c4countdown

There are many sporting events which occupy time on the main TV channels which could be less boringly used - in the worst case displacing more enjoyable programmes from their regular spots.
After all. there are now special Sport channels where fans can get their fix without disturbing the rest of us, who can avoid the relevant places.
So which sport on TV do you think too boring?

Sport is much better than regular TV.

Really, really hard to choose just three to vote for out of that lot, since there are at least five on the list that can induce physical symptoms ranging from nausea to severe depression (I'm not joking) if I'm in someone else's house and forced to sit in a room where one of them is on TV, or if the in-laws come round for Sunday lunch and someone (either my brother-in-law or father-in-law) says, "Ooh, do you mind if we just have the x on?" where x is typically either football, golf or motor racing. Darts and cricket are equally mind-numbing. I'll watch rugger if there's nothing else on, and I enjoy tennis and snooker - I wouldn't want them on all the time, but I don't mind the TV schedules being disrupted a bit during, say, Wimbledon. But yeah, generally I'm in favour of sport being confined to specialist channels.

Tennis is top for me, just mind-numbingly dull. Golf and Horse Racing follow shortly behind. I actually like Cricket, oddly enough.

Watch a game of rugby and then read a Harry Potter book. JK Rowling is actually quite a good satirist.

Horse racing by a distance. It only survives because of gambling. Total shite and virtually no skill differential.

I voted for athletics. The only exciting thing about it is the breaking of records (this is usually an indicator of a boring sport).

Golf, closely followed by Cricket.

Anything seen "in the flesh" so to speak is likely to have a different effect on the observer
than watching it on television.
Live theatre has an emotional impact and uplift which is rarely obtained from tv (if the show is good that is.)
Horse racing on tv does not convey the atmosphere as experienced on a racecourse.
If you like horses and appreciate riding and training skills it can be thrilling.
Thudding hooves and flapping brightly coloured silks dashing past is stirring to some people.
On reflection I think I would feel apathetic about darts whether on tv or at the venue.
I can hardly bring myself to think of boxing as a sport. Setting out with the intention of hurting someone
doesn`t sound very sporting to me.
I suppose it makes a difference to our views if we have been physically involved in any of these activities.
Thanks for the poll Peter.
It has caused me to think (for a change.)

I will watch - and indeed play - almost any sport. I would guess that at least a third of the television I watch is sport; with the remainder mainly music, comedy or quizzes; leaving only a sliver for other light entertainment, drama, film, news and documentary.

I subscribed to Sky Sports mainly to watch darts, although I enjoy plenty of other sports that are shown a lot, including cricket and football. I occasionally watch in person, and play, all of the above, which I suppose helps. I also find myself strangely glued to a lot of minority sports/games on Eurosport and other channels (timbersports, strongman competition, carrom). As a distance runner, I appreciate most endurance sports - whether athletics, triathlon, cycling, rowing, swimming, etc. If I've got nothing else on, I can quite happily watch live coverage of the Tour de France for five hours straight, although that's mainly to relax whilst watching some pretty countryside flash past and hearing the commentary team chat about last night's hotel and dinner.

There are however some sports that I don't particularly enjoy, except perhaps when I have some kind of vested interest. I'm not particularly fussed about sports where I find it difficult to appreciate the technicalities (the dressage phase of 3-day eventing, angling, synchronized swimming, and ice dancing (as opposed to figure skating)). I'm also not desperately keen on combat sports which last more than 5-10 minutes e.g. professional boxing, "theatrical" wrestling (i.e. the WCW stuff etc, as opposed to Greco-Roman or freestyle discplines competed for at the Olympics). I also find baseball incredibly slow. I can't get too excited about horse racing, but it's hard to pinpoint why, as I do quite enjoy greyhound racing. Maybe because a greyhound race is over in 30 seconds.

In terms of more general sports viewing, one of my favourite TV sports shows of all-time was "Superstars" - before it got re-launched in a team format by Channel 5 this year. ESPN Classic often shows some of the "Superstars" events from the late 1970s/early 1980s - very simple TV, but gripping competition.

Combining comedy and minority sport, the ESPN show "Cheap Seats" and Channel 5's "International King Of Sports" were also brilliant.

I assume by "rugger" you mean rugby union (judging by my experience of rugby league players/fans who are about as likely to use the word rugger as they are to stop wearing flat caps and eating whippets for tea), or are you encompassing two of the top four team sports together?

Waah, waah, another potentially good poll ruined!

Ian Volante wrote:I assume by "rugger" you mean rugby union (judging by my experience of rugby league players/fans who are about as likely to use the word rugger as they are to stop wearing flat caps and eating whippets for tea), or are you encompassing two of the top four team sports together?

