What decade

Have you had the most fun watching sports? Pretty simple question.

screwed up the thread title again. Meant decade.

 

'80s thru most of the '90s.

 

I was born in 1960 so I would say the 1970s. But 10-year period would be 1975-1985.

 

Late 90s into early 2000s. I was a teenager watching baseball. I knew every player on the Giants and read box scores daily. Figured out magic numbers. I think it was the home run race and the Giants were really good. It was so much fun. My dad got into it with me and it became our thing. Then I got to college and graduated and didn’t have TV and got engrossed in my job. Baseball started being on in the background more than me hardcore studying it. Still loved and do love it but not like then.

 

Mid 1990’s baseball. Cleveland felt like some enchanted baseball heaven for a few years there.

 

The 90s, particularly from 93 on after I left for college, were electric. After a lifetime in Podunk with nothing more exciting to attend in person than the occasional Midnight in the OVC game, I suddenly had a full plate of SEC sports I could see in Tuscaloosa, plus nearly every pro sport in Atlanta a day trip away. I gorged myself. I even remember driving by myself through the snow to Starkville to watch an Auburn-MSU basketball game I had no real rooting interest in, just for the novelty.

 

I grew up in the 60's but the 80's were more memorable (ESPN and TBS helped greatly; I was in college & law school most of decade too)

 

I would say the 80s, if, for no other reason, that was the decade I grew up in.

Baseball had the Mets winning one Series, having the rest of the league hate them, the Steinbrenner Yankees, the Baseball Bunch, This Week In Baseball, and NBC’s Game of the Week with that criminal Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola.

NFL had the Parcells/LT Giants, Super Bowl Shuffle Bears, evil Plastic Tom Landry, two great franchises in the future Football Team and the 49ers, the draft on TV, the Jets fucking up the draft every year, Summerall and Madden, the depressing Summerall announcement about 60 Minutes and Murder ..... She Wrote (except on the West Coast) because that meant bedtime soon and school the next day, Monday Night Football still mattered and there was a spring football league that was pretty cool until a future president provided a glimpse into his future fuckups.

NBA went from something on late at night to something really cool with MJ, Magic, Kareem and Showtime, Bird, Parish, McHale and DJ, Patrick in New York, Dr. J and Moses, Barkley, Isiah with the Pistons.

College hoops was fun, and to a kid whose mother let him stay up late on a school night to watch NC State beat Houston, was pretty cool too. Big East was awesome, With no internet, finding out who some random 15 seed that I never heard in the NCAAs was interesting (Coppin State?). One local little school with a future NBA star made a couple NCAAs, and hung with a star-laden major school for most of one game before losing. Another local little in another direction actually pulls off an upset over a major. NCAA was full of shit back then, but at least, coaches weren’t yet hypocritical millionaires.

College football had less bowl games, it was a big deal to make one, coaches stayed around forever, local college team made a couple of bowls, Doug Flutie was awesome, and the NCAA was still full of shit, but it wasn’t as insane, at least above the table.

NHL was cool. Rangers-Islanders rivalry was in full force, Devils moved from the west and told Don Koharski to go get a fucking doughnut. Gretzky and the Oilers kicked everyone’s ass.

US kicked ass in two summer Olympics, and basically sucked in the winter. I was too young to know about the 1980 hockey team, but since the games happened every four years, it was a big deal to watch. Had a nice teenage crush on Ekaterina Gordeeva in ‘88.

Pro wrestling, ‘nuff said.

 

1990-2011, pretty definitively. Saw titles for the Giants, Yankees, and Rangers, a final appearance and plenty of great playoff games by the Knicks, my alma mater nearly made the Final Four and won a conference championship, the Olympics had some spectacular moments, I watched boxing and the birth of MMA, the X Games and racing, and Tiger made golf cool. I was young and mostly single enough to bond over sports with my guy friends.

By 2012 I had a kid, I was no longer working in sports, and staying up until 1 am to watch the end of a game lost a lot of appeal when he was screaming crying at 5 am.

 

70s as a kid and then 90s as an adult

 

If I weren’t jaded, the 2000s with the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots.

So it was the 1990s, before I decided to enter the journalism racket.