treesquirrel":2e6ho9jx said:
Update - I'm not a troll. It may not be completely fluent grammer, as I typed it quickly based on my thoughts without major revisions.
People say I should understand, but I don't yet, because I am good at understanding logical things. There are many different things I like, some a bit better than others, but I like them all within balance. When it comes to football/seahawks, people seem completely off balance with their extreme level of passion so incredibly above and beyond any other related interests to a point beyond any logic which I can see.
Thank you for taking the time to post here. As a teacher and former mental health counselor, I understand autism fairly well and have worked with many youngsters who have it to varying degrees. The point that you bring up here is critical for folks to understand when dealing with people who have autism. Often times they struggle to understand emotional concepts. Feelings can be difficult for them to process at times. That said, many are EXTREMELY smart and tend to be very logic oriented. Not knowing and not being able to understand social and emotional situations can really tend to stick in their craw. So, treesquirrel's questions here are very natural for someone with autism.
So, to you I would echo what many have said in saying that the emotional side of football is going to be hard for me to accurately convey to you. In many ways, it would be like trying to describe what a rose smelled like to someone who had no sense of smell. Some things have to be experienced to be fully understood. That said, I don't believe that you have to necessary be able to FEEL something about a sport in order to really like or at the very least appreciate it. You can definitely learn to appreciate sports from a purely intellectual standpoint. For me, Seahawks football is something that I literally grew up with. From the time I was 7 years old and moved to Washington State, I was exposed to the NFL and began following this team. I was immersed in it, gained an appreciation for the amazing skill of players like Steve Largent, Curt Warner, and others. I’ve followed this team my whole life and learned to really love football from a young age.
That wasn’t the case with me with baseball. When I was young, I tried watching the sport a few times on my own and absolutely could not for the life of me figure out what in the world the attraction was. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, it looked boring, like nothing was happening, etc. It made no sense to me. It wasn’t until I was 15 years old that that chanced. One day, I was over at a good friend of mine’s house (who was a die hard Braves fan) and he was watching a baseball game when I came over. The two of us got to talking and I confessed to him that to me, the game seemed boring, slow, made little sense, and I had absolute no idea what was really going on. He proceeded to spend the next 2 hours or so explaining in great detail what was happening as we watched the game together.
That one conversation ended up changing everything for me with baseball, as all of a sudden it was like a light switch had been turned on. I came to understand that though it looked like nothing was happening ... in reality the game was a lot like chess (and I love chess). Though it SEEMED as though nothing was happening, in reality quite a bit was happening. I came to understand the game within the game – the mental aspect of the game. There was all these moves and counter moves happening all the time that I had never understood before. Once I understood the logic behind the game (I tend to be pretty intellectual/analytical/logical myself when it comes to games and sports) … I really began to appreciate and actually like the game from a strategy standpoint.
I’m wondering if the same thing might be true with you as well. I’m wondering, do you understand the game itself and what’s happening? If not, you might be surprised to learn that football (unlike how it might appear on the surface) is in reality a whole lot like chess. Offenses and defenses have many complicated moving parts and once you understand the complexities of that … and begin to grasp the chess match of what’s happening on the field between offense and defense … the game may actually perhaps start to interest you. There is a ton of strategy and skill involved – moves, counter moves, guessing what your opponent is going to do, trying to out think/outperform them, etc.
I don’t know if that describes you or not when it comes to football, but in case it does, here is a short youtube video that someone did that explains some of the very basic concepts of football. Now, when it comes to NFL football, offenses and defenses and the way they operate can be a whole lot more complicated. This is a fairly basic description of football positions …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zanr8sETHdQ
Perhaps if you’re not understanding the game itself … you could eventually learn to appreciate it once you grasp what’s going on.
I wish that you could interact with some of the great football minds on this forum in person so that we could help answer any questions you might have. Forums like these can be such a clumsy and inefficient way to interact. I don’t know if I was on the money with my post … or way off base. Let me know if there are any questions you might have when it comes football in general or the Seahawks specifically. I’d love to try to take a stab at helping answer any you might have.
