You don't need to know much about sports. If you can just keep up with what's in season that's typically enough. Who do you think will go to the super bowl? Have you done a final four bracket? are great questions as long as it's the right time of year.

For the few times where I had to speak to someone about topics I don't care much about, I found that simply asking questions to learn about them ( as well as the person I'm speaking to) is enough.

"What team do you support? Has it always been the case? How do you think they compare to <well-known other good team>?" "What car do you drive? Any particular reason for that car model? What's the brand's best and worst things? Oh, that piece tends to break easily; pardon my ignorance, but what's the purpose of it?" "Any key difference in the way you hunt/fish this or that animal, or the time of the year during which you hunt/fish? I don't know that word, what does it mean? Do you have any anecdotes about some hunting/fishing you did?"

Those have to be adapted to the person and situation, but they are pretty good to keep a conversation going. People love to speak about their interests, and a lot love to even teach about them. Putting yourself as the listener makes them perceive you as nice, and you might even gather interesting information to yourself, or at least gather enough knowledge to have an easier time speaking about it next time.

Being a good listener is key for any relationship, however brief it may be.

Definitely agree on the listening and just asking questions. It helps to have one or two factoids about many subjects to sneak into any conversation.

    I found that simply asking questions to learn about 
    them ( as well as the person I'm speaking to) is enough.

This is such a great insight and skill.

This is something that 99% of "nerds" don't understand about sports. You don't have to fake your way through "knowing about sports" to have a conversation around it.

Suppose you're in Buffalo, NY and you don't know a thing about sports. However, unless visiting with your eyes and ears closed, it would be difficult not to see that the city is really into its football team.

If you are "stuck" in a conversation with a Bills fan and don't know a thing about football, you could just ask - are the Bills good this year? what's it like being a Bills fan? are Bills fans as crazy as they say? how did you come to be a Bills fan - were your parents Bills fans?

There's like 100 possible conversation angles there that don't require any knowledge of sports

Discussions like these show that some people really block out anything beyond their specific interests.

I don't care about superhero movies, so I haven't seen any of the Marvel or DC movies, yet I still know they exist and sometimes I know which one is being promoted right now. If I got stuck at a table somewhere with someone who is a big fan of them, we could have a conversation. It'd mostly consist of me asking questions, but that'd work fine, because as a fan he'd have opinions to share. Same thing with sports or anything, really.

Right! It's so simple to me, that I actually get kind of frustrated with people who haven't figured this out.

Yeah, I noticed this too about sportball people - they’re generally out of shape and not actually athletic (I’m fit and active in several outdoor sports). I just find watching or talking about sports excruciatingly boring. To me it’s the same thing as pornography, watching other people who are really good at it while you are a bystander, but your brain gets the physiological and-psychological signal that you’re actually part of the action. Though I don’t recommend the latter as a potential topic of conversation.

I don't have the same experience at all. The people who I know and have met which enjoy watching sports come at all levels of fitness. I am not that interested myself but quite many of the members of my running club enjoy watching sports and some of them can run 3 hour marathons.

And if you have ever met football ultras most of them are very fit.

Are you coming from UK or US perspective? Never heard the term Ultra.

What are football ultras?

Somewhere between dedicated fans of (often working class) European Football teams and paramilitary organisations. Green Street starring Elijah Wood is a film accessible to overseas audiences detailing the cultural phenomenon n the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultras

In Europe however, Italy in particular, organised crime is embedded in the structure - e.g. Gennaro Di Tommaso aka "The C0rpse", the leader of Napoli's ultras whose approval is needed before a match can take place

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/curva-nostra-mob-infilt...

Extremely fanatic soccer "fans", aka hooligans. Basically just an excuse to be antisocial.

the mob that pretends to be the core fans.

This may be a more recent thing, but I find a lot of the "sportsball" conversations are actually just slightly disguised conversations about gambling. Everyone is on Draft Kings and when they talk about this guy's stats or that team's past, or this game's expected score, they're just talking about betting and stuff. I don't think a lot of the sportsball people are even really fans of the sport, they're just looking at stats and betting.

As somebody who enjoys both watching and playing sports, I agree and I think that sports betting is so gross and harmful.

I have a question, though. What's up with the "sportsball" thing?

I mean, I'm very familiar with it. It just seems like it's always been used as a mildly derogatory term by people who really dislike sports and sports fans. What does it mean to you? No wrong answers.

> It just seems like it's always been used as a mildly derogatory term by people who really dislike sports and sports fans.

Yeah, actually saying 'sportsball' in conversation in a non-ironic way is an excellent way to signal that you have poor social skills. No need to yuck someone's yum.

That's certainly been my experience. I've never heard it used in a way that wasn't a mild yucking of somebody else's yum.

I don't know. OP used the word and I just repeated it. I figure it's a generic term for the kinds of ball sports that popular culture follows and/or bets on: Baseball, Basketball, Football and so on.

Yeah, it's funny. I find a lot of sedentary sports-enjoyment (particularly fantasy sports) to be way "nerdier" than stereotypically nerdy stuff like D&D.

That said, the sports fans I know really are quite the wide spectrum when it comes to their actual sports/exercise participation. Lot of very active people.