Why I Hate Sport
- arthurpeterchappell
- Dec 29, 2025
- 10 min read
Updated: Feb 10
I have no interest in physical, athletic sport. I’ve been accused of being ‘gay’ for declaring that I neither support (Manchester) City or United. The value of healthy exercise aside, sport is generally over-concerned with winning, and beating the opposition. That means it automatically relegates oppositional human beings to the status of losers, also-rans, and second raters. Business capitalism works on the same principle. Competition makes us too assertive, and aggressive, and greedy for success.
I was poor as a competitor in sport, avoiding the ball rather than trying to get it. At cricket, I was OK at batting but useless at fielding and bowling. As a bowler I rarely landed the ball anywhere near wicket or batter. Once, at school, by a sheer fluke I bowled an opponent out, largely as he didn't try batting at all thinking I'd miss getting the ball near him as usual. He threw such a tantrum over his defeat that the teacher gave him another chance, much to the infuriation of the team I was on who felt rightly that I'd taken him down fare and square. He still beat me up for it later too. I was nearly always among the last picked to play on teams in sport events.
Swimming I enjoyed, but I never saw it as sport. I just loved being in or near the water.
Some sports and pastimes can be educationally beneficial, if skill is developed in mastering moves and tactics involved. Exercise is good, and we can swim, walk, cycle or run, or sail without racing against our friends. We may say to ourselves that taking part matters more than winning, but we are happier when we win.
International competition makes sport supporters all the more patriotic, nationalistic, and jingoistic. We still long nostalgically for a repeat of England’s 1966 World Cup Victory, and some resent Germany as much for beating us since then, on the pitch, as much as for any wars we fought with them in the 20th century. For many sports national anthems and martial, patriotic prayers are presented before a game, and at award ceremonies.
Religion also has a way of creeping onto the ballpark. Religion competes for converts while atheistic Humanists decline to play or pray for afterlife gold, silver or bronze medals.
For professional football teams, too many losses mean relegation to lower divisions, and fewer sponsorship and advertising deals, if not fewer fans. (Long-term mass audience loyalty is for winning teams). The big, successful teams, such as Manchester United, (for one example among many), can stay successful by buying the best players from other teams, at home and abroad, and leave the lesser, poorer clubs with inferior players who lack the prestige or the professional training and support the winners luxuriate in. Worse, the selection of players from an international smorgasbord of talent means that calling a team Manchester United or City is absurd, when the focus on exclusively local talent has long since been eroded away.
Crass consumerism means fans of big teams have barely bought their sons the team strip when the colours and sponsorship logos change and make the glorified PE kit unfashionable again. Lousy football pop songs are also among the worst records ever recorded and sold commercially. Sports shops sell kit to many who don’t play the game but just watch it, even if only on TV at home. Some sports wear companies struggle to keep up with demand to the point of treating staff abusively to maintain productivity and hit sales targets. Sport is big business.
Blood sports are obviously a major no-no for Humanists and humanitarians and animal rights activists too. Boxing, (the noble British art of beating your opponent unconscious) pledges to be the sport of Gentlemen who abide by the Queensbury rules of sporting etiquette. (This was the brutal unforgiving Marquis who showed no mercy to Oscar Wilde in the famous libel case). On the whole, for Humanists, boxing should be regarded as no better than broken bottle fighting in pubs, or illegal bare-knuckle street fights. We daren’t ban boxing though, or street fighting, without adequate medical supervision may be what we would get instead.
Animal hunting is also off the Humanist list of pastimes. Foxhunting is the obvious one, but a few eyebrows may be raised when I suggest fishing is unacceptable to me personally too. Many anglers say fish feel no pain, which I doubt, but spare a thought for the bait. Maggots are stored alive in fridges, and Tupperware boxes, before being skewered on a barbed fish hook, and cast into polluted water, where they either drown or get eaten alive? Is fishing still not on your list of blood sports?
Sport is also rife with all sorts of superstitious beliefs that Humanists find laughable. Here are a few highlights from the crazy world of sport.
