Quotes About Watching Sports

“At least watching dirty movies can be kind of fascinating if they aren't too horribly strange. And even the horribly strange ones are still more interesting than televised sports.”

— Merrill Markoe

“Another atrocity of summer is soccer. When the Euro Cup is on, it brings out the worst in people. It turns them into ravaging beasts who complain when a team they like, which they have done nothing to deserve, slips from grace and loses the match.
An old man sitting beside me at the cafe was watching the men watch the soccer rather than watch the soccer himself. He found their reactions more entertaining than the game.
"All this stuff and nonsense over men kicking a ball," he groused. "And they don't do any of the work themselves."
I told him, "We should just have wars. Then we would not need sports."
He laughed and quite agreed with me.”

— Michelle Franklin

“Sure, there is an undeniable pleasure in rooting for a winning team and in being able to look down on opposing fans with equal measures of superiority and disdain. But that's also the Ruthian drawback in rooting for the Yankees (along with high ticket prices, overpriced concessions and crude neighbors). The true pleasure in sports comes not from simply winning but from watching a team overcome adversity to win in the end. The joy of sports is never the final destination, it's the journey. It's experiencing the highs and lows, and appreciating those highs all the more because of the awful lows.”

— Jim Caple

“He feels a little better while watching the guy on TV or thinking of him. Still, he feels insignificant. He has a few heroes whom he sees on other TV shows: sports figures, a tough cop or a late-night talk show host. He lives vicariously through all of them. Unbeknownst”

— Anton Szandor LaVey

“As a general man I tried watching movies, playing sports, going to picnics and other entertainments but I still got bored, then I tried heroism and now I am hero, and I never get bored.”

— Amit Kalantri

“More African American adults are under correctional control today-in prison or jail, on probation or parole-than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.7 The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery.8 The absence of black fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time watching Sports Center. Thousands of black men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites.”

— Michelle Alexander

“It's Thursday afternoon, and we have sports. These are the choices for the girls: watching an invitational cricket game; studying in one of the classrooms; or watching the senior rugby league. As you can imagine, I'm torn.”

— Melina Marchetta

“Males have probably always enjoyed watching the defeat of other males, but without the invention of numerals and the subsequent invention of the concept of keeping score, we could never have had a million sports channels.”

— Patricia Marx

“My favorite way to spend Saturday is in and out of bed, watching sports on TV and eating.”

— Alan King

“Sports nurtures dreams of achieving self confidence and masculine striving for the skinny kid watching a boxer dance around the ring with sublime ease.”

— Armstrong Williams

“I spend way too much time watching television, going to sports games, going to movies. It struck me that there's an awful lot of data in the public domain for these sectors. The movie industry publishes weekly sales numbers - not many industries do.”

— Anita Elberse

“I like to walk around my apartment naked. I like sitting around in the nude watching sports, actually.”

— Kylie Bax

“I don't really pretend to know what's going on, but I've been immersed in the excitement of watching sports, particularly football. I like baseball, probably more than football.”

— Kevin Corrigan

“He's talking football," Lisa whispered. "Shh. it's like watching a baby turtle trying to find the ocean. He's either going to get eaten because he knows shit about sports, or he's going to swim free into the ocean and discover he's a real boy.”

— Rachel Van Dyken

“I've never met anybody who says they don't like the World Cup. If you're a soccer fan or not, everybody loves watching it, and I think it could be the same for other sports.”

— Landon Donovan

“With 'Love & Basketball,' I played ball my whole life and did track at UCLA. So, I'm an athlete. And it was very important for me to get it right. I started with casting: As an athlete, there's nothing worse for me than watching a sports movie and the woman that they hire can't run or can't shoot. It sets women's sports back years.”

— Gina Prince-Bythewood

“Sports is a bunch of people gathering around, watching something that they're not actually connected to - they're just emotionally connected.”

