This is such an interesting perspective to me, because I get nothing out of basketball (although watching it in person with people is okay). It's just so repetitive, the same things happen over and over the whole time. Scoring is so constant that none of the goals seem particularly special or spectacular.

I feel like both American football and Australian football hit a kind of sweet spot, where there are a lot of different kinds of athleticism on display, different sorts of positions in which different things can happen, and scoring isn't rare enough to make ordinary gameplay boring (soccer) but it's still infrequent enough that each one feels like something it makes sense to stand up and cheer for. With American football in particular, you can really say that two games are very rarely alike, whereas both soccer and basketball have a kind of "seen one, seen them all" vibe to them, with some very rare special games that elevate above that, obviously.

As for American football - I used to be a huge fan of NCAA and NFL games, even though I never played myself. Of the core American professional sports, it's the only I used to watch regularly. My son played into high school. I happily helped coach his youth teams. But, with the discovery of CTE, I've gone right off watching it. Knowing that the players literally concussing themselves stupid took the fun out of it.

I agree - it's just that basketball is basically the same for me. The only difference is that with basketball, they score about 25% of the time (or whatever). But the scores are all kind of the same, with a rare spectacular three pointer. Whereas in American football the teams kind of "feel each other out" and change strategies over time, have different formations, and so on, to the casual observer basketball is just a bunch of guys running towards defenders, hoping to spot a weakness, and either succeeding or failing, over and over. And when they succeed it doesn't matter that much, it's 2 points in a game where the teams will score a combined 200!

I've attended two NCAA basketball games, SEC and Big 10 respectively. In both cases when our (the home) team scored, we didn't stand up and cheer, we clapped. I felt like I was watching golf!

> Knowing that the players literally concussing themselves stupid took the fun out of it.

You're absolutely right about this, I was praising football on the abstract level but actually haven't watched it in years. I've sort of gotten myself into watching the occasional Australian football game for exactly that reason; it has some of the same appeal to me without the physicality that creates so many injuries.

Wrong conferences. ;)

ACC games are bonkers.

The goalkeeper in soccer (as the article points out) has a much larger space to guard, and this provides opportunity showcasing ability. Both for the shooter and the keeper, as well as other defenders who can make impressive saves without the use of hands.

Fans like showcases of ability. There are boring soccer games, just as there are boring hockey games and boring basketball games. But to me, a well-played soccer game is exciting almost all of the time. A goal can be scored from essentially anywhere on the pitch (much like basketball) and there are an enormous number of possible strategies to make this happen.

This article seems to indicate that there is only one viable strategy just at the minute, and that's detrimental to the game. I don't really care much about hockey, and I'm not well educated on it, but I bought the argument.

E.g. when one of your strikers is about to make a shot on goal, opposing strikers will likely move in anticipation that the goaltender might recover the ball and set up their own attack. Your defenders will need to move in response to this; if they mistake the play being set up, this can be a significant disadvantage. However, unless you recognize the play being set up, you don't see any of this and it just looks like a failed goal attempt.

Disclaimer: I don't actually know much about soccer/football, and am paraphrasing an explanation from memory.

That's entirely possible. I played very little soccer (or any team ball sports) as a youth. By high school I had moved on to rowing and mountain biking.