I am not into spectator sports at all, EXCEPT for football and golf, and specifically college football and more specifically Rutgers football. Conceptually, I hate the idea of it--it's dangerous, it's combative, it's competitive in a very brutish way. But because I know a little bit about the rules of the game from attending my EVERY high school football game, it's fun to follow, and it's fun to root for a favorite team (two of my sons graduated from Rutgers)--as Jane suggests, it probably appeals to some ancestral tribal thing in the amygdala of my brain.

AND, lets not forget that Rutgers/New Brunswick is the home of college football--first collegiate football game was played in New Brunswick vs. Princeton in 1879. Rutgers won (sorry, bae).

Finally, football is SO much more fun to watch than baseball. Baseball is SO boring.

ETA: In looking up the exact year of that first football game, I actually found this, from a Princeton publication. What I also found interesting in this article is that American football actually predates soccer. (Waiting for the pushback on that from you, Ishbel, but that's what it says)

First Intercollegiate Football Game
Until 1800 outdoor exercise for Princeton students usually took the form of walking, horseback riding, canoeing down the Millstone River, and hunting small game in the hills and fields nearby. By 1857, cricket, baseball, and football arose as popular sports on campus.

The first American intercollegiate football game was held between Princeton and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. on November 6, 1869. The game played was a form of association football, forerunner of later-day soccer. The 25 players from each college played in their street clothes, and the several hundred spectators stood around on the side or sat on a wooden fence. The Rutgers Targum reported that Princeton's first goal was made "by a well directed kick, from a gentleman whose name we don't know, but who did the best kicking on the Princeton side." The Targum is equally silent about the identity of the first wrong-way player in American football history, a Rutgers man "who, in his ardor, forgot which way he was kicking," and scored for Princeton instead of Rutgers.

Rutgers ended up winning the game 6 to 4. A week later, however, Princeton won the return match on its grounds, 8 to 0.

(Adapted from A Princeton Companion.)