— George Stroumboulopoulos

“My parents wanted me and my siblings to practice some sports outside school. And since we lived next to a tennis club, we decided to play tennis. I didn't have an idol, so to speak, but I always enjoyed watching Pete Sampras and Alex Corretja.”

— Stanislas Wawrinka

“I like watching baseball on TV. I love watching all the sports.”

— Bradley Steven Perry

“I love sports. When I'm not playing, I'm watching, reading, or otherwise obsessing about them. This probably stems from growing up in Indiana, where if you didn't at least attempt to play basketball, you were considered of dubious moral character.”

— Mark Waters

“For watching sports, I tend to drink Guinness; early evenings always begin well with a Grey Goose and tonic with plenty of lime; and on a cold winter's night, there's nothing quite like a glass of Black Maple Hill ... an absolute peach of a bourbon.”

— Martin Bashir

“Sports is remarkably cognitive. I think it's underrated just how smart it is. Actually, if I had more time, I would spend more time with sports. Watching it, reading about it, I think it's oddly underrated.”

— Tyler Cowen

“My greatest memories as a kid were playing sports with my dad and watching sports with my dad.”

— Mark Teixeira

“I think sports makes for good drama because it has all the same ingredients as anything worth reading or listening to or watching. Conflict, desire, heartbreak - it's all there.”

— Jay Baruchel

“We've finally told the world that this is sports entertainment, and I think one of the best forms of entertainment is anything that's fun or funny, something that you really enjoy watching or listening to.”

— Jerry Lawler

“It certainly is dangerous that there are only a few clubs left in Europe that can afford to pay millions. At the end of the day however, the spectators decide the rates of pay - by watching the games and consuming the goods and services advertised on sports TV programmes.”

— Angela Merkel

“I played basketball in high school, and I love watching sports - I'll watch everything except maybe hockey.”

— Andy Roddick

“It was easy being healthy when I was young. I was full of energy, so sports and physical challenges were fun. But as I got older and the spring left my step, exercise became harder, and eating, drinking and watching TV became easier. By the time I was 50, I'd put on 50 pounds.”

— Robert Kiyosaki

“I think they need to get a more reliable way of watching television on the laptop. Because I travel so much, if I want to watch my favorite sports team it might not be showing in that place, so I want a reliable way to watch whatever I want to watch on my laptop.”

— John Legend

“Sports are basically our way of feeling sorry for ourselves. Most men can't become athletes. We're watching guys who actually made it. We see them dunking and making touchdowns. Then we think about ourselves when we were younger.”

— Kevin Hart

“Embrace the common: a Sunday afternoon watching sports, Starbucks with a friend, cooking dinner for a neighbor, taking the dog for a walk, heading to a job that is making you more humble and needy because it is so unfulfilling, or working through conflict with a friend you have offended. This and more is all part of it. So do your everyday and your ordinary. Godliness is found and formed in those places. No man or woman greatly used by God has escaped them. Great men and women of God have transformed the mundane, turning neighborhoods into mission fields, parenting into launching the next generation of God's voices, legal work into loving those most hurting, waiting tables into serving and loving in such a way that people see our God.”

— Jennie Allen

“If you're a dope like me, you get every sports channel you can get. I'm watching, you know, Netherlands soccer.”

— Michael Keaton

“I haven't watched that much TV, to be honest. To be honest, I don't watch that many films anymore - partly because I don't have time; secondly, because I watch a lot of sports, and I love watching sports.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

“Sometimes, sitting in the park with my boys, I imagine myself back at Ebbets Field, a young girl once more in the presence of my father, watching the players of my youth on the grassy fields below-Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges. There is magic in these moments, for when I open my eyes and see my sons in the place where my father once sat, I feel an invisible bond among our three generations, an anchor of loyalty and love linking my sons to the grandfather whose face they have never seen but whose person they have come to know through this most timeless of sports.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“I'm a vampire," he said. "I'm never going to be anything else. You need to decide if you're okay with that, Eve. I am." "What if I'm not?" Her voice sounded really small and wounded. "What if I just want you to be Michael, not-not Vampire Michael of the Clan, or whatever?" "I can't," he said. "Because I'm not just Michael anymore. I haven't been since before you moved in. You just didn't know it." He let go of her hands, uncapped the sports bottle, and drank the blood down in long, thirsty gulps, making sure she was watching. His eyes turned ruby red, and he licked the drops from his lips. He put the empty bottle down, watching her.”