Waah, waah, another potentially good poll ruined!

I was thinking that anyone who found rugby football boring wouldn't be interested enough to distinguish between the varieties.

Of course, for a proper poll, I'd need to ask voters to rank the sports in order of boringness and use STV to determine the order

Ben Hunter wrote:I voted for athletics. The only exciting thing about it is the breaking of records (this is usually an indicator of a boring sport).

Interesting that you say that you voted for athletics, considering that only 1 person has voted for athletics and that would happen to be me!

James Robinson wrote:

Ben Hunter wrote:I voted for athletics. The only exciting thing about it is the breaking of records (this is usually an indicator of a boring sport).

Interesting that you say that you voted for athletics, considering that only 1 person has voted for athletics and that would happen to be me!

I did vote but when I clicked 'vote' nothing happened for whatever reason, and quantifying my opinion with a vote was secondary to expressing my feeling about breaking records, so I didn't bother trying to work out why my vote didn't register and simply gave up.

Peter Mabey wrote:

Ian Volante wrote:I assume by "rugger" you mean rugby union (judging by my experience of rugby league players/fans who are about as likely to use the word rugger as they are to stop wearing flat caps and eating whippets for tea), or are you encompassing two of the top four team sports together?

Waah, waah, another potentially good poll ruined!

I was thinking that anyone who found rugby football boring wouldn't be interested enough to distinguish between the varieties.

Of course, for a proper poll, I'd need to ask voters to rank the sports in order of boringness and use STV to determine the order

On the contrary! Only one of them is nicknamed kick-and-clap

Ben Hunter wrote:I did vote but when I clicked 'vote' nothing happened for whatever reason, and quantifying my opinion with a vote was secondary to expressing my feeling about breaking records, so I didn't bother trying to work out why my vote didn't register and simply gave up.

Is that a clever/crafty ploy to get others to vote for athletics on your behalf, each thinking that they'd be the only one to do it, thus increasing the votes greatly?

Derek Hazell wrote:

Ben Hunter wrote:I did vote but when I clicked 'vote' nothing happened for whatever reason, and quantifying my opinion with a vote was secondary to expressing my feeling about breaking records, so I didn't bother trying to work out why my vote didn't register and simply gave up.

Is that a clever/crafty ploy to get others to vote for athletics on your behalf, each thinking that they'd be the only one to do it, thus increasing the votes greatly?

It clearly hasn't worked. It's still on 1!

I wouldn't actually rate rugby union as boring as darts or snooker, but it does have similarities with the style of football played by Wimbledon v. Watford at their "peak" - ie. one team kicks it a long way, then the other team kicks it a long way back, ad nauseam, until the ref blows his whistle for no apparent reason and someone has a shot from the dead ball.

In my experience, horse racing fans would never go to watch motor racing, or vice versa. Though it is perfectly possibly to dislike both. Can anyone disprove it? (Always assuming that by motor racing, it's the stuff like Formula 1 which is dead boring, not the stuff like stock car racing at Onchan, IOM, which is actually pretty good.)

Gavin Chipper wrote:Watch a game of rugby and then read a Harry Potter book. JK Rowling is actually quite a good satirist.

Just to elaborate on this, I've watched very little rugby in my time but watched some of the 2003 world cup thing. While the normal players were doing the mundane task of trying to score trys/tries (whatever they are) Johnny "Harry Potter" Wilkinson was busy in his completely separate game just kicking the ball, rendering the rest of the game and players irrelevant - just like Harry Potter the seeker when he catches the golden snitch.

Phil, how is darts boring? I know we all have different opinions but the crowd going wild when 180s are flying in, the missed doubles by millimetres, the stealing of legs, the bull finishes. Amazing tension and crowd noise.

Kirk Bevins wrote:Phil, how is darts boring? I know we all have different opinions but the crowd going wild when 180s are flying in, the missed doubles by millimetres, the stealing of legs, the bull finishes. Amazing tension and crowd noise.

And some glorious chavs.

Sue Sanders wrote:

Kirk Bevins wrote:Phil, how is darts boring? I know we all have different opinions but the crowd going wild when 180s are flying in, the missed doubles by millimetres, the stealing of legs, the bull finishes. Amazing tension and crowd noise.

And some glorious chavs.

The darts wives are the best bit!

With the football season well under way, there doesn't seem to have any surge of members recording how dull that sport really isso I think it's time to comment on the results.
I suspect Horse racing got its high position because although it's more interesting to watch than the other leaders. it is the only one to force Countdown off the air.

BTW, I forgot to include Swimming as an option: probably would only have affected the lower places.

