The 5 Most Boring, Popular Sports: Baseball, Football, Darts, NASCAR and Cricket

Ladies and gentleman: May I present to you the five most boring, popular sporting events devised by man.

Please be advised that this is from a Briton's point of view, and so certain biases may appear. I would also like to point out that I have concentrated on the major sports of the world and left more obscure sporting events such as elephant polo, cheese chasing, bouls, chess, etc. alone for two reasons. First, it's debatable as to whether some of these sports can even be deemed sports, and secondly, I will succeed in pissing off far more people with the list below, which will I'm sure will elicit comments both defending the sports mentioned and attacking those that aren't. Let's begin, starting at 5 and working our way down to THE most boring one of them all:

5: Baseball

The great American game. Great that is except for the mind numbing tedium of the whole thing. Baseball has some of the fattest arsed and overpaid athlete's? in the world. Although you'd be hard pressed to call some of these players even passably fit what with their fat arses. I know enough with the arses already, but come on get into shape people or perhaps it's just the clingy outfits. O.k. back to the game itself. As with many American Sports there is a great deal of standing around, contemplating of navels, mucho getting ready, intense debating of what to do next, thinking about what to do next, talking about what to do next, pointing at things, spitting, stomping of ground, chewing of cheeks, signaling to catchers, placing of feet, readying of hands and ball and many other things ending in .ing! If you can stay awake long enough for the opening pitch then perhaps you have the mind-set to enjoy the sport of Baseball, I myself just don't have the patience and unless I have money riding on the game or it's a World Series (the world being made up of um........well, just America pretty much, now that's a small world isn't it)...then I don't think I'm going to make it past the 1st 10 minutes.

Home runs are actually quite spectacular to view. The satisfying crack of the bat and watching the ball fly into the crowd with another satisfying crack as it bounces off someone's forehead is good entertainment but there's just too long of a wait in-between.

4: American Football

Huge bulky steroid enriched behemoths bashing into each other in-between way too much stopping and starting. Again the American preoccupation with military type maneuvers overly complicated planning and infinite interruptions of a game that is boring enough as it is without being interrupted every 5 seconds so that the gaily clad referee can make air-angels, point South, East, North and West and listen to his voice echo off the stadium speaker system whilst TV audiences watch mind-numbing replays in ultra-slow-motion of a 2 second piece of action that happened 5 minutes ago is too much for me to bear. The occasional grunt and broken neck not-withstanding this is a dull sport which I just don't get.

3. Darts

Whew, where to start with Darts and before you Americans say 'Huh, major Sport?' why yes it is. There's big money to be made in this sport and it's spread its beer-filled wings from being a British-Pub Game to a World-Wide Sport that's televised around the globe.

There are two physical attributes necessary in order to play Darts. They are as follows:

A: The ability to consume many liters upon pints upon liters of Beer which must (I assume) aid in the hand-eye co-ordination and the incredibly accurate marksmanship which is admittedly on occasion pretty impressive. The drinking of beer to aid hand-eye co-ordination only seems to help Darts players though and should not be applied to Motor-Sports or High-Diving.

B: The ability to sweat prodigiously is a necessity, so as to purge all that beer you've been drinking all damn day. O.K. the beer isn't helping with the Body Odor situation either and I'm sure the stink wafting off these players is something akin to the B.O. encountered by 'Seinfeld' in the 'Parking Valet' episode.
However, I can understand the thirst-factor. These tournaments take place in what look like overly-crowded mega-pubs and the anxious tension can get pretty high when there are hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line and therefore sweating aplenty. But as a Spectator sport come on now, who are you kidding? Held in foggy/smokey clubs with Soccer-Chanting type crowds hollering out the names of their favorite players the only possible good view of this Sport is from the Close-Up TV shots that are projected from the stage showing the myriad of tiny feathered projectiles winging their way towards the board. They even show slow-motion replays can you believe, just in case you couldn't contain your excitement the first time a 2 ounce dart hit a dartboard.

2: NASCAR

Ooh, this was difficult. NASCAR was very almost the number one pick. It's only saving grace being that you usually have good access to food and drink at these events and there is the occasional smash-up to entertain the hypnotized crowds. I say hypnotized because really, wouldn't you have to be in order to watch a bunch of matchbox cars whiz repeatedly around a circle/oval track at high speed. I don't doubt the talent of the drivers who partake of this sport at all. I'm sure it's like 110 degrees in the souped up racecars they cocoon themselves within and you certainly need to be fit and have fantastic concentration to steer the thing repeatedly around the tracks without making mash potato's of yourself against the barriers. Out on the crowded stands though all I can see is a little blip with a 'Google' or 'Microsoft' logo on it going 'Neow' once every minute.

1: Cricket

And we have a winner. Cricket!. This game plays out like some epic 'Harry Potter' type Quiditch game. It requires a huge field with most of the action taking place on a tiny little bit of grassless turf in the center. Fielders stand mostly motionless at various spots around the field. The Bowler and Batsman being the only 2 people you can rely on to generate any real excitement. Amazingly enough people go to Cricket matches in droves, setting up shop in a picnic like atmosphere. These fans are in it for the long haul because Cricket is not only boring and unendingly dull (sometimes lasting many days) but also mind-bogglingly complicated and difficult to follow. I was born and raised in England and I still have no idea how they score the thing. You have 'Runs', 'Inning's', 'Wicket's' and a sort of vague notion of how a team wins. Interspersed between the long hum-drum periods of toenail clipping tedium there are tiny little slivers of excitement like for instance when the Batsman is bowled out or run out or caught on the fly. Some of the bowlers are extremely fast throwing the very heavy ball at 100mph (the fastest recorded being 100.2 mph) and protective headgear and 'Hannibal-Lecter' style masks are a must when the professionals are playing. But for sheer mental banality this spectator sport makes the top of the list.