I've no scientific evidence to support it, but I believe the human genetic code includes a "sports gene". This gene is responsible for making those who have it obsess over pennant races, earned run averages, field goal percentages, shots on goal, and any of a million other statistics used to try to quantify sports activities. This gene makes otherwise sane people dress up in outfits of the same color, smear their faces with paint, and chant silly slogans like "Batter, batter, batter, SWING, batter..." It makes them spend inordinate amounts of money on sports logo clothing, sports logo stickers, sports logo pens, sports logo paper, sports logo flags, sports logo food, and even sports logo toilets. Yet, while I'm certain this gene exists, I'm equally certain that I don't have it.

I know I don't have it because I don't have an urge to own any sports-related paraphernalia. If I have anything with a sports logo on it, it was a gift, or it happened to be cheaper than a logo-less item of the same type. I don't smear my face with colored makeup on game day. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't even know when "game day" is.

On my own, I will not sit down and watch sports in person or on television. It just doesn't interest me. I'll get more enjoyment out of watching a documentary on the mating habits of the common fruit fly than out of watching the Super Bowl or World Series. Watching a sporting event is about as interesting to me as watching a group of retirees play Yahtzee.

There is nothing less interesting to me than the "color commentary" of sportcasters and those sports shows like the ones on ESPN where two people hold up masks of famous sports-related figures and pretend to be those people having some kind of discussion. Maybe I'm mentally defective in some way, but I can't imagine any situation where I'd enjoy watching two commentators pretending to be someone else, discussing ANYTHING. Seeing Bill Gates debate Steve Jobs over why the Mac's security isn't as good as Vista's would be interesting. Watching John Dvorak and Guy Kawasaki pretending to be Steve Jobs and Bill Gates having that debate wouldn't. Perhaps nothing is more conclusive evidence of my lack of the sports gene than the fact that I can't see why anyone would want to watch any of the "sports talk" programs that don't at the very least feature an athlete or coach or manager from that sport on the panel, or why anyone would bother to call into a sports radio show. There's obviously some appeal there, but I don't get it. I really, really don't.

Not having the sports gene is a good thing in many ways. I've gone to normally-crowded restaurants during the Super Bowl and been escorted straight to a table, where I received excellent service because practically no one else was there. I've been able to spend my money learning skills that have helped me on the job, rather than on sports logo merchandise. I've found it much easier to relate to women, many of whom also do not have the gene and do not see the appeal of sports. My marriage is probably stronger, too, since I don't neglect my wife because "the game" is on or spend all my time in front of the TV watching ESPN, the Golf Channel, and all the other sports-related programming. I don't stand outside in freezing weather cheering on a sports team, or spend hundreds of dollars to watch sport events that I'll forget about in a year.

But there are some serious drawbacks to be sports-gene-free. For one thing, conversations with my fellow men are often virtually impossible. Most groups of men spend their time discussing who traded who, who's playing who tonight, who got injured last week and is now on the disabled list, and why their team needs a left-handed pitcher. Drop me into this conversation and I do my best to keep quiet, nod, and not be noticed. I've got NOTHING of value to add, and I know it. I'm about as comfortable in the middle of a sports discussion as most men would be sitting in on a focus group for a new feminine hygiene product. My only hope in an all-male conversation scenario is that they'll eventually drift off the topic of sports and on to something I do know a little about, like a popular television series or movie.

Am I better off without the sports gene? I don't know. I do know it's genetic, though, and not learned behavior. I've tried to watch sports and enjoy them at different times in my life. I just don't. It seems I genetically "can't" get into sports. Sports fans tell me that it's the marvel of watching athletes at the peak of physical perfection performing complicated maneuvers better than their rivals, that it's the strategy of choosing the right play at the right time, of standing behind a group of people who represent your city, state, or country. I get that. I still don't find it interesting. If you can't see my point of view, perhaps this will help.

Imagine that instead of two sports teams taking the field in opposition, it's two accounting firms, each leaders in their field, one representing your city/state, and the other representing a rival. Both teams will be given the most challenging accounting tasks in the world to complete, and the winner will be the firm whose bookkeeping is the quickest and most accurate. The starting gun is fired, the accountants go into a huddle, then sit down at their desks to start "accounting". A couple of hours later, one of them turns in a ledger that's complete and accurate. They win. The crowd goes nuts. They've never seen such a group of highly trained professionals accomplish such marvels of business acumen in so little time, so well.

Would you, as a sports fan, enjoy sitting in front of your television watching two hours of people going through complicated accounting acrobatics? I can hear the sportscasters now, "Wow, Phil, look at the speed at which Jenkins adds up those debits and credits! He's amazing!" and "Did you see that? Johnson is depreciating that company car over 3 years instead of 5! He's going to save the company hundreds this year. They sure made a good decision when they hired him from SmithCo last season." I'm betting that you'd find this accounting competition dreadfully dull. In spite of that, it has all the same elements that I'm told make a sporting event worth watching. Two teams, at the height of perfection, representing their communities, competing in a public spectacle, doing something beyond the reach of most of us.

If you tell me the accounting competition sounds like an exciting idea, I'd be a little concerned about you, even if you were an accountant. As uninteresting as that competition may sound to a sports fan, that's exactly the way sporting events strike me if I sit down to watch them. At the end of the day, the accountant's work will at least have yielded a ledger that solved some business problem and perhaps made or saved a company money. The athlete's work will have resulted in a pile of meaningless statistics and a ball/puck/etc. being moved back and forth on a playing field for a couple of hours. This, to me, is sports in a nutshell. A bunch of people who've spent far too much time training to play a game get paid to spend a couple of hours moving around in front of an audience. More entertaining than watching grass grow, but far less entertaining (and much more expensive) than a rock concert.