The vast majority of the Squishy crew are not sports fans, nor by and large, do they have meaningful experience with organized (and thus, training in) sports. For an avid sports fan like me, I've boggled at this disinterest for YEARS. Every other social group I interact with, except some that consist entirely of ladies (even then, I can ply a FEW of them with sports conversation), exhibit at least some passion for spectator sports.
I've long held that it was because they didn't identify themselves as fans of teams, and thus missed out on the thrill and agony of fanhood pathos, but that wasn't quite it either. For example, I recently was enthralled by one of the most amazing Word Series I've ever seen this year, but I couldn't care one whit about either team. I was nominally rooting for Texas as they had never won the Series, but when St. Louis gave me that game 6 rally, I was beside myself in wonderment. The Squishy peeps, by and large, wouldn't have cared at all.
So I chalked it up to them being nerds.
But this might be a contributing factor: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7179471/this-your-brain-sports
Batman's awesome. Every last one of us with functioning arms can "neurologically mirror" him punching a ne'er-do-well in the mouth. But if you've never taken a serious crack at sports, watching them be played at a world class level wouldn't fire up those mirror neurons. A baseball fan can totally BECOME Albert Pujols when he's hitting a game winning home run, or Curtis Granderson making a diving catch. If you've never attempted to make that play, you only mirror it via "broad congruency" and I'd imagine your interest and investment would be significantly lessened.
Anyhow, interesting article, especially when applied to our everyday activities like watching someone eat a peanut or nail a critical fallaway jumper (oh that's right, fuck the let's-cancel-the-season-because-we-are-dumb NBA), with further ramifications on how they impact our passions.