I believe one of my specialities is being extremely passionate about sports without ever really watching them. While this is not necessarily intended to be a gendered topic, I’m sure this guide will apply mostly to women. Keeping up with sports conversations can be difficult, especially if you don’t really care in the first place; however I think there are ways around this, or potentially to induce it. I would say there are two requirements to care about sports, and I mean any sport: 1) being a competitive person and 2) being on social media. Having friends who care about sports are also helpful and important in fostering an interest, however I would argue that if you are reading this, you already know people who care about sports but up until now have never tried to care as well. Trying to look at sports from a different angle helps, which is why I’ve chosen to focus on competitiveness and social media.
Competitive Drive
I believe that everyone is competitive in some way – I don’t think it’s possible not to be. We’re all the center of our own universes, have insecurities, and want to be recognized in some way. Whether its being competitive at board games, at work, in school, when playing sports, in relationships, there’s always some part of you that wants to be number 1. To transfer that to caring about professional sports shouldn’t be too difficult, but here are some tips just in case:
1. Pick Your Teams and Stick To Them
Most people have mothers or fathers that care about a certain team due to where they’re from, or maybe you’ve decided you want to create your own allegiances. Pick your teams and stick with them. Don’t be a fair weather fan or you’ll never truly be able to get into them (no matter how much I may want to change from being a Knicks fan to a Nets fan now).
2. Fantasy
Try to join a fantasy team with friends. Insert yourself into your friends’ leagues, or if they’re being rude and cliquey about it, just sign up for free on ESPN or Yahoo in their millionaire leagues so you can be invested – this will also teach you who some of the key players are and get you into more aspects of the media game (podcasts, articles, etc.)
Tip: If you’re able to get into one of your friends leagues or a work league I highly recommend cheating. By that I mean, have someone you know draft your team for you to start. That way you start with an optimal team that you know will probably be good and allow you to shit talk. Shit talking is an imperative part of fantasy and will get your competitive juices going. You don’t need to try trading, picking people off of the waiver wire, etc. but make sure that you’re paying attention enough to not play players who have a by that week. This will also help key you in to who you should be following and will allow you to follow along on Twitter and through the fantasy apps without actually watching the games. For example, if you have James Conner (RB on the Steelers) and you see that he has 30 fantasy points that game, you can know that he’s doing well and usually that means the Steelers are doing well too – giving you general knowledge quickly and without much effort.
3. Gambling
Nothing inspires me to be invested in something more than gambling! Putting small bets on games, or what I prefer, larger bets on futures before the season, will help you follow along generally without making you watch individual games, as it’s an easy way to incentivize interest, even if only looking at results.
Social Media
This is where it all happens. Everything you know about sports, how you relate to the games, how you consume content will all happen on social media. Curating your feeds to include people who know how to comment on sports in a way that is effective to you is imperative. I’m going to lump in online media into this category because the two are very interconnected. See below for my recommendations that will apply to all sports coverage – this list is not exhaustive and I’ll continue to update as well as post separate lists that address people who focus more on one sport in particular.
*I’m not going to list out the twitter handles for every player but follow the main players on your favorite teams (for example in football, follow the quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers); you’ll also start following people based on who other people follow and who’s making noise in the twitter-sphere.
You’ll find a common theme among these recommendations… a lot of people from The Ringer and Barstool. I’ve found that people working at these two websites are particularly good at relating what’s happening in sports to pop culture in some way.
General Sports-Centric Accounts
- The Ringer (@ringer)
- Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport)
- ESPN (@ESPN)
- House of Highlights (@HoHighlights)
- The Athletic (@TheAthletic)
- They have twitter accounts by city and by sport as well
- Barstool Sports (@BarstoolSports)
- They have twitter accounts by city and by sport also
- CBS Sports (@CBSSports)
- SB Nation (@SBNation)
- For The Win (@ForTheWin)
- NBC Sports (@NBCSports)
General Sports-Centric People
- Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons)
- Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente)
- Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat)
- Chris Ryan (@ChrisRyan77)
- Ryen Russillo (@ryenarussillo)
- Katie Nolan (@katienolan)
- Scott Van Pelt (@notthefakeSVP)
- Jalen Rose (@JalenRose)
- David Jacoby (@djacoby)
- Omar Raja (@OmarHoH)
