Here's a quick list of 10 things that are annoying about sports, sportswriting, watching sports, etc. It's not in any particular order. The #1 thing is no more annoying than the #10 thing. Well it's possible that it is to you, it's not necessarily what is meant by this list.
10. Watching sports with somebody who thinks they're better than professional athletes. It makes it even worse when the person saying this has never played beyond the level of where 14-15 year olds play and even more worse when they have never played the sport competitively.
9. Hearing people talk about their fantasy sports teams. The first rule of fantasy sports: Nobody cares about your fantasy team except you.
8. When people think the sports games are too important. People sometimes watch games thinking the outcome is life or death.
7. Hearing or reading sportswriters debate the meaning of the phrase "most valuable". Every damn year. Every damn sport.
6. Hearing or reading sportswriters start off their debates about the phrase of "most valuable" by saying that there's so many articles about what this phrase means.
5. Ultimately unsatisfying results in crowning champions, which happens in every sport almost every year. The biggest offenders: college sports. Joe Posnanski has written about this before, if I find the post, I'll link it on here.
4. Narratives of athletes not matching with the statistics. This is the second most annoying thing to me. I hate when sportswriters will write something similar to such and such hitter can't hit in the clutch (usually Alex Rodriguez) but all the stats indicate that they can or at least don't have problems.
3. Sportswriters who flat-out ignore statistics. This is the most annoying thing to me. There's always sportswriters who will say something that flies in the face of what the statistics say. Then they'll back what they were saying by quoting intangibles.
2. The never-ending money arguments. For whatever reason, fans always decry athletes for making too much money but never stop to think about the billions of dollars that sports owners make that don't make it into the athlete's hands (or ummmm bank accounts, I guess).
1. The lack of accountability for predictions. Sportswriters and analysts at the beginning of each sports season will make predictions not only of how teams will do but players, as well. Often these sports analysts and writers will make predictions that don't make sense like the wins and losses of all the teams not adding up correctly. More likely, they'll ignore simple regression to the mean analysis.
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