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From a Guy’s Perspective: How Much Should a Girl Know About Sports

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Peter Frankman Student Contributor, University of Iowa
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at U Iowa chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.

 

            A lot of comedians have talked about the problem of having a girl bothering them while they’re trying to watch “the game.” It happens because the reality is, most guys care about sports more than girls do. No, this is not the case for everyone. Some guys don’t care at all about sports and some girls are so sporty that they beat out the guys in this regard.
            But assuming that the “norm” is true and a guy is super into sports, the question arises: how much should a girl care about sports?
            The answer isn’t straightforward and simple. A girl who really enjoys sports is really great. As a guy you get to hang out with them and experience more together. Going to games and cuddling together watching sports can be a super cool experience.
            At the same time, guys like doing that with other guys. It’s not something that a guy needs a girlfriend to do or to be interested in. In fact, I would argue some guys might not want to hang out with a girl to watch sports, because it has the potential to take away from guy time.
            A girl being sporty is different; it’s awesome because it gives a couple a lot more to do together. There are few non-sexual bonding activities more fun then playing sports with a girl. There probably are some more… but I can’t think of anything right now.
            One guy’s response to this question was that it should be, “As important as cooking is to guys.” Maybe sexist, but kind of true. Guys aren’t known to cook, but should at least respect it and someone else’s interest in it, which is easy enough because cooking is delicious. It’s understandably harder for a girl to respect sports if a guy isn’t an athlete, because it looks like something that only exists on TV and for other people.
            Girls need to be able to understand guys’ interest in sports enough to at least pretend to care about sports so they leave a guy alone to watch sports, or join them and say, “Oh wow! World Series! I get that you want to watch this and don’t want to talk about ___________ and won’t leave it to do something else that’s random.”
            That makes sense.
            This is a topic that is enough of a guy-to-guy basis that I’m in a room full of guys and when I asked this question one guy said, “Girls shouldn’t know sports at all,” and the other said, “Girl’s should know everything about sports.”
            Yeah, it is difficult to gage it as a general amount of knowledge.
            Overall, it should be enough for a girl to get by with the basics. She should be able to watch a football, baseball, or basketball game without having to ask questions about every aspect of the game, while not necessarily enjoying it a whole lot.
            If a relationship fails because of sports, it was probably not the healthiest relationship in general.

Peter Frankman is an underclassman at the University of Iowa from Burbank, California. He has a few addictions in his life: writing, reading, heavy metal, Adult Swim, and any movie with zombies. He joined The University of Iowa's Her Campus team as the writer of the "From a Guy's Perspective" articles in January 2011 and hasn't looked back since (except to make sure he doesn't write the same article twice). Peter's a major in both Journalism and Creative Writing and hopes to become a writer in some way, shape or form after he graduates. That or the President of the United States, he hasn't really focused too much to say anything decisive yet... or maybe he has, we're not quite sure. If he had to choose a night of guilty pleasures it would include the Beastie Boys, Monster Import: Light, Zebra Cakes, and a marathon of subpar movies that he thinks are amazing (Blade, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Fast and the Furious, etc).