How to Talk About Sports

 Without Having to Waste Years of Your Life Memorizing Pointless Minutiae

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It's happened to the best of us. You're minding your own business, trying to finish those TPS reports before Bob gets all over your ass, when all of a sudden he appears. The office Sports Guy.

Sports Guy revels in the 21st century technology that allows him access to 365.25 days a year of unfettered sports coverage. This means you'll be treated to several pointless facts about recent trades, injuries, and player salaries before you can even act like you didn't see him and run back to your office. Just make sure you run back to your office, and not his, or you'll have to simultaneously hold back laughter and rage that this guy makes 5x more money than you:

You won how many little league championships?!?

However, in hopes that someday you will be the asshole who makes enough to cover his desk in trinkets that nobody can say anything about, it's probably a good idea to chat this guy up (as painful as it seems). So here's a quick lesson for how to sound like you know what you're talking about when you don't know the difference between holding and intentional grounding:

1. Interject with a question or comment about an obscure rule, play, or formation. The more obscure, the less anyone will dispute it.

Sports Guy: "...and that's why nobody will ever be as great a pitcher as Nolan Ryan."

You: "Yeah, but when they started enforcing the larger strike zone in 2001, batters responded by swinging at every thing and running up the score, raising ERAs across the board."

 OR

Sports Guy: "...the Lakers are unstoppable."

You: "Any team with the size of the pros that adopted the Tar Heel's 2-3 defense could easily keep them under 100 points."

CAVEAT: Don't go too obscure. You may find yourself exposed for what you are: A huge dork who needs to read the Wikipedia page for "Baseball" to hold your own in a conversation.

Sports Guy: "The higher slugging average in the AL just proves how little they spend on good defensive players."

You: "If they got rid of the infield fly rule I think the Cubs may have a shot at the World Series."

And he's even a Cubs fan.

2.  Open up the sports page of the Sunday paper (it's the one you use to line the litter box, hopefully it's still legible), and depending on the current sports season, find out whether the Yankees, Patriots, or Lakers won their last game. Come Monday morning, you've got all you need.

Sports Guy: "Can you believe that game?!?"

You: "Yeah there's no stopping the [Yankees/Patriots/Lakers]! "

3. Start every sentence with "I was listening to Mike & Mike..." Nobody listens to them. Anything you say following will just be accepted as fact and you can move on with your life.

You: "I was listening to Mike and Mike, and I couldn't believe how adamantly they opposed Michael Jordan returning to hockey."

Sports Guy: "Yeah, what a bunch of dicks."

Seriously, how are they still on the air?