Intrusive Sports

I hate sport. At least, I hate watching sport on TV. It's so unbearably dull.

Now, I don't want you to think that I'm some sort of Jabba-the-Hut couch-potato. I'm moderately athletic, though I'm not about to win any medals, but I do exercise - mostly by running - and I enjoy that plenty. Not boring at all. I still find my brain numbed to exhaustion watching other people doing it. I love swimming and I used to do it a lot (in my *much* younger days). In fact, I trained competitively. But to spend an hour in front of a TV, watching other people splash up and down a 50m pool is reminiscent of the first circle of Hell as far as I'm concerned.

Where is this going? The summer schedule for TV is rubbish. All the regular programmes have been mooched around to make room for - you guessed it - sport! Gah! Endless and mindless hours of men running around a big field chasing a ball, while old fogies who used to run around a big field chasing a ball tell us about how the young guys aren't running around a big field and chasing a ball the way they did in their day.

I'm probably in a slightly worse situation than many people as far as this goes, because I only have four (that's right American viewers, four) channels. Two of them seem to devote their entire evening's programming to football, so this is cutting my viewing options in half. Everywhere I go, everywhere I look, there's nothing but sport, ads for sport, support for sport, references to sport... it's endless.

It is so intrusive - I can't get away from it. What's worse is, when this Euro 2004 madness is over, I've got the bloody Olympic games to look forward to. There's also the Grand Prix (thankfully, that's only every other weekend, rather than every night), horse racing and GAA football and hurling.

While ranting about this to some like-minded (mostly female, I must admit to the stereotype) friends yesterday, I had an epiphany. It's only partly related to the main rant, but it did help me to clarify some ideas in my head. Would you like me to share my blinding insight with you all? Of course you would...

Teams are for losers who can't win on their own!