— Rachel Caine

“The real sports of the Hunger Games is watching the tributes kill one another”

— Suzanne Collins

“I've gotten to watch a lot of football games. Growing up, watching sports, watching people compete, whether it's my brothers or teammates. I grew up observing and taking it all in. It's kind of my attitude.”

— Eli Manning

“When I'm watching sports I can't be bothered.”

— Jeremy Hotz

“I was always interested in sport. My family are big sports' fans. We always had all the locals round watching big sporting events. I wasn't particularly sporty myself. I played a lot of hockey and rode, still do ride, but I just had a general interest in it. When I was given the opportunity to do sport stories I used to grab them.”

— Jill Douglas

“I'm very bad at watching anything. I'm bad at going to theaters; I can't watch my own stuff; I watch a lot of sports.”

— Steven Knight

“When I was writing the script, I knew didn't want to make a sports movie. I was very clear that I wanted to make a sibling rivalry story. So when I was writing the script, the football was getting in the way of the drama. One day, I saw Michael Haneke's Funny Games, which is probably the most violent film I've ever seen - but the violence is off camera. When I finished watching the film, I said, 'Hey, that's what I have to do.' Haneke gave me this solution.”

— Carlos Cuaron

“Nimai [Larson] and I are very psychically connected to each other, I guess just being sisters, so as soon as we started watching sports videos we thought, Oh yeah, we could totally get into this zone.”

— Taraka Larson

“I really wanted to be able to make the music that acknowledged the metaphysical aspect of extreme sports because when I started watching GoPro videos, the thing that struck me the most was that the sound seemed completely detached from the imagery.”

— Taraka Larson

“I am a huge sports fan and spend a lot of my time away from work watching sports, going to sporting events, stuff like that. So it is a big thrill to see these people who I have so much respect for and to find out that they're all really fun, super-nice people. It's very exciting.”

— Will Forte

“I've always like watching competition and athleticism. Just seeing the average person going up against Gladiators, is always something I enjoy. I'm not really a big sports fan, but I do enjoy the show.”

— Laila Ali

“According to the American Psychological Association, the most effective stress-relief strategies are exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside of ra walk, meditating or doing yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby. (The least effective strategies are gambling, shopping, smoking, drinking, eating, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and watching TV or movies for more than two hours.”

— Kelly McGonigal

“Sports are too much with us. Late and soon, sitting and watching - mostly watching on television - we lay waste our powers of identification and enthusiasm and, in time, attention as more and more closing rallies and crucial putts and late field goals and final playoffs and sudden deaths and world records and world championships unreel themselves ceaselessly before our half-lidded eyes.”

— Roger Angell

“The 1992 US Olympic basketball team is the best sports team ever, the equivalent of rounding up the greatest American writers of the last century or so and watching them collaborate: 'OK, Twain, you do the dialogue and hand off to Faulkner. He'll do the interior monologue. Hemingway will edit - no, don't make that face, you know you overwrite. And be nice to Cheever. He's young, but he's got a good ear. Wharton and Cather can't play - they're girls.'”

— Anna Quindlen

“To me, torture would be watching sports on television.”

— Quentin Tarantino

“I was doing community theater, and I was always interested in acting, but I was also interested in sports. I was interested in a lot of things. I was a pretty normal guy. I wasn't like a guy who grew up in a dark theater watching movies.”

— Willem Dafoe