This article (http://www.pnas.org/content/105/36/13269.full.pdf+html?sid=b121ff29-f5f3-4a51-ba75-ea311f58d45f) from the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" reports a study of hockey players, serious hockey fans, and non-fans and purports to "provide evidence that specialized (sports) motor experience enhances action-related language understanding by recruitment of left dorsal lateral premotor cortex, a region normally devoted to higher-level action selection and implementation — even when there is no intention to perform a real action." In other words, watching a hockey game has the same effect on your brain as playing it (minus the concussions, I suppose).