For context, he was talking about all of the time he spent on the road during his career and how many nights in hotel rooms as he traveled to away games. He stated that during the season was just a grind - and the players were very wrapped up in the day to day stuff of going on to the degree that they were pretty oblivious to a lot of stuff going on in the world.

And then when he retired, it was shocking to him how many people he ran in to who didn't watch or care about football at all. Shocking because it had been his whole world and drove everything he did every day.

Not sure why this came to mind when reading your post - other than to notice that even the millions who ARE watching all of these sports are a fraction of the population as a whole.