Why watch live sport?

SuperInfinity

I'm getting sick of Euro 2012... I hardly care who wins or want to watch any of the remaining games. I didn't enjoy watching Ireland playing. And yet I constantly find myself flicking on ESPN Classic to watch some soccer here and there. I also watched highlights to a lot of the games.

So this may sound like an odd topic, but why go to the trouble of watching an entire hour and a half of a match when it could be a terrible match? Some of the best memories of watching soccer I ever had, was the "Serie A" show that used to be on tv when my sister and I were very young. It had one or two feature games, and then a "roundup" of the rest of the matches. And you saw all the goals, all the top players, all the amazing runs and the drama.

Suppose I want to watch some staged drama. It makes no difference to me whether it's live acting, or was produced decades ago. And I don't care also about seeing all the backstage etc. I do care about the actors, that doesn't mean I need to watch it live.

So why not pick the best games, and view them? Why are there almost no really well known games that are rated etc. like there are films?

Isn't the whole point of watching soccer to enjoy it? To watch players cooperate and push it to the maximum, to see their idiosyncracies and how they work together as a team. To see the victories, heartbreaks, amazing passing moves, howlers, frustration, luck, acrobatics etc. You can view them all without getting a total random game. Can you imagine sitting down to view a completely random movie for an hour and a half regardless of quality?

"But SuperInfinity you won't understand the game if you only view the highlights".

I thought this before also, however what's there to understand about passing it around the back? The time you spent watching players pass it around the back could be spent looking at amazing bicycle kicks and solo runs by the best players ever.

Note: I thought of posting this on the Soccer board, but a lot of people take their football very seriously over there and are not a casual viewer like me, thought this mightn't go down so well...

tHE vAGGABOND

sorry - soccer threads not allowed here