So, let me see if I got this straight. Watching some random high school football game in person (that I care nothing about) makes me more of a football fan than watching my favorite NFL team on the television?

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

Because you're not a fan of football. You're a fan of the NFL on CBS.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

You have yet to explain how the difference in viewing on tv compared to in person has an effect on the level of fandom.

This isn't like reading a newspaper on newsprint vs. reading one on a Kindle. In that case, the content is exactly the same. Only the method of delivery is different. Watching sports in person is completely different from watching a television program.

Are you a football fan? If you are, don't you desire to see football live?

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I would argue the content isn't different. And perhaps, there is actually better and more content on tv.


And again, EVERYONE is on the same page about it being different. There is no confusion around that. You simply fail to explain why that difference affects perceived fandom. This is the key.



As stated, I love the Bears. I love them the same whether I watch in person or on tv. I just prefer to watch them on tv. My fandom is about wanting them to win football games. That's true both on tv or in person.

No I don't desire to see it live.

I've gone to Bears games over the years and it's not the greatest sport in the world to attend unless you love a lot of gaps in the action for commercials. At home, you can get up a get a beer that isn't 8 dollars or go take a leak and not stand in line.
Yea...what I'd love to do is fork over a bunch of cash for a ticket, drive 2.5-3 hours each way...pay for parking...watch the game and then sit on Lakeshore waiting to go home. That sounds like a lot more fun than watching it at home.

Somehow I've survived without going to a game more than once every 3-5 years. To suggest that makes me less of a fan seems to be stupid.

Edit.....if the tickets are free, count me in.

This has been an interesting thread, and while I don't agree with everything JORR wrote, I can understand his original premise since t stemmed from the above quote. If you love football more on tv than in person than you clearly are a bigger television fan than football fan. I don't know why anyone would dispute that.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

I don't think it's the game that is loved any less, but the other factors that go into seeing it live.

I think the love of the actual football is the same. It's the little hassles and annoyances that go with seeing an event in person that worse than the comfort of your home.

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I don't know. I definitely understand financial restraints and the fact that some people don't live in close proximity to their favorite teams. Hard to argue with either one of those reasons for not attending games. But if you just don't like crowds/people and that's why you're not going, then I would have to agree with JORR that you're more a fan of a tv program.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

But crowds are not a part of the game of football. If people who enjoy watching at home are merely fans of TV, then I could argue that people who attend live are fans of the NFLs live productions and not the game of football. The only way to be a "true fan" would be to sit alone in a parking lot with no modern amenities and watch people play the sport right next to you. All sports viewing is through the prism of modern day comforts and marketing.

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I don't follow your logic here. Crowds and modern amenities don't fundamentally change what you are watching. Television does. It chooses for you what part of the game you are going to see.


And I'm not saying you have to attend games to be a true fan. My point was more that a true fan(from how I understand the term, and I agree with others who have expressed how meaningless this whole debate is) would never say something like "I love football. I love it less in person." That just doesn't make sense to me, as a fan.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

wow...this is quite possibly the dumbest argument in the history of the internet. You are absolutely, 100% wrong.

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This is such a classic internet post. THIS IS THE DUMBEST THING EVER TO ARGUE ABOUT.... BUT IM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG!

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

All our arguments are dumb. That's why I post here.

Back to the argument... JORR seems to be arguing that watching on TV is different than in person, and we all agree with that. It is a different experience. But none of the differences are in regards to the actual sport. They are cosmetic differences. There is music, commercials, announcers, etc. I'm saying that attending a game live also has its own "fluff" that has nothing to do with the sport itself. There are announcers, mascots, games, etc. So, my question is, are live attendees fans of the sport or fans of the experience? It's the exact same argument he's making about television.

Also, I disagree that TV changes what part of the game you watch. This is partially true only for football since the field is too large to fit on the entire screen. If anything, TV allows us to view things better. Sitting in nose bleed seats pretty much makes it impossible to see anything.

