OT: Your favorite niche/non-"major" sports
We've entered the summer sports doldrums. The only active "major" sport is Major League Baseball. The Tigers stink, and we still have two months to go until football season.
But that doesn't mean there aren't any sports at all. Wimbledon is firing up, and the Tour de France begins shortly. There is auto racing on television every weekend, and other lesser-known sports are active as well.
Are there any "niche" sports that you enjoy? For these purposes I won't count US national teams in soccer or the Olympics; however, if there's an "Olympic" sport that you enjoy outside of the Olympics (I've gotten up at 5 am to watch Alpine skiing in non-Olympic years before) that totally counts. Sports Michigan plays that aren't the four majors (eg Wrestling, Field Hockey) count as well if you actively follow them in-season.
Post your favorite niche sports here.
I freaking love beach sports- particularly volleyball but I never get the opportunity to play. And there's nothing I'd rather do at any given time than go bodysurfing. I could never get good at real surfing but it rules and I even watched it on TV last night.
Lacrosse! It's fun to play and has elements of lots of other sports - the open field flow of soccer, offensive and defensive schemes akin to basketball, physical play and stick skills (somewhat) similar to hockey. Plus, Michigan and some schools have uniforms and helmets that resemble football. It might take some getting used to but it's actually a pretty good spectator sport as well - give it a chance, I recommend it! Especially if Michigan gets good!
I played tons of sports in my life but I swear, rugby might be the most fun. It doesn't look like much but it's constant motion and action. It's like soccer with more people and everyone is hitting and tackling the shit out of each other. It's brilliant chaos. The only thing I think might be more fun is playing linebacker in football (I played LB very briefly my senior year for a bad HS team but always thought it was really fun).
Sex (non bloodsport edition)
What's the sport where you have to pick something up with your ass crack and move the object across the room?
I like that one.
We'd have more luck playing pick-up sticks with our buttcheeks than we will getting a flight out of here before daybreak.
I miss the days when ESPN360 used to have a ton of random sports on there. My buddy and I used to love watching sports where we had no clue what the rules were. Australian football and cricket were two favorites and there were a bunch of other random events too
you don’t have the ocho?
Maybe not thread worthy (not that I’m starting one anytime soon), but Venus just got beat by fifteen year old Cori Gauff at Wimbledon.
Wild day in women's tennis also with Osaka going down.
Watched about 4 - 5 games. Is Venus coming off an injury or is this kid that good? Or maybe Venus is just slowing down.
Eh I think it just has to do with Venus being 39. And I guess it's not too uncommon for these young em's in women's tennis to pull the upset off. I think Sharapova beat Serena at just 17 years old if I remember correctly.
I stumbled on to a video of Irish Hurling a few years ago on YouTube and I find myself watching matches on YouTube to this day. I think the best way to describe it is a cross between lacrosse, baseball, rugby and soccer. It’s played in gaint stadiums in Ireland. 80k+.
Fenway Park has hosted the Fenway Hurling Classic the last few years. Kinda their version on the Sox-Yankees in London. Definitely an interesting sport.
Rugby! Played since 95, love to watch.
I'll co-sign cricket, as others have noted.
Also really used to enjoy Australian rules football, which used to be on ESPN2 latenight in the 1990s.
I grew up racing sailboats, so I enjoy watching the America's Cup, and sometimes follow the Whitbread (nka The Ocean Race).
IndyCar. Every driver I have ever met has been awesome and that has made me love the sport even more.
I love Formula 1 but IndyCar has way more parity which I also enjoy. Also the balance between road and oval courses is nice.
Trail running.
The Western States 100 was this weekend - which is considered a crown jewel of running. Look up some of the videos of finishers; it's wild.
Swimming
Squash. One of the few negatives living in Michigan was having a tiny pool of people to play.
Not an everyday watcher but I love me some Jeopardy! Nooooooot quite an answer to the question but I really dont have much else. I enjoy some backyard Beersbe and am quite good at it...though I'd never watch people play that on television.
Show's not the same since James Holzhauer "lost" (I buy into the conspiracy that it was rigged).
For me it's tennis. When I was in HS (early 1970s) one of the coaches took some of us who were on the tennis team to Chicago for the WCT tour tournament. The first year it was played at Ryan Field House at Northwestern, the second year we went it was played at Lyon's Township High School. This was early in the open era, and you could get up close to the action. In a drawer somewhere I have autographs of Rod Laver, Stan Smith, Ken Rosewall, Arthur Ashe, and others. Tennis is great game.
deer hunting
Formula 1! Great race in Austria yesterday.
I like the Haas team as they F1's sole America-based team (HQ in North Carolina).
I don't have a favorite driver as long as it's a fun and competitive race.
Races are often at 9am on Sunday mornings (Eastern Time). I'm on the west coast so it's easy for me to see it later on demand (not a lot of F1 spoilers here in the States, as you can imagine).
If you ever have a chance to see crew (rowing) live, it is worth doing once (e.g., Head of the Charles in Boston, US Rowing championships). Kind of the sports viewing equivalent of fishing--enjoy a good afternoon by the water, seeing a good boat go by is beautiful.
I rarely watch on TV though, unless the olympics or if I can catch the college championships somehow.
My wife and I swim at the Masters level (she is way better than I am), so we love to watch swimming.This summer, there is no U.S. selection meet so all the best U.S. swimmers will be spread across 4 events -- World Championships, World Junior Championships, World University Games, and Pan American Games. Most interested in seeing what some of the Juniors are doing, in preparation for next year.
