I think even among those who don't necessarily care for sports, calling them 'sports-hating snobs' is often at odds with reality.
I grew up in an academic family. My parents were at the top of their respective fields, and their work, to them was as much a labor of love as it was anything else. I found that really very few things competed in their eyes with the fun/enjoyment of doing their job. Sports didn't really make that cut, but pretty much nothing but family made that cut. Their friends (and colleagues) seemed to be similar.
It was not so much about "Eew sports" as it was "Do I want to watch sports? Or would I rather read a book?" and "Read a book" won 99.99% of the time.
That being said, I did see a lot of disdain for sports among some of the more intellectual students at my university.
I'd be willing to bet that who acts like a sports-hating-snob can be predicted by simple signalling theory: professors/academics are unlikely to have their 'intellectual credentials/worthiness' questioned. They usually wouldn't need to signal "Disdain for sports" as a way to differentiate themselves from the non-intellectual working class. Being interested in sports also probably doesn't have any potential impact on other's perception of them, but probably doesn't benefit them particularly either--so you'd see academics with an interest in sports and academics who just don't really care, but you probably wouldn't see lots of academics decrying sports. (Outside of the critiques you'd expect of the NFL/NBA/FIFA/etc.--probably focused on the organizational ethics rather than the idea of sports as inherently bad.) On the other hand, in the case of students or middle class, non-professorial individuals, the differentiation between them and the working class is less immediately obvious to them and their peers, particularly on the things that someone aspiring to appear 'intellectual' would care about. (I think this also includes people in tech.) For them, decrying sports signals that they are decidedly not working class/non-intellectual, and alleviates the risk of being identified as such.
Your signalling theory misses out the extent to which it seems to be okay to signal disdain for 'intellectual' interests like art and culture.
Bottom line for me is that no one has ever had to worry about getting beaten up by a stadium full of Mozart fans, or humiliated in high school by a feral gang of science nerds.
I think hatred on reddit is a complicated mess of legitimately bizarre people being given a forum for the first time, trolls, signalling, and groupthink, depending heavily on the topic and subreddit.
Signalling of social and political grouping is particularly prevalent and obvious on the internet because you can't rely on extrinsic or physical factors to demonstrate your social groupings. In the real world someone can rely on their appearance to telegraph a lot of things--clothing and grooming choices alone can hint at sexuality, politics, social class, and a variety of other things, to say nothing of existing social structures and bonds (who you surround yourself with also telegraphs a lot). On the internet, you either need to explicitly say these things ("I'm not straight", or "I came from a well off family" or "I'm a conservative") or signal them somehow, and there are areas where it's less acceptable to overtly announce your membership in a group, so implying it through general biwords for it is socially necessary. ("I'm filthy rich" or "I'm really, really smart and intellectual" or even "I'm really, really, really ridiculously good looking" all likely fall under that category. I think that generally the more desirable the category, the more it requires either actually costly signals--e.x. displaying expensive artwork in your home or donating lots of money in the case of wealth--to do 'acceptably'.)
You see some of it on HN, too, although I think it's generally much less accepted to negatively signal here--but especially in the more social-justice-y threads, you see a lot of signalling of people picking sides going in both directions, because that's something that HN doesn't really have any sort of unity on but individuals here feel strongly about. In this thread there was a perhaps unsurprising backlash against the author (usually backed up with some logic--which is thankfully required by the etiquette here) about why the posters were justified in their active dislike of sports.
In my experience most social signaling/biwording is fairly well summed up by the basic theory of "You will only expend effort signaling if there's (a) a chance you'll be mistaken for someone in a group you don't want to be mistaken as, and (b) there's a chance you'll be seen as being in the group you want to be in because of it."
I grew up in an academic family. My parents were at the top of their respective fields, and their work, to them was as much a labor of love as it was anything else. I found that really very few things competed in their eyes with the fun/enjoyment of doing their job. Sports didn't really make that cut, but pretty much nothing but family made that cut. Their friends (and colleagues) seemed to be similar.
It was not so much about "Eew sports" as it was "Do I want to watch sports? Or would I rather read a book?" and "Read a book" won 99.99% of the time.
That being said, I did see a lot of disdain for sports among some of the more intellectual students at my university.
I'd be willing to bet that who acts like a sports-hating-snob can be predicted by simple signalling theory: professors/academics are unlikely to have their 'intellectual credentials/worthiness' questioned. They usually wouldn't need to signal "Disdain for sports" as a way to differentiate themselves from the non-intellectual working class. Being interested in sports also probably doesn't have any potential impact on other's perception of them, but probably doesn't benefit them particularly either--so you'd see academics with an interest in sports and academics who just don't really care, but you probably wouldn't see lots of academics decrying sports. (Outside of the critiques you'd expect of the NFL/NBA/FIFA/etc.--probably focused on the organizational ethics rather than the idea of sports as inherently bad.) On the other hand, in the case of students or middle class, non-professorial individuals, the differentiation between them and the working class is less immediately obvious to them and their peers, particularly on the things that someone aspiring to appear 'intellectual' would care about. (I think this also includes people in tech.) For them, decrying sports signals that they are decidedly not working class/non-intellectual, and alleviates the risk of being identified as such.