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I guess our disagreement is that I dont consider them equal. I would say watching a game on tv is definitely a lesser experience than seeing it live. That goes for pretty much every sport I can think of.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think JORR's point is more about the the lengths a "fan" will go to in order to watch a sport, rather than watching the sport itself. It seems to me his point is about the effort fans make to watch sports; flipping on a TV is much easier, perhaps even lazier, than undergoing all the types of problems that accompany someone when he/she decides to travel to a stadium. Since the latter takes more effort, it is more reflective of the "fanaticism" JORR thinks truer fans have over those who take the easy path of watching the game at home.

I happen to prefer watching the game at home too, for reasons already mentioned by most everyone here. I just wanted to see if the fan's effort was at the base of JORR's contention rather than the actual game viewing experience itself.

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Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

Well, this is the Bores and Bernstein forum. I just argue like they do with callers!

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JORR has ever so softly crossed over into trolling with this "argument."

Enjoy the moment, folks.

He is dug in

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Elections have consequences.

Let the record show, no one has any clue what his point actually is because he hasn't explained it in any sort of detail at all.

Every sporting event is different in person than on television, but there's no greater disparity in experience than with the NFL, which has entrenched itself as a cultural force through ancillary aspects of the game far more than the game itself, which is intrinsically tedious, repetitive, and not demanding of undivided attention. It is, in essence, America's favorite TV show. There are robots and lasers and Zapruder films and law-talkin' guys and dramatic whooshy camera angles and highlight packages with stentorian narration. And you have it on TV every Sunday with yr bros and yr Cool Girls Who Are Really Just One Of The Guyz And Semi-Sexily Wear Football Jerseys (or so TV would have me believe: sadly, I watch games both broless and JOOTGgirlless), and it's communal appointment television for the sake of communal appointment television in an age where more and more we'd rather just binge-watch Mad Men and Girls on a Kindle. If you took away the bells and whistles of the production truck, the fantasy/gambling, and all the extraneous lifestyle bullshit peddled by beer/car/NFL.com commercials and just had a world where NFL telecasts consisted simply of showing fat guys headbutting each other while some guy runs ten feet and falls down, no one would really care about it because it's not terribly compelling. People would just like baseball, like they used to.

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10 year old kid listening to radio broadcast in bed with a flashlight and the sports section = not a fan!

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@audioidkid

Youre right about all the program/production excess that goes into a NFL telecast, not to mention mostly inarticulate, doofuses that do pregame and halftime "analysis," but i personally avoid all that trash and just tune in at kickoff. All I need is the game, and if I want an analytical breakdown, I'll seek out some noted writers for that, or even log in here. I don't need a guy like Ron Jaworski taking five minutes to say winning comes down to which team scores more points, or Terry Bradshaw telling me a RB's leg injury will likely impact his running ability. My point is all the fluff you rightly pointed out is not necessarily consumed by everyone watching the game on TV. It's often ignored.

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Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

I guess someone understands my point.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Does that trope really evoke football?

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

No. People would still watch, even without the robots and Tony Siragusa. And again, the Exact. Same. Argument. can be made for the live game itself. If it were a bunch of guys playing in a parking lot wiithout tailgating and concessions and music, many people would not go. The arguments you are making are not exclusive to TV.

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Do you know what you get when people watch a sport on TV simply for the sake of enjoying the sport, without paying mind to cultural pressure, recreational gambling, or rampant televisual gimmickry? The NHL.


Yeah, generations of kids clandestinely burning the midnight oil for those Sunday afternoon Bears games. If you have fond memories of being under the covers alone with Hub Arkush, it's because he was molesting you.

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If this was your point you should have just made it yourself....you didn't.

I agree with the premise that there really are a lot of people who are interested in the NFL for fantasy/gambling purposes and probably are more fans of a TV show than the actual sport. But to come on a sports talk message board and call out posters, who are obviously sports fans to begin with, and lump them into this demo is just plain dumb.

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