I fucking hate sports. Fuck.
So imagine some kids from a city, growing up watching sports with their parents, and rooting for their city team. And then those kids grow into teens, and they get together and bond around watching a home game on TV. It is a fun and exciting experience for them because they are emotionally invested in their home team, or the just the game itself maybe.
I chuckled when I read that. I mean, yes, there's definitely a bonding experience, and I guess most of the passion people throw at their teams and clubs exists only because they have nothing else to love. But the vast majority of the supporters have played the sport they watch on TV. A lot still do, even if they're in their 40s! I mean, if you never played sports, it's obvious you will never derive any pleasure from watching the best athletes in the world competing against each other. For you it's just a stupid game of pointless running after a stupid ball. But for people who have played these sports all their life, it's much more than that.
That said, playing sports is definitely better than watching sports. Infinitely more fun.
I was a kid who lacked empathy and had access to video games. It was inevitable I would grow up not caring about sports.
Disregarding the empathy bit about you (because lacking empathy makes no sense unless you are mentally challenged (and you are obviously not retarded)), that's not really a good excuse for you not caring about sports. It might be because you never had the luck of having someone close to you practice a given sport with you, or because none of your friends cared about any sports, or because you were too afraid to try them and be terrible at them, etc., but videogames have nothing to do with it. I mean, I grew up with videogames too, and I love sports. And I believe everyone, given the chance to play them for certain time and see progress in their skills, will love them too. You are missing on one of the greatest pleasures of this world by not playing sports, that's what I mean, and you should change that. Not only will you have a blast, you'll become stronger, so there's no excuses. :)
Why's that inevitable? Doing sports (in my case soccer) was what most kids my age did. We played in school during recess, we played after school, we played in organized teams... Sports were an important arena for socializing and even kids that had the body control of a stranded blue whale regularly participated.
Sports is indeed an art but, like you said, you need knowledge to see beyond the obvious (people running about) and appreciate the details. Since I've played soccer and understand how difficult some moves can be, I enjoy the sight of other people accomplishing with grace and ease what I myself would utterly fail at.
Take basketball (an extremely popular sport here in the US) for example. What is it? Guys running back-and-forth on a court, trying to get a ball through the hoop on the opposing team's side. Now I've just made extraordinary simplification of something which involves a great deal of knowledge, highly-honed kinesthetics, etc. The sport is certainly at a level of an art itself to the person who understands it well, who sees the possible plays, who feels for his team and its players.
When I see basketball, or football, or whatever on TV, I just see people running around. I don't care about the team that "represents my city;" frankly I don't care who wins.
Sports are quite popular in many countries. I think that the enjoyment of sports for most people is a kind of emotional as well as bonding experience. So imagine some kids from a city, growing up watching sports with their parents, and rooting for their city team. And then those kids grow into teens, and they get together and bond around watching a home game on TV. It is a fun and exciting experience for them because they are emotionally invested in their home team, or the just the game itself maybe.
I was a kid who lacked empathy and had access to video games. It was inevitable I would grow up not caring about sports. But let's take the video games out of that equation and imagine if without them I would enjoy sports? I still think not, because I would't empathize with the players, and I don't (can't?) empathize with the teams. I just see a bunch of people I don't care about running around. Maybe that's what many of us here have in common, maybe it's not.