Thanks for the info. My young one, who we haven't been able to find anything to sufficiently capture their interest, appears to have really taken to swimming. It's not often that I see a tired smile at the end of a practice followed by an exclamation of how much fun that was. We'll be on the lookout for the events you identified.
I swam competitively for 15 years.
That smile will definitely fade towards high school, but it's worth pushing through.
My advice: don't push them too hard about it. Swimming is a total grind and most of my friends were burned out mentally by the time college rolled around (we were state champions so we were good swimmers), even though most were good enough to swim at a mid major or walk on at a power program.
But it's a great sport to be around, and it's fun to get totally emersed in the whole swimming world while most other people aren't paying attention.
By "push too hard" I mean doing doubles as a middle schooler in the summer. Stuff like that.
I appreciate the insight. We've tried various team and individual sports, and nothing lasted longer than the season itself. So I'm going to play follow the leader here and hope that she makes it hers and finds something that can serve as a general ongoing fitness activity. If she wants to make it competitive, fine.
With swimming, that's the approach you need to take.
Hopefully she continues to keep loving it! It's a great sport to stick with. The sport is great too for applying similar work ethic outside of the pool.
rugby 7s and handball are both awesome. I can always get sucked into watching a fast paced game.
Rugby for sure - and since USA is good at it, I find myself making some time to watch the 7s World Series every year. So happy that I found those guys at FestiFall so many years back. I like football better, but I know that's mostly because I'm an American. If I'd grown up almost anywhere else, I'm pretty sure rugby union would be my favorite game. SOILED MEAT AND SAND!
24-hr Le Mans... Porsche FTW, I take time off work, so I can prepare, then sleep the entire day after.
F1
World Cup, Germany
Love the 24 hours of Le Mans. It's kind of at a lull between major rulesets, though, and I'm pessimistic about the "hypercar" formula. I was hoping they'd go the DPi route.
But it's always a magnificent event.
Anyone who has paid any attention to my posting history will know my answer already, it's badminton. I'll take this opportunity to share an anecdote from a recent trip to the badminton club. Recently, I commented how I've been picking up stickers that come loose from the shuttles and put them on my tennis shoes - the badminton equivalent of helmet stickers. Because of this, I've started paying attention to the stickers on the underside of the birdies. This also helps me determine if the shuttles are good quality or not. For example, a Yonex 10 is kind of iffy, but a Yonex 50 is really good. So I was playing Thursday night, turned the birdie over and saw a logo that read, "INDO COCK." This, apparently, is a real thing:
https://www.amazon.com/INDO-COCK-Badminton-badminton-Shuttlecocks-Durab…
$12.50 for a pack of 12 INDO COCK shuttles is a good deal.
I don’t recommend googling “12 indo cock”
I hardly have the time to watch the major sports anymore, so there aren't really any niche sports that I follow. That said, I have no idea how handball and badminton aren't more popular in America. Make sure to watch as much as I can every Summer Olympics.
I am too old to directly participate in drinking games, or even at this point to follow them in any non-passing respect. But yeah, drinking games.
I've actually searched furiously for times when curling was on in non-Olympic years.
Also, a few other people have mentioned it already, but cricket. I will watch cricket when it is on.
I will watch ice skating, gymnastics and swimming whenever they are on TV. Ice skating and gymnastics take both athleticism and artistry, so it's beautiful to watch. I swim for exercise and love to see it at its best; it's inspiring.
NBA summer league and nhl prospect tournaments/camps
Strongman!!!!!! You may remember seeing some of the competitions on ESPN over the summer when you were bored and surfing channels.
So incredible to see these massive human beings performing insane feats of strength and athleticism. It's really growing in popularity in the last few years, which is awesome to see.
Some of the big names out there right now are Thor Bjornsson (who you probably know as "The Mountain" from Game of Thrones, Brian Shaw, Martins Licis, Mateausz Kielszkowski just to name a few. Many of them have YouTube channels that are great to watch.
West Mongolian Dick Whiskering.
Tennis is the one sport my wife and I both enjoy watching on a regular basis.
I follow MotoGP (motorcycle F1) enough to pay for the app and to stream the races.
I was a scrub walk-on for the Michigan Track team, so I do occasionally watch Track and Field.
Other motorsports (two and four wheeled), boxing, MMA and World's Strongest Man get a bit of love from time to time.
Sailing. The #1 thing I did with my dad. He would have been 71 today.
You should race the Trans Superior some year. I'll buy you a coffee at the finish.
Been invited on a few Macs but never went.
I will agree with the team handball sentiment here on the board. Fun sport; I watch the European or World championships every January (European in the even years, world in the odd years).
Cricket is fine, but the 50-over style they use in the world cup is easily the least interesting of the 3 formats--both test cricket and Twenty20 are better, but in very different ways. Test cricket only works for me at the very highest level though--must be a matchup between top-5 countries.
I want to add one that hasn't been mentioned: biathlon. I really got into world cup biathlon on the Olympic Channel this winter. The pursuit, mass start and relay competitions are awesome, suspenseful sporting events. If you watch a few weeks in a row and get to know the competitors--learn their strengths & weaknesses, who the perennial winners are and who the underdogs are, etc.--it gets even better. I can't recommend it highly enough for a sports fan.
This whole thread makes me miss the Wide World of Sports on ABC. "...the human drama of athletic competition..."