frankj1 wrote:were you a small kid who had a late growth spurt?
sounds like you're kind of a big guy, swimmer, rugby, both take some strength and athleticism...didn't coaches try to recruit you in school?
No. But my mother didn't watch much tv at all, let alone sports, and my father usually was at work (at 80 he still works 6 days a week), so he never had time to watch tv (or any interest in sports, I think I watched him watch one football game in my life, and I still don't know why he did). As a child I was allowed very little tv, I wasn't about to blow all of it on watching a sport I didn't understand.
I've never had great hand-eye coordination, so while I did attempt basketball (I was taller than most of the children) I wasn't good at it. And I was terrible at soccer. But I was very good at swimming. By the time I was old enough for school related sports (jr high?) I was training every evening and had 3x a week 5am practices. By high school I had 3 different practices to go to some day. And by then, I looked at football as being slow and lazy. they stopped to rest every couple seconds, while my main event was a mile swim. Of course, I also wouldn't have been of any interest to a football team. Because of the training I had to eat 5,000 calories a day just to maintain my 5% bodyfat. I was just under 6'2" and 185lbs.
Contrast that to 220lbs now, something I consider way too fat.
Long story short.... I wasn't exposed to the idea of watching sports as a child. By the time I got old enough to have done it myself, I simply had no time or desire to watch someone else exercise. Between swimming, orchestra and homework, and the occasional lifeguard job, there were many days I would be in 3 different pools until 10pm, finally get home, practice my cello until 11, do homework until 12 and then be up at 4:30am for training. My weekends were always busy wtih something....