Sports for Nerds

This is one area where you may think nerds would have no knowledge. Again, a false rumor. While we may not have the physical prowess of your typical modern jock, we possess skills others lack. These skills aid us in our numerous sport-game adventures, and in other ways as well. The main skill set possessed by all geeks, nerds, and tech-dorks alike is that of hand-eye coordination. Whether it be from hours spent surfing the Web without so much as glancing at our fingers as we type, or "role playing" in chat rooms, using our superior typing skills to create characters, scenarios, and battle scenes with our fellow computer nerds. Nerds possess excellent hand-eye coordination, and excellent digit control. We are able to manipulate our hands second only to our cousins, The Gamers, working in small spaces like hard drives at the back of CPU stations and wiring boards for various electronic boards. Similarly, although we may often wear glasses, our attention to detail is superb, making us adept at any physical sport which may require a keen sight for specificity. Many nerds, as a result, are interested in solo-sports like sailing, which may not require a lot of muscle power, but rather a shrewd thought process. Additionally, bowling comes naturally to many a geek, as it can be broken down into simple geometrics and again, requires little strength. That is not to say, of course, that no techno-geek is able of body. Far from it. Some of the best athletes out there are nerds. You just wouldn't know it, because they'd much rather be showing their stuff in an online round of Halo than on the baseball diamond or football field. In general, nerds are solitary creatures, communicating with each other mostly online, and thus we prefer single sports (like sailing and bowling, as mentioned before). Golf is another hit with some nerds, as we can analyze the simple physics of any given situation and use the rules to our advantage. Now, on to professional sports. Do nerds partake in this form of entertainment as most of society does? Of course we do. We just classify our sports differently and enjoy them for different reasons. A whole breed of nerds is involved in the fantasy sport world, as we are highly aware that we could probably never compete in them ourselves. Popular among nerds is Fantasy Baseball, with its endless stats and complex scenario management. In addition, we nerds turn to a different type of sport to fill our viewing pleasure. We enjoy watching new ESPN favorites like Paintball and Robot competitions. These harken back to our hours on the computer playing single-person shooter games like Doom, as well as peak our interest in Japanese Anime, which many nerds are fond of, with its giant killer robots (think Transformers). There are hundreds of obscure, lesser known "sports" out there, many of which are only found on television, but almost all of which require a very specific, if not obsolete, talent.

Juggling, cup-stacking, and other games that require, again, hand-eye coordination are often picked for viewing, and many nerds will try these types of sports themselves. Then of course, we have chess and other "mind games" which spill over into the realm of "Entertainment" or "Hanging Out," which will be discussed in further detail later. The point is, geeks will defend their games as the "sports" they play, and who's to say they're wrong?

Another lesser-known sport fad that many geeks get into is Japanese Extreme Sports. These wacky television shows often feature insane obstacle courses with expertly trained physical specimens clamber through in order to please a crowd of screaming fan-girls. Martial-arts competitions hold the same appeal, and while many nerds and geeks will take a class or two in jiu-jitsu or tai-chi, most never hack it past a blue belt (with a few exceptions). Then again, there is Capoiera, the Brazilian martial art/dance form, which almost every nerd on Earth is familiar with in some regard. For some reason, nerds love this stuff. Again, we can trace the roots back to video games. It must be understood that all nerds, not unlike most of society I might add, live in at least a slightly deluded reality. They wish to be that which they are not; namely, the characters they imitate while role-playing in chat rooms, or playing D&D (Dungeons & Dragons), or seeing on Rurouni Kenshin, a popular Japanese Anime. We aim to be as athletic, courageous, clever, and spry as the characters we see on the screen and can manipulate so easily with but a touch of the button, not the often flabby, out-of-shape momma's boys that we are (this is, of course, a vast generalization). So, we escape into an alternate reality of exciting missions, daring romance (see article 7 on Love & Relationships), and epic battles. And the Japanese, as they are so good at doing, have tapped into this universal Nerddom and created television sports for us which show us those people we so wish to become: agile, brave all-stars who can combine the forces of our minds with those of our bodies in completing death-defying stunts in the form of tame inflatable challenges, as most of these "extreme sport" gauntlets consist of. While we may not be the super-jock all-star athlete superman we wish we could be at times, nerds are quite content in their alternate world of pseudo-sports, preferring to stand at the sidelines more often than participating. Still, there are things we do excel at, and most nerds have the confidence needed not to fret over our usual lack of physical prowess. Gone are the days where nerd automatically meant wimp. We are heroes of the internet; champions of the chat room, and victors over video games.