I also seriously considered whether Boxing should be considered a sport at all. Watching people attempting to inflict on each other the sort of injury for which there is no remedy or even prosthesis is really sick.
Why doesn't Health and Safety deem a blow to the head to be a foul?

Peter Mabey wrote:I also seriously considered whether Boxing should be considered a sport at all. Watching people attempting to inflict on each other the sort of injury for which there is no remedy or even prosthesis is really sick.

Almost all sports involve a risk of pain and physical injury, and it's an objective in many of them. Would football, rugby, American football et al be as interesting if they were non-contact?

I think boxing really, really sucks (for excitement and health reasons), but I'm really into MMA. Which some people think is contradictory, but it isn't.

Matt Morrison wrote:I think boxing really, really sucks (for excitement and health reasons), but I'm really into MMA. Which some people think is contradictory, but it isn't.

From what I've seen of that stuff, it either ends with someone getting sparked in ten seconds flat or with a cuddling match for ten minutes...

EDIT: I've always been interested in the concept of MMA, but in practice it seems disappointing.

Ian Volante wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:I think boxing really, really sucks (for excitement and health reasons), but I'm really into MMA. Which some people think is contradictory, but it isn't.

From what I've seen of that stuff, it either ends with someone getting sparked in ten seconds flat or with a cuddling match for ten minutes...

Exactly, something for every type of man.

Ian Volante wrote:EDIT: I've always been interested in the concept of MMA, but in practice it seems disappointing.

My bro was into it for a while and I thought it was absolutely disgusting, I'm a completely non-violent person, and still am. Random street violence sends shivers down my spine, and I've never been in a fight in my life. I'd just been tarring it with the boxing brush really though, MMA is one of those things that you really reap rewards out of understanding it. That might sound like quite an obvious statement, but what I mean is you get certain sports like, say, Rugby, where upon first viewing it's instantly clear that you need to understand the rules, and can't appreciate the game until you do. And then you get MMA which seems to emit a sort of "it's simple - it's men beating each other vibe", people assume that no prior knowledge is required to 'get' it, but that's not really true, and it seems to get broken down into "punching each other" far more readily than Rugby gets broken down into "picking up a ball and running".

So yeah, I love it now. There are still a lot of meathead fans that boo if they don't see a knockout within a few minutes, but more fool them - some of the best fights I've seen have involved 15 minutes of "men just lying on the ground" (as an unappreciative fan would surmise) and once you get an understanding of techniques, positions, strategies, it's easy to see it's one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving sports that exist today. Off to see my first event in November - UFC 105 in Manchester.

Matt Morrison wrote:

Ian Volante wrote:EDIT: I've always been interested in the concept of MMA, but in practice it seems disappointing.

My bro was into it for a while and I thought it was absolutely disgusting, I'm a completely non-violent person, and still am. Random street violence sends shivers down my spine, and I've never been in a fight in my life. I'd just been tarring it with the boxing brush really though, MMA is one of those things that you really reap rewards out of understanding it. That might sound like quite an obvious statement, but what I mean is you get certain sports like, say, Rugby, where upon first viewing it's instantly clear that you need to understand the rules, and can't appreciate the game until you do. And then you get MMA which seems to emit a sort of "it's simple - it's men beating each other vibe", people assume that no prior knowledge is required to 'get' it, but that's not really true, and it seems to get broken down into "punching each other" far more readily than Rugby gets broken down into "picking up a ball and running".

So yeah, I love it now. There are still a lot of meathead fans that boo if they don't see a knockout within a few minutes, but more fool them - some of the best fights I've seen have involved 15 minutes of "men just lying on the ground" (as an unappreciative fan would surmise) and once you get an understanding of techniques, positions, strategies, it's easy to see it's one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving sports that exist today. Off to see my first event in November - UFC 105 in Manchester.

I almost certainly would like it then if I appreciated the skills more, as I love long drawn-out contests of skill. I learnt to appreciate that sort of thing in Sumo where the rare bouts on the scale of minutes were always worth waiting for.

Matt Morrison wrote:I think boxing really, really sucks (for excitement and health reasons), but I'm really into MMA. Which some people think is contradictory, but it isn't.

Isn't the objective still the same though? i.e. Hurt the other person so that they can't stand up any more.

Jimmy Gough wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:I think boxing really, really sucks (for excitement and health reasons), but I'm really into MMA. Which some people think is contradictory, but it isn't.

Isn't the objective still the same though? i.e. Hurt the other person so that they can't stand up any more.

Nope. Submissions are a massive part of the game too which makes technical groundwork really good to watch. I've seen a couple of fights where the winner literally has not thrown a single punch or kick.