BASEBALL players don’t like cross-eyed women in the stands; red headed women are lucky, especially if they give the player a hairpin. He must place his gloves down with the fingers pointing to his own baseline. He can’t lend his bat to another player, as each one is believed only magical for so many strikes. Dogs on the pitch are unlucky, and no season must start on a Friday.
BOXING - Boxers often carry good luck charms, and believe that it is bad luck to be first into the ring. New shoes are to be worn in each bout, and it's important to spit on the palms of the gloves to avoid offending the gods of fortune. Being punched out cold is bad enough, but stamping your saliva onto the bruises you’ve inflicted on your opponent sounds positively disgusting.
CRICKET - A score of 111 is unlucky as it is symbolic of the wickets without the bails on top. There are lucky & unlucky bats, balls, and grounds. 13 runs are considered to be a bad score too; (though better than a duck, and obviously unlucky when the opponent scores 14 or more runs). Certain caps & sweaters may be regarded as lucky. It’s good to see a black cat at the start of the game but not on leaving the pavilion. It’s unlucky to restart a bowler’s run for that bowler. Batsmen should never unwittingly put their pads on wrong (left pad on right leg, etc). No two batsmen should wash their hands at the same time.
DARTS -Playing against women is said to be unlucky, (one superstition rooted plainly in pre-feminist currency thinking) Players sometimes use the left foot to wipe the line clean of any invisible omens of bad luck that lie between themselves and the board.
FOOTBALL - Lucky mascots are supposed to help a team out; so many have a token pet animal or a precocious boy or girl fan elected as Mascot. In some teams, the superstition sets in before the players leave the dressing room; where the oldest player is expected to bounce the ball and toss it to the youngest, who must catch it to favour victory on the pitch. Goalkeepers kick each post of the goal net itself for luck, and the captain will bounce the ball three times on the kick off spot for good luck. Players feel unlucky if watched by their wives and girlfriends. Some teams faring badly believe that some group or individuals curse their grounds, or certain players. Manchester City’s Main Road football ground was built on the site of a Romany Gypsy encampment, and the gypsies were kicked out accordingly. Is there a curse, or were City just playing badly anyway? Even the chanting, shouting and bearing of banners (official ones being so conveniently pricey) are based on a desire to ward off a team’s bad fortune on the field of play.
GAMBLING - Always a problem in sport is that of fans betting on one’s fortunes to improve their own. It can lead to horrendous addiction problems and potential bankrupsy's, relationship destruction and crime. Delusions abound here; novices fare well (beginners luck), and you fare better on borrowed money (a superstition leading straight to debts and legs being broken by loan sharks). Never pick up your cards before the dealer has finished giving them out, blow on the pack of cards when shuffling, sit on a handkerchief or a on a chair turned astride. Some cards are unlucky, spades in general, but especially the Queen, (death card), Two aces & two eights are unlucky, (they were for Wild Bill Hickock, who was shot dead while holding this hand).
GOLF - Many golfers carry a club that is there for luck, but only if not used in a particular tournament. Never change your mind about a using a club once it is selected. If you win the first hole, you are said to lose the match more often than not. The thirteenth hole fills golfers with dread, and golfers don’t like teeing off at 1pm (13.00 hours).
HORSE RACING -The winning certainty based on a hunch invariably leaves gamblers skint, and many gamblers believe that you must never wish a jockey or his horse good luck before a race or they are destined to lose.
MOTOR RACING - Never enter a racing car from the exhaust side or offer autographs and photographs of yourself before the race.
MOUNTAINEERING - Wear an eagle’s tongue sown into your coat collar (available at all too few mountaineering shops sadly). I do agree however that falling off a mountain is bad luck.
SHOOTING - Have a virgin jump in front of your gun before you shoot game or clay pigeons, and you won’t be able to miss. If you miss the first shot, (due to forgetting about leaping virgins) the rest of the competition will go badly for you. Note – Don't shoot the virgins.
SWIMMING - ‘He who bathes in May will soon be laid in clay/ He who bathes in June will sing a merry tune/ but he who bathes in July will dance like a fly.’ This only applies to your first seaside swim, (paddling doesn’t count). To fully submerge yourself and even to bathe all over cleans away all your good luck. It is said to be lucky to see someone skinny-dipping (but only if unexpectedly, and if you don’t get arrested for Peeping Tom voyeurism).
