Sports are the domain of jocks. That truism has been cemented in our culture by high school gym classes, pop culture, and competition on the field. But there’s a hidden truth to sports people don’t talk about as much: It’s one of the nerdiest hobbies you can have.
Watch any sports game broadcast and you’ll start to see this. Arcane figures like a quarterback’s passer rating (a complex mathematical figure that’s supposed to tell you how “good” he is) or a batter’s on-base plus slugging (same deal, but for baseball) crowd the screen almost as much as the game action itself.
This obsession with “data” and history is somewhat inevitable. After you lock into a favorite team or player, sports fandom tends to devolve into staring at numbers and memorizing lore — like how Kansas City Chiefs fans shudder at the thought of that one time their kicker missed several easy field goals in a close playoff game. And if you’re into math or storytelling and want to find a new thing to nerd out about (with the added bonus of being able to join in on Monday morning watercooler conversations), learning about sports is easier than ever thanks to the wonders of the internet.
You don’t even have to turn on ESPN or go to a bookstore either, though both of those are also productive avenues to learning about sports. Instead, you can get almost everything you need from the home of videos on the internet: YouTube. And the best part is, it won’t cost you a single penny beyond what you already pay your ISP.
The best YouTube channels for learning about sports
There are countless great YouTube channels for getting up to speed on how sports work and how they’ve evolved over the years. Some cover individual sports or leagues like the NFL or NBA, while some cover everything under the sun. Here are three great channels to start with and, hopefully, YouTube’s recommendation algorithm takes you to more like them instead of trying to radicalize you.
NFL Throwback
First up is NFL Throwback, a channel run by the NFL itself — not by fans — which separates it from the rest of the channels we’ll discuss. That’s actually a good thing in this case because the real value of NFL Throwback is its high-quality, condensed edits of games and moments from throughout NFL history, as well as college football history. It’s been around for five years and some of its videos have millions of views.
These videos generally don’t have additional commentary beyond what was in the original game broadcasts. The whole ethos of NFL Throwback is “show, don’t tell.” You won’t get the life story of each individual player or anything, but you’ll get to see amazing plays the way people saw them live as they happened.
I’ve lost hours of my life watching clips of things like the time Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers threw six touchdown passes (that’s a lot) in the first half of a game. If you really have nothing to do, you can even see entire games, like this 2001 playoff game between the Patriots and Raiders that famously ended with a bad call by the referees to help Tom Brady eventually win his first championship.
The point is that so many great football moments, like Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Santonio Holmes’s game-winner in Super Bowl XLIII, tend to get shown ad nauseam on networks like ESPN without the context of a whole game full of exciting twists and turns. NFL Throwback provides the most raw, unobtrusive way to see all of that on YouTube.
BBALLBREAKDOWN
You can’t just spend all your time worrying about things that happened 30 years ago, though. That’s how you end up like the old guy in the sports bar who keeps complaining about how nobody in today’s NBA could play against the superstars of the 1980s like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. BBallBreakdown is an excellent basketball channel for brushing up on what’s happening now.
Put simply, BBallBreakdown is a channel that, well, breaks down basketball in a way that makes it easier to understand just what the heck is happening on the court. Watching an NBA team run its offense can be dizzying, as teams like the Golden State Warriors have guys running around all over the place in a way that looks random and nonsensical, but is in fact deeply methodical and punishing to the defense.
Newcomers may find BBallBreakdown a little tough at first because of terms like “ball screen” and “pick & roll,” but handy on-screen graphics (and the ability to pause, rewind, and slow down the footage yourself) make it easy to grasp what’s going on. The above video, for instance, will give you a great idea of just how much of a menace Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry was during the 2022 playoffs, beyond his ability to simply shoot the ball from long range. The way he intricately slices and dices his way through a defense while one of his teammates has the ball (and the opponents’ attention) to set up shots that have no business being as wide open as they are is out of this world. It’s fascinating stuff once you actually get a breakdown of how and why Steph does all of those things.
Secret Base
The third and final channel on this list is my favorite one of all. Secret Base has a dedicated staff pumping out great videos at least once a week about historical happenings for basically every sport, so no fan should feel left out here. There are a bunch of great series on this channel that cover sports from a cornucopia of fun angles.
For instance, “Rewinder” takes singular famous plays like Michael Jordan’s final shot as a member of the Chicago Bulls and goes into excruciating detail about what was happening both on and off the court/field leading up to that moment. These usually run for about 10 minutes, so they’re super digestible and can teach you about everything from World Series-winning home runs to tennis matches that ran for three entire days.
Another personal favorite is “Collapse,” a series which studies teams that should’ve won more championships than they did. Squads like the Phoenix Suns of the late 2000s are put under a microscope, detailing all the on-and-off-court drama that took them from annual contenders to bottom dwellers.
And finally, the crème de la crème of all of sports YouTube: the long-form documentaries from directors, writers, producers, and all around sports historians, Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein. These cover all kinds of topics in all sorts of formats. There’s an epic, seven-part saga covering the history of the NFL’s red-headed stepchild, the Atlanta Falcons. One of my favorites is a two-parter documenting the centuries-long triumphs, trials, and tribulations of every professional athlete who ever went by the name “Bob.”
These are meticulously researched and presented with video clips, tons of charts and graphs that use numbers to brilliantly tell human stories (I’m serious, it’s great)… and even super-old newspaper clippings. These videos are very chill in tone, too, as they’re often set to what could be generously described as “dentist waiting room music”. I sincerely believe these are better than almost anything that gets nominated for Best Documentary at the Oscars.
Now, seriously, go watch that one about guys named Bob. I promise it’s the most interesting thing you’ll see all day.
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