And as far as hurt, in MMA, once you're smashed about the fight's over. Once you can't defend yourself, the ref steps in and it's done. In boxing, at this point they separate the fighters, give the guy who got smashed 10 seconds to recover, then set them at it again, and repeat it for 12 rounds. It's no wonder there's so much talk of permanent brain damage. MMA is far less punishing, and granted there isn't the history of boxing yet, but there's not been any brain damage or anything like that as the referees always step in so efficiently to stop a fight. In general the guy who's been knocked out will be back on his feet congratulating the winner within a matter of seconds, and never more than a minute or so.

MMA is the catching your new girlfriend sleeping with some guy after a couple of weeks compared to boxing's getting married to her and eventually finding out she's been cheating on you every single day for ten years. That'll fuck a man up over time.

And the claims that it gives children autism are completely unfounded.

Kirk, there is a "spoof documentary set in the world of professional darts" just about to come on ITV4, Good Arrows.

I am utterly baffled as to how Boxing & Motor Racing got 14-15 votes each in this poll and Tennis got 2. I can't even watch tennis without falling into a coma.

Ben Wilson wrote:I am utterly baffled as to how Boxing & Motor Racing got 14-15 votes each in this poll and Tennis got 2. I can't even watch tennis without falling into a coma.

In tennis you have girls in short skirts who wiggle their arses and orgasm every 3 seconds. Motorsports you just have men in cars whizzing round tracks. Yawn.

Good poll. I chose boxing, cycling and horse racing, but would have liked another three votes for athletics, motor racing, and rugby. One issue not yet mentioned is the fact that we have to pay extra for the sports channels. Not everyone can afford to pay more than the licence fee. If you can get your fix from Corrie, Antiques Roadshow, X Factor, and The Whatever-Bilge-Ant-And-Dec-Are-Hosting Show, then count yourself lucky (in terms of televisual satisfaction, anyway). The sports fans among us are out of pocket because a lot of live sport is no longer on 'free' TV (remember The Big Match on ITV, Sunday afternoons?).

Alec Rivers wrote:Good poll. I chose boxing, cycling and horse racing, but would have liked another three votes for athletics, motor racing, and rugby. One issue not yet mentioned is the fact that we have to pay extra for the sports channels. Not everyone can afford to pay more than the licence fee. If you can get your fix from Corrie, Antiques Roadshow, X Factor, and The Whatever-Bilge-Ant-And-Dec-Are-Hosting Show, then count yourself lucky (in terms of televisual satisfaction, anyway). The sports fans among us are out of pocket because a lot of live sport is no longer on 'free' TV (remember The Big Match on ITV, Sunday afternoons?).

The Big Match was a highlight show (but it was still good)
I also used to like World of Sport on a saturday with the Wrestling on just before the football results
My favourite ITV sport show from the seventies was Indoor League with Fred Trueman "ah'll see thee"

Marc Meakin wrote:The Big Match was a highlight show

Hmm, you're right, but I distinctly remember live matches on ITV on Sundays. Maybe they were 'Big Match Specials' or they had a different name altogether. Dunno.

Alec Rivers wrote:

Marc Meakin wrote:The Big Match was a highlight show

Hmm, you're right, but I distinctly remember live matches on ITV on Sundays. Maybe they were 'Big Match Specials' or they had a different name altogether. Dunno.

I think ITV did show live first division (before the premiership) matches on a sunday before Sky took over.

Marc Meakin wrote:

Alec Rivers wrote:

Marc Meakin wrote:The Big Match was a highlight show

Hmm, you're right, but I distinctly remember live matches on ITV on Sundays. Maybe they were 'Big Match Specials' or they had a different name altogether. Dunno.

I think ITV did show live first division (before the premiership) matches on a sunday before Sky took over.

Aye, BBC did them as well, depended who had the rights. I remember watching West Ham v someone on MOTD on a Sunday afternoon in the early 80s.

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Ben Wilson wrote:I am utterly baffled as to how Boxing & Motor Racing got 14-15 votes each in this poll and Tennis got 2. I can't even watch tennis without falling into a coma.

In tennis you have girls in short skirts who wiggle their arses and orgasm every 3 seconds. Motorsports you just have men in cars whizzing round tracks. Yawn.

Yes but then you also have porn, which does all of this without the distraction of people batting a ball back and forth for hours on end.

Ben Wilson wrote: Yes but then you also have porn, which does all of this without the distraction of people batting a ball back and forth for hours on end.

Good point but not on BBC2.

Saturday was a corncopia of sports on TV - 2 football games, rugby union, rugby league, golf and bikes all on at the same time. I couldn't make my mind up so I went to the pub.