My brother says that he used to think that the Chicago Bulls mascot lived in the sewers, ate poop, and kidnapped people. He lived with other Chicago Bulls and the people they kidnapped were forced to poop for eternity.

Shirley B.

My brother thought the white powder used by weightlifters to help them grip the weights was the ashes of the Olympic flame.

This was because at the 1984 games the containers used to hold the chalk dust looks just like the flame bowl at the stadium.

Richard Davies

I grew up in the New Orleans area, where our football team is the Saints. My father was, and still is, a die-hard Saints fan, and as a result, I often heard a great deal about the local team. Well, as a child, when I heard about the holiday All Saints Day, I believed that it was a day to commemorate the athletes playing on our local football team.

Miss Mustard

When I was 10 years old, I used to think the footie team Sheffield Wednesday was a bank holiday, Barry van Hire was a dutch soccer player and Muffin the Mule was a sexual offence.

Notty

While watching a football game on TV, I once asked my dad why there was a net between the goal posts. He said that it was to keep the ball from being eaten by the crazed fans in the seats. So, for a good decade, I thought that people at football games would get so excited that if a ball went into the stands, they would tear it to shreds and eat the pieces. Fortunately, this was well before we started hearing about "soccer hooligans" in the states, otherwise I might never have realized that he didn't mean literally eaten.

Anon

i used to believe that the "team fouls" thingy on the basketball scoreboard was the number of fouls that the WHOLE team did.. like if all five players beat up on an opponent. i imagined lots of doggy piles. i remember noticing that their were so many more team fouls than personal fouls, and wondered why i didnt remember seeing any.

Emily

When I was six I joined the local football (soccer) team. I knew we had red shirts, but when the first match I was to participate in arrived everybody put on blue shirts. Of course this was because the other team had red shirts as well. Because I had only been to one practice session and really didn't know or remember anybody since I was very shy (I still have a slight problem with names and faces for some reason), I thought the blue shirt meant that I had ended up on the wrong team. Being a little unsure if this was the case, and worried that I might let my actual team mates down, I kept a very low profile on one of the wings, making sure to stay away from the ball at all times, so I wouldn't make anyone mad by putting the ball in the wrong goal, which could be either one.

Christer

When I was about 9, I saw the Saturday Wild World of Sports. I thought that if I tried hard, and ran fast enough I could perform the floor routine of a gymnist. After gathering my family in the living room for the performance of a lifetime, I started to run, and attempted my first flip. After landing flat on my back and not being able to breath, I realized that there might be alittle something more to doing this stuff, and then wondered how they could have let me try this.

KJ

Anon

When my wife was a kid, she used to watch the football results on telly with her dad every saturday afternoon.
Because the Scottish results came after the English ones, she thought that if you were relegated from the old 4th division, you had to go and play in the Scottish Premier league.

Stevie Mac

One year my soccer team was doing very well. We were facing another team and went into "sudden death". I was scaird out of my mind because I thought it ment if you missed, I would be killed instantly.

Neil

When I was little, there was always talk something on T.V. about sports or the Book of Records. They would talk about the guy who 'broke the record'. I always pictured people standing outside and smashing LPs on the ground, and never understood why that was so important.

Anon

One day, when is was a kid, at a big family reunion, i was looking at my cousin's cricket gear & naming all the equipment. e.g. Bat, pads, gloves etc, until i saw a small plastic curved thing which i picked up & proudly announced in front of my entire extended family, that this thing covers the nose & mouth, which i then did. To my complete surprise & horror, absolutely everyone cracked up laughing at me because it was in fact a "box" which protects the batsman's genitalia area getting hit by the ball during the game of cricket!

Mathew Cooper

When I was about 6 I wanted to be a professional baseball player, but I was very upset to see that they all chewed tobacco. I was very excited to discover that when you chewed on lots of tootsie rolls that it looked like you were chewing tobacco. I figured when I got to the major leagues I would fool them that way

Laci

I used to believe that American football was just men racing each other back and forth on a field and the numbered lines told them where to stop. I figured they threw the ball around to each other so they wouldn't get bored just running back and forth all day.

Carrie

I used to believe that certain babies were born with extremely huge shoulders.
These babies were sent to "training camp" (which is why you never saw them on the street as children and when they grew up the became professional football players.

Jane

I used to believe the 'autographs' of famous athletes on baseball bats and basketballs were real. I thought they must be very valuable and so you shouldn't use them.

queeneve

when I mentioned that (american) football fields looked so much bigger on TV, my dad told me that it was because professional football used 4-foot yards. I believed him until I was 16.. after all, there's a five-quart imperial gallon.

aaron

In hockey, they have awards given each year that are named after famous people, like the Conn Smythe trophy, the Norris trophy, the Vezina trophy... So, when a player would be penalized with a misconduct penalty, I thought it was actually a penalty named after someone named Miss Conduct.

Anon

I believed that the men jumping over hurdles in slow motion on TV must have practiced very hard to run so slowly. I practiced too but never got very good at it!

Bob Masse

To me, football (or actually, futbol) has always meant what is called soccer in the United States. When I first saw American Football at a fairly young age, I thought that players in that sport had gigantic muscles, though it turned out to be their shoulder pads.

Rafaela