New Sports For Me to Watch

     I already spend a ridiculous amount of time watching sports.  This is in addition to all the time I spend reading about sports, and the in-depth analysis of sports I watch as well.  So when I told Shannon I was now interested in another sport, she was not exactly pleased.  This is a down time for sports fans who don't really get into the NBA playoffs like me.  By down time, I mean really during the week it's just baseball (which is still about six nights a week), and on the weekend it's NASCAR and a few PGA major championships in the upcoming months.  So due to the reduction of major sports to watch, I found myself getting into sports that I never would have thought of before.

     The first sport I found myself getting into only more recently is soccer.  I don't mean like last week, I'm going back a year for this one during the 2010 World Cup.  Actually, let me go back a little further than that to the 2006 World Cup.  I remember this World Cup because at the time I happened to be at a small bachelor party weekend with about 4 other guys.  I claim to be a bigger sports fan than most people I know, but I was the only person at this gathering who was not getting into the World Cup.  I never really liked soccer all that much, but my friends gave me a pretty good argument about how I claim to be such a big sports fan, but refuse to watch the world's biggest sporting event.  That was all it took to convince me that at the very least I should give it a chance.  That World Cup was about over at the time, but I knew that the next time it came around, I was going to give it a good chance.  I decided to thoroughly follow the U.S. team for the 2010 World Cup and it was very exciting.  I don't think I could follow soccer year round, but watching the U.S. team try and play above their level, and advance through the tournament like they never have before as the underdog team was a lot of fun, and easy to get into.

     Another sport I have started to get into more recently is college lacrosse.  Now this one is more because of personal interest for me, but I still think it was worth getting into.  Being a Maryland fan for other sports, I noticed Maryland was on ESPNU one day.  I know all too well that it can be difficult for some teams to get some national coverage, so I thought it was particularly special for a lacrosse team to be on national television.  I soon found out that the reason they were on national television was because it was the first round of the NCAA men's lacrosse tournament against North Carolina.  This was the first time I actually sat down and watched a full lacrosse game, and I loved it.  First of all, there is constant action going on.  The game is played in 4 15-minute quarters, and there are rarely any timeouts, so the game doesn't drag on at all.  Later on I got to see what would be thought of as one of the greatest sports plays of the year so far, when Maryland pulled off a "hidden ball" play, that would be shown on SportsCenter about a thousand times that week.  I got to watch Maryland advance through the tournament all the way to the championship game which they lost to UVA, but it was a great game, and a fun tournament to watch.  Barring any significant explosion in the Maryland baseball program, I think I found my college sport to watch in the Spring season.

     My last, and probably least exciting of new sports to watch was tennis.  There have been periods of time where I have gotten into tennis, so this isn't exactly a story as to why I have gotten into it recently, but I just happened to sit down and watch the Maria Sharapova and Li Na matchup at the French Open, and I couldn't turn away from it.  Tennis is one of those things for me that's easy to get into if there's anything special about the match.  Yesterday for example, it was because Sharapova has been out of the national limelight for tennis recently, so she was making a big comeback by making it to the semi-final round of the French Open.  This was also the only major tennis championship she has yet to win.  She didn't win the match but it was still fun to watch her play a competitive match as she tried to continue her quest for the career grand slam. 

     These three are the only sports I have started to grow more interest in than normal lately.  If you have any more ideas of new sports for me to watch, please don't tell me about them so I can give Shannon at least a little break from sports.