sport

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

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

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

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

I assumed that if a football player was hurt badly enough to have to leave the game, their team would get to win automatically--it seemed only fair.

Anon

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

Once told by my sports-loving father that football games were filmed from a blimp, I believed that the games were actually played INSIDE a blimp! I used to scan the skies for stadium-sized blimps, wondering why I never saw any...

Tabby

I used to think that running cross-country meant you ran across the entire nation!

Anon

I used to believe that the list of retired numbers displayed in baseball stadiums was actually the stadium's telephone number

Andrew

When I was little, my dad told me that football was the game of god(he didn't mean it ,he just loved football).For years after ward I thought the winners went to heaven and the losers went to hell.

Harrison

My sister used to think that the "Best and Fairest" award in Australian Football (ie: the best player of the season) was awarded to the player with the blondest hair.

Hayley

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 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

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 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 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

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

In a game of tennis, when the umpire announced the score as Deuce, I used to think that he/she was telling the players that it was break time and they were welcome to some "Juice" to drink!

Anon

whenever we watched football on tv i used to think that the abbreviation "og" [own goal] was some wierd Scandanavian surname and one day i was at the house of this boy i really liked with his mates and football was on and the text said "Tanner og" and i said look he is another of that bloody og clan, they all laughed thinking it was a joke and so
nobody explained it to me until i moved in with my last partner and he never let me live it down - in other words i didnt know og meant own goal until i was - wait for it - 26 years old.
by then i even understood the offside rule!!!!!!!!

chrissydontsurf

When I was really little and watching the Olympics opening cerimonies (sp?) for the first time, my mother explained to me that flame had been carried by an athlete on all continents. I pictured some poor runner carrying the torch all the way across his or her continent, and also thought they had to use foot-powered paddle-boats (like the kind we rented at City Park Lake) to get it across the oceans. It never occured to me to wonder how they ever started the the Olympics on time. I thought that was why it was only every 4 years.

Still not an athlete