Sports Watching Rituals and Routines

[JayMac]

I think it's safe to assume that most of the members here are big sports fans. Now with college football starting and the NFL about to get underway, I was curious if any of you had any types of routines for your Saturdays and Sundays in the fall (or with any other sports, as well).

 

Saturdays usually begin with me waking up and watching football across the pond with some EPL action. Then it's usually ESPN college gameday after that. In the afternoons, I usually flip around among many channels. The only full games I usually watch are Penn State games. Sundays, I usually do household chores in the morning and skip NFL shows altogether because most of them are annoying. Then I usually head over to a family member's house to watch a game or two. If I stay home, I'm usually Red Zone watching. I am also a huge Flyers fan so watching games at night usually fits well provided I have completed my workout for the day.

 

Having a fiancée that despises football, it gets pretty tricky. I am also very involved with an animal rescue that my fiancée's family started up about 2 years ago. I know technology makes watching sports much easier but it doesn't always help me. So I wanted to also see how you guys work sports viewership into your schedules.

[dont care]

Mine is I try to match the jersey I'm wearing with what they are playing with. I can do it for football pretty easily and hockey I can do it about 75% of the time, basket ball it's a crap shoot, and I don't have enough baseball jerseys to try this so I'll just try to match my cap.

[BeerGuyJordan]

1 hour ago, jmac11281 said:

Having a fiancée that despises football, it gets pretty tricky. I am also very involved with an animal rescue that my fiancée's family started up about 2 years ago. I know technology makes watching sports much easier but it doesn't always help me. So I wanted to also see how you guys work sports viewership into your schedules.

How does she feel about hockey? My ex-wife and an old girlfriend didn't like football, but I was able to get them into hockey.

 

My current S/O liked football, a lot, but I turned her into a hockey-first fan within one season, without really trying too hard. I'm not sure what it is about the sport, but it seems women get into hockey more than football, when taken to games.

[JayMac]

2 minutes ago, BeerGuyJordan said:

How does she feel about hockey? My ex-wife and an old girlfriend didn't like football, but I was able to get them into hockey.

 

My current S/O liked football, a lot, but I turned her into a hockey-first fan within one season, without really trying too hard. I'm not sure what it is about the sport, but it seems women get into hockey more than football, when taken to games.

She loves hockey and loves her Flyers so I can look past the hating football part! 

[BeerGuyJordan]

15 minutes ago, jmac11281 said:

She loves hockey and loves her Flyers so I can look past the hating football part! 

Case-in-point. I'm not sure what it is about hockey that seems to cause women to like it so much more than football.

[JayMac]

They love the tough guys, I guess!

[CS85]

My NFL Sunday consists of getting up early, making some coffee, messing around w/ pre-game stuff and playing some PC games to kill time.  I watch games by myself almost 100% of the time, and generally hate when the Bears play at any other time than noon.

[B-Rich]

Of course, there is this ritual of mine for tailgating @ LSU home games:

Grilling up the competition

 

plus the Super Bowl cuisine thing mentioned in that post.

 

Attending Saints, Pelicans, LSU home games; I almost always wear some type of team logoed shirt (polo shirt, sometimes t-shirt).  Often can't do that for Pelicans game as they are often on a week night and I go there straight from work, in suit or dress shirt.

 

Not much ritual for watching games at home, other than drinking (night games-- Sunday afternoons--no).

 

[Sport]

One of the things I really miss about living on the West Coast is NFL at 10 am and SNF being over by 7:30. There was a bar across the street from my apartment that had a really good breakfast menu and I'd always get a TV with my game on. I loved it. The East Coast doesn't know what they're missing. 

 

I don't have rituals for football or baseball and I'm not superstitious about anything - this took some years of active thought and contemplation. THE SHIRT I'M WEARING HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW THE TEAM DOES. 

 

Hockey - This is where I am weird. Usually alone, I sit there on my couch transfixed on the TV with my computer open to twitter while wearing a jersey that matches whatever the Blue Jackets are wearing and I do this for all 82 regular season games. I am a legitimately scary person during the games and this is not lost on me. My GF and I have lived together since December 2015 and this is easily the hardest thing she's had to learn to live with. We're going to Florida in October and I need a few hours on October 15, and the 21st where I'll need internet access. She knows this and understands. Also, she will forever regret buying me a goal horn that has all 30 teams' specific goal horn programmed into it. When the CBJ score I hit the button. 