YACHTING -It is believed dangerous to win in a practice race or rehearsal run, as you cannot then repeat such success.
Nonsense beliefs to a (golf) tee, of coarse. For me, the not taking part matters more than the winning. Many friends will like some or more of the above sports, and some may even take part in such activity, so my views on the subject are far from universal. Does that mean my views on sport compete with alternative viewpoints? If so, which will win the day? Perhaps we compete, and aim to win too much, even outside the sporting arena. To paraphrase the motto of the Special Air Services as my own; WHO CARES WHO WINS?
Do you ever ask yourself how pool tables took over from snooker tables in pubs? The reason is that pool matches are shorter, so you end up paying for more games, and less time to develop skills. Worse, because the rules have it that you play the next competitor in the queue if you win, you end up playing strangers all night instead of the players you want to compete with. Bring back proper pub snooker! It’s cheaper and friendlier all round.
Many businesses use the language of the game as corporate lingo. ‘Team player’, ‘going for goal’ scoring, etc. At one company meeting for a warehouse we were shown two film clips – one a cartoon football match comedy scene from Bedknobs & Broomsticks, showing disorganization, chaos, missed goal kicks. The second was a montage of well executed game play by top players like Bobby Charlton, and Pele, with a message that we had to work more like Pele than the Bedknobs players. My thinking was that I just needed to move pallets and pick items as and when requested. Marx got it wrong. Religion is in decline. Sport has become the new Opium of the masses, and it can be used to brainwash us into tribal rather than individual thinking. It is OK not to support, not to cheer, not to win, to desire something else instead.
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Fans are often fanatical, discussing little more than the glorious game. I am eternally asked ‘who I support’. When I say no one, the reaction is often shock and disbelief. It’s like I have casually declared a liking for crapping on the carpet. I can be immediately dismissed as a freak, weirdo, or in a few cases, even ‘gay’, which I still see as being a sexual attraction to one’s own gender, not a dislike of a given or all sports.
For some, once they see I don’t like their preferred sport (let alone their favourite teams) they no longer know how to talk to me, and often lose any desire to talk to me. Some fans become hooligans, beating up and assaulting ri3val fans. Many bars ban football colours and emblems as wearing them can and often does tri3gger conflict with opposition fans. This doesn’t happen with other fandoms. Those who prefer Sean Connery’s James Bond films are not inclined to physically attack those with a preference for Roger Moore or Daniel Craig in the way Celtic fans can get ugly with Rangers fans.
Some sport seems to survive on novelty. Beach volleyball draws attention due to skimpily dressed players. American Football has fans more taken by watching the cheerleaders bouncing up and down with glimpses of their underwear than what the players are doing. Constant time outs make the game boring too.
I’m not even interested in big games or fights. I don’t tune in to FA Cup matches or even World Cup finals. I dislike sports bars as the noise of fans yelling and screaming at the TV screens as if their support / opposition affects the game gets deafening, and the bars often sell rubbish ale, as the fans are not bothered what they drink. I know a few bars that have anti-sport policy. I was in one where we watched episodes of a children’s puppet show on the bar’s TV screens. Some football fans arrived and asked if they could change the station so they could watch England play in a crucial tournament qualifier. The staff said no, and the footie fans stormed out in disbelief. We carried on enjoying Thunderbirds.
In the 90's I went to Liverpool from Manchester (where I lived for many years), for a monthly Doctor Who fan meet up. Arriving early, I popped in a nearby bar for a drink, and sensed growing excitement among surrounding Liverpool FC fans. Eventually one asked me where I was from. I told him – Manchester. The silence was palpable and I was asked why I’d come to a Liverpool fan pub when they were playing Manchester United in a few hours. I was briefly worried that I might get assaulted. I confessed to having no idea the game was even on and told them I was there for the Doctor Who event. While normally I’d have expected alienation and scorn, they were fascinated to meet the only Manc in Scouseland not there for the match, and two of them even bought me beer before I headed to the event I was in the city for.
Sports fans can be lovely people. Their sports are just not for me. If that kind of thinking makes me a freak, so be it.
Photos taken by me unless otherwise stated.
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Arthur Chappell
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