The Failure of a Sports Father: A One-Act Play

The cast:

Son: My 17-year-old son, who's a complete sports illiterate. He plays video games, loves anime and works at Game Stop. His soccer career was two seasons between ages 2 and 10. He has never attended an amateur or professional sporting event.

Me: One of my first memories (not sports memories -- memories memories) is Larry Csonka running through the Vikings' D-line in Super Bowl VIII. I was 6, and I was at my friend Brooke's house (actually my mom was good friends with his mom, Nancy), and they lived on a house that sat at an angle to Patterson Avenue in Richmond, Va.) But I digress.

Scene: Work.

Sound: Ringing of a phone.

Me: Hello?

Son: Hey. Name players on the New England Patriots.

Me: (caught off guard that such a question would be asked) ... Uh ... Tom Brady? He's the quarterback ...

Son: No, no. Who's the guy in all those commercials?

Me: (after a pause) You mean Peyton Manning?

Son: Yeah, him!

Me: He plays for the Colts, not the Patriots.

Son: Didn't he used to play for the Patriots?

Me: No. He's always played for the Colts.

Son: (in a disbelieving tone) Really?

(Spotlight focuses on a middle-aged man, holiding a telephone in one hand and covering his face with the other.)

- Fin -

Yep, time to shelf this one and re-roll.

But does he kick your ass in Call of Duty multiplayer? That's all that's important.

Enix wrote:

He has never attended an amateur or professional sporting event.

Gah! I'm calling CPS.

Yes, you've failed in raising a child who remembers the same meaningless trivia drivel as you.

I bet he would likewise facepalm when you fail to name the lead characters in { insert name of anime here }

Hmm. A kid who's not interested in sports knows nothing about sports.

I am *shocked*.

(And I probably know less than he does, although I have been to both amateur and professional sporting events.)

I've never even heard of any of the athletes you mentioned.

Maybe try for a daughter.

Vulgar or Ridiculously Childish wrote:

Maybe try for a daughter.

It sounds like he already has one.

Spoiler:

I know I'm going to die for that one.

Right now your son has no interest in sports and, frankly, no reason to. He's presumably still in or just out of high school so his friends are certainly mostly of his age and similarly into anime and video games. Furthermore he works at GameStop with a bunch of fellow geeks while any of his regular customers are almost certainly nerds of some stripe. You like sports, sure, but you're his dad and will love him no matter what so where's his incentive to watch a game? Hell, you don't even press the issue because if you did he'd have seen a live professional sporting game at some point with you, yeah?

But wait and see what happens when he goes out into the real world, when he goes to college or gets a better paying but not directly video game related job. While my interest in sports is only nominally higher than it was when I was in high school my knowledge of sports is multitudes more simply because I have friends and coworkers who are interested. For the price of listening to the sports section of the local news I can interact with them in a cursory manner and get good vibes from them when we next talk. When with a client, with only a basic understanding of the rules of football to guide me, I can see the game on and comment on whether a play was stupid or amazing, making the client feel I'm interested in their own past time and significantly boosting our professional relationship. Hell, only a few more raises and I'll have to go learn how to golf.

So just wait a decade or so. If your son knows you and knows of your love of sports he'll use his newfound knowledge to talk to you about sports. And if he's good you might even think he enjoys them.

*Legion* wrote:
Vulgar or Ridiculously Childish wrote:

Maybe try for a daughter.

It sounds like he already has one.

Spoiler:

I know I'm going to die for that one.

Ouch... Well, I wasn't ever interested in sports and I turned out allright, 's no big deal. Well, actually I liked basketball and did karate and I still work out, so er never mind that. But not knowing obscure trivia I don't think that's a big deal...

Did you ever try playing sports with the kid?

Doesn't like sports? What does he watch while he drinks?

S..p..o..r..t..s? What is the meaning of this sports you speak of?

In the real world we have things called computer games. About a bazillion times more entertaining

*Legion* wrote:
Vulgar or Ridiculously Childish wrote:

Maybe try for a daughter.

It sounds like he already has one.

Spoiler:

I know I'm going to die for that one.

IMAGE(http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t22/Gumbie84/t9dwr6.jpg)

Sports suck.

What exactly did you fail at? Making him a carbon copy?

Rather than pine about his disinterest in sports, how about try to learn and pursue some of his interests?

Maybe get him onto a local Quidditch team.

I was confused by the play. So the cops knew Internal Affairs was setting them up?

Please, oh please tell me you are a resident of some Eastern European nation or maybe Canada.

All of us non-commie, god-loving Goodgers who know who Scott Van Pelt is, need to immediately give the sport-challenged goodgers atomic wedgies. It's for their own good.

I already pre-snipped my undies

Am I the only one here that feels that it is possible to be a huge geek and still enjoy sports? I played football (or soccer, for you yanks) for 14 years, I'm following the NFL and Premier League religiously and I'm still the biggest geek my friends have ever met...

Agemmon wrote:

Am I the only one here that feels that it is possible to be a huge geek and still enjoy sports?...

There are a ton of geeks who follow sports. So no problems there.

*Legion* wrote:
Vulgar or Ridiculously Childish wrote:

Maybe try for a daughter.

It sounds like he already has one.

Spoiler:

I know I'm going to die for that one.

Damn well done.

FSeven wrote:

What exactly did you fail at? Making him a carbon copy?

Rather than pine about his disinterest in sports, how about try to learn and pursue some of his interests?

Not everything is to be taken as 100% serious you know.

My son went to his first A's game in-utero.

Just chiming in. I don't really have an opinion on this. I can't name more than 10 people on the Raiders' current roster and I'm a lifelong fan.

As long as he's not rooting for a division rival, I think you're good.

You know... We have a forum right over here... Where you'll be welcomed and consoled as one of our own. As opposed to...

FSeven wrote:

What exactly did you fail at? Making him a carbon copy?

Rather than pine about his disinterest in sports, how about try to learn and pursue some of his interests?

I'd say who gives a damn about whether he likes sports or not, but then I realized that he'll never be able to get that final piece of the Trivial Pursuit pie without at least some knowledge.

That's a crippling disability.

Naysayers aside, the world has not yet gotten to the point where having a healthy mental knowledge of anime or video games is even close to the importance of knowing sports.

I am being very, very serious when I say that, at least in the corporate world I am familiar with, having at the very least a passive knowledge of sports is an unwritten requirement for promotion.

Take from that what you will, but knowledge of sports has been as vital to me as knowledge of my actual job. The fact that I can recite lines from Cowboy Bebop and I know the theorycraft behind feral cat dps has not.

Whenever people in this country say "sports", most of the time they actually mean to say "television".

Y'all crack me up. Really you do.

What I posted originally was 98 percent tongue-in-cheek. On one (small) hand I'm horrified that anyone can't ID Peyton Manning or Tom Brady. That's sort of like not knowing what anime is or what WoW stands for. It's pretty basic cultural literacy.

On the other (much, much larger) hand I'm greatly amused at my son's complete ignorance of sports, considering that my (very limited) TV diet is 90 percent sports and that I've been a sports fan all my life. I never forced the issue, and osmosis didn't come into play, either.

I've got a foot in both the sports and geek worlds. After watching my Carolina Panthers get pounded Sunday by the Patriots, I'll pad downstairs to the computer and keep pushing my ret paladin toward 80.

My son has both feet squarely in Geekville -- he was in the steam punk parade at this year's DragonCon, for cryin' out loud -- and I love him for it.

The meta issue here for all of you fathers in the house is that I always marvel at how my children (I've got 3, including, yes, Legion, a daughter) are in many ways like me and my wife and in many, many ways are so very, very different.