[JayMac]

2 hours ago, B-Rich said:

Of course, there is this ritual of mine for tailgating @ LSU home games:

Grilling up the competition

 

plus the Super Bowl cuisine thing mentioned in that post.

 

Attending Saints, Pelicans, LSU home games; I almost always wear some type of team logoed shirt (polo shirt, sometimes t-shirt).  Often can't do that for Pelicans game as they are often on a week night and I go there straight from work, in suit or dress shirt.

 

Not much ritual for watching games at home, other than drinking (night games-- Sunday afternoons--no).

 

Going to an LSU game at death valley is definitely on my bucket list!

[JayMac]

2 hours ago, CS85 said:

My NFL Sunday consists of getting up early, making some coffee, messing around w/ pre-game stuff and playing some PC games to kill time.  I watch games by myself almost 100% of the time, and generally hate when the Bears play at any other time than noon.

The Fox Game of the Week with Joe Buck is usually brutal. He is annoying as all hell. I'm usually watching the Seahawks game at that time unless, God forbid, he is announcing the Seahawks game that Sunday.

 

Overall, I hate a non-Seahawks 4:25, or whatever the hell it is, time slot.

[2001mark]

NFL - I don't tune in until 1pm.  Pregame shows are putrid- parade of inside jokes, juvenile behaviour, & lots of yelling.  

If the early games don't tempt me, & if I have things to do, I'll wait until 3:30 to tune in- to watch the end of the best early game(s) + watch through the late games.  

Patriots playoff games I will fix something like wings or pizza & turn the world off.  

 

For any big playoff games my teams are playing in, if they're leading I won't touch the volume &/or lights.  If there's a stretch of drought or poor play, I'll change the volume & all the lighting.  If it's very close &/or tied, I may even watch standing up + do some exercises to burn tension.  

I can only watch my fav teams' big games alone, like writing a final exam.

 

NCAAF I'll watch a couple College Gamedays a month because their landscape is always too big to keep up myself (& doesn't capture my weekday attention)

NHL I treat weekday & Saturday Leaf games differently.  Weeknights are fun, Saturdays seem to mean litmus tests of all kinds.  

MLB Jays playoff games are the hardest because baseball tension.  

NBA Raptors are the easiest to watch because the sport is always on the go, & my degree of expectation for the team is lowest of all my favs.

[neo_prankster]

If you want to decry the humor of NFL pregame shows, it was Fox who pretty much made CBS and NBC look bland, uptight and helplessly old fashioned back when they first got the NFC in '94.

 

For me, it is SportsCenter every morning when I get up and every evening before I go to bed. Sometimes when the Padres have a weekday afternoon game, I'll catch the replay, albeit condensed later in the evening.

 

On nights when TNT has an NBA double header, I tune in early to make sure I don't miss the pregame, and when the games are over I stick around for EJ's Neato Stat of the Night (sponsored by...nobody).

[IceCap]

I really only have two rituals I stick with. I always catch the Leafs on Saturday night if I don't otherwise have plans, and I always wake up early to catch those Super Bowl retrospectives prior to the actual game on Super Bowl Sunday.

[jc...]

Every NFL Sunday. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I've done a version of that with TV and streaming NFL Sunday Ticket (which I re-upped for this year).

 

I watch a lot of sports while on the treadmill. It's easier for fall and winter sports; I don't get Mariners games on any mobile device.

[chcarlson23]

On 9/2/2016 at 10:31 AM, McCarthy said:

Hockey - This is where I am weird. Usually alone, I sit there on my couch transfixed on the TV with my computer open to twitter while wearing a jersey that matches whatever the Blue Jackets are wearing and I do this for all 82 regular season games. I am a legitimately scary person during the games and this is not lost on me. My GF and I have lived together since December 2015 and this is easily the hardest thing she's had to learn to live with. We're going to Florida in October and I need a few hours on October 15, and the 21st where I'll need internet access. She knows this and understands. Also, she will forever regret buying me a goal horn that has all 30 teams' specific goal horn programmed into it. When the CBJ score I hit the button. 

I'm a lot like this too... I watch with my brother, and we celebrate like WE just scored the goal.  We're both on the edge of our seat, completely into the Wild game. Bathroom and food during the commercial breaks, and sometimes we have to do the dishes or homework during the intermission. We both can get SUPER pissed off when the other team scores... 

 

The only difference though is that I only wear my jerseys for big games, (Openers, big playoff games, SS game, etc.) and that I don't have the goal horn... yet