Congratulations to the Anchorage Aces on winning the... wait, they lost? And they've been called the Alaska Aces for over 5 years? Yet somehow my life goes on.
For many years, my only exposure to sports came from including at least one story in my newscasts for KASH 107.5. Since KASH news ended, I haven't had reason to look at the sports wire at all. On KENI, sports exists only in the noon news, but I only anchor that program when Kurt Haider is on the road with the UAA hockey team as their announcer. Since their season ended (I'm pretty sure they lost, too), I've been able to ignore sports entirely.
Most people don't need a job as a news anchor as an excuse to follow sports. They watch games, read the scores, and follow teams in the off-season. Not me. Never me. I've had a blind spot for sports my whole life. It's one of the things I don't do, like knitting. My sports experience can be summed up quickly: in grade school, I played T-ball, softball, and volleyball, but I don't recall having strong feelings about winning or losing. By comparison, I have more vivid memories about playing in the school orchestra, even though I'm not a musician, either. I just couldn't sustain interest in playing sports.
I never felt the urge to follow pro sports, either. My first lunchbox had all the NFL helmets on it, but I was more interested in the designs of the logos. To this day, I couldn't say which team is in which league. I've seen exactly one major league baseball game--New York Yankees versus Minnesota Twins at the Metrodome in 1987, the year the Twins later won the World Series--which I found irredeemably boring. Pat Sajak threw the ceremonial first pitch, but I can't remember who won the game. I remember the San Antonio Spurs dominated the Golden State Warriors when I saw them play in 2007; in fact, it was such a mismatch that the fans started to leave the arena at halftime.
College sports seems to be where the action is. I watched the UAA women's basketball team for the first time last December, and they showed me how the game is really a duel between offense and defense, like chess only sweatier. A couple weeks earlier, the UAA hockey game I heard on 550 The Zone was exceptionally exciting, though Kurt Haider had to tell me so. Of course, Kurt finds it all exciting. He and I are exact opposites in this respect. As I noted before, Kurt will stretch the KENI sports segment to 5 minutes, whereas I cut it short to leave time for a longer Your Money segment. In my mind, our target listener, Average David, is more interested in finance than sports. He is (or you are; hello, David!) a bank executive, invested in real estate, and a reader of the Wall Street Journal. Our market research indicates his (your?) game is golf, although 550 The Zone is another favorite radio station. Which probably means Average David is as interested in sports as the next person. As long as the next person is not me.
