A Different Sort of Game

My friends and I were having dinner the other night when the topic of sports fans came up.  The argument made was that generally people that are fans of sports are not the most intelligent.  While a good point was made on the unintelligence of mob-mentality taking over, all fans are not one in the same.  I, of course, took offense to the argument as I am a sports fan myself and felt my intelligence being insulted, but perhaps my friends regarded me as not being on the same level of “nerd” as them.  This is possible, since they are all avid Starcraft II, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Dragon Age, or Skyrim players and my gaming skills have been lacking as of late.  But as we all know, that is only one facet of Nerdom.

So I argued (pretty unsuccessfully) that watching any sport can be just as nerdy as being a spectator at MLG, the Major League Gaming convention.  But I still agree with my argument, that it’s only more socially acceptable to watch a game of football versus a game of Starcraft, but has little to do with the intelligence of the spectator.  Maybe the commonly-accepted connection of sports and beer aids in sports fans seeming less intelligent, but come on, let’s be honest, we’ve all seen a few drunken game nights as well.

Let’s take for instance, my friend’s father, who I recently sat by at a Super Bowl party.  Before any call was made by a ref, he would call the penalty, making the signal for the specific penalty with his arms, and the refs on television would soon mimic him.  Watching him made me giggle because he knew that much about the sport.  He was calling the penalty as the flag was being thrown and calling the smartest play to run at that point before it happened.  He rattled off stats like he’d practiced for football-themed trivia nights his entire life, and when anyone in the room had a question of a past players’ old team or the number of times a specific player had been to the Super Bowl before or a coach’s favorite color, he was there with a sure, confident answer.  I didn’t even need my iPhone, I kid you not.

This particular nerd, as I will call him that because that is most definitely what he is, works as a lab technician in a hospital.  Now maybe that isn’t the type of intelligent person this particular group of friends was referring to.  But since I have experience working in multiple tech-related groups, I can say very matter-of-factly, that my team at the software company I worked for, programmers and testers alike, was for the most part, made of up huge sports fanatics.  We had all sorts– the college football gurus, the college basketball freaks, the NFL and MLB nerds, even some crazy soccer hooligans.  In fact, I first got into playing Fantasy Football with these guys (and gals).  I probably talked more sports with these nerdy, intelligent coworkers than I ever did working at a school with “normal,” intelligent people.

Just a one letter difference.

Of course, I would be biased on this topic, but as I state in my staff bio, “given the proper obsessive personality and the right hobby, anything can become nerdy.”  I truly believe this.  Have you ever watched a baseball game?  And I mean really watched, not fallen asleep halfway through or downed too many beers and focused more on the strange-looking man selling cotton candy.  The rules of the game are complex and detailed.  It took me, a baseball fanatic, half of my life to learn them all.  I have my own baseball collection, books on players and the rules of the game, and a strange assortment of baseball trinkets.  Does that not make me a baseball nerd?  When you know the rules of a game, any game, inside and out, you must be some sort of nerd.  And if you’re not just watching a ball bounce up and down the court mindlessly, you must have a decent level of intelligence to even understand them.

So, fellow nerds, I implore you, look around you.  Don’t use this argument as a way to shut more people out, but rather as a widening of your nerd view at all of the potential for nerds to thrive!