Sorry for the long post, but I hope I can help answer your questions.
To put it briefly, like syztem said, you basically just seem like a casual player who looks at gaming simply as "is this game fun for me to play," which there is nothing wrong with. Replace all the gaming terms in the OP with football terms and it works the same way coming from someone who just doesn't understand competitve gaming. My mom doesn't understand why two guys who get into the boxing ring to try to knock each other out is considered so huge and loved by so many, but that's just because she's no into it, like you with competitive gaming I guess. MLG is no more far hardcore gamers than the NFL is for football fans. My family and I can have fun at a game even if we aren't huge fans. You're 100% that having a lot of skill doesn't make you hardcore. I suck completely at Starcraft, but when I see matches like Huk vs. Boxer or Bomber vs. Naniwa or MMA vs. MC, I'm blown away and am glued to my seat. I don't watch them to get tips for playing, just to enjoy the game. Or course there's always the chance that I learn things I wouldn't have otherwise while watching, but that's just a bonus for me.
Many people enjoy watching the best when it comes to most things. Do you go to a high school football game when you want to watch a really great game? Probably not; you check out the pros/top college teams because they're the best. To answer your question "are they trying to make this into a full blown sport?" In other parts of the world, it already is. Check out South Korea where their top Starcraft 2 players walk around and get bombarded with fans trying to get an autograph or a picture. But what is a sport really? It's really just some kind of skill-based game that people compete in. You probably comsider it to be more of a physical activity that requires you to run fast and/or beat the crap out of people, but IMO, the skills needed to play Starcraft at the highest level rivals the skills needed to play professional sports. Different kind of skills, sure, but they probably take just as much time and effort to master.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.291395-More-People-Watched-Major-League-Gaming-Online-Than-the-NFL-Draft
MLG Columbus, the second event this year, had 22.5 MILLION views during its three days. Since then, Anaheim, Raleigh, and Orlando all beat the record each even, and now Providence, the GRAND finals, is expected to smash the record again. For the grand finals at Providence, which is just about to end, the winner of SC2 will get $50,000. The top Halo teams gets $100,000. To put it briefly people care about this. Will it ever end up on ESPN? I don't think so, and I don't think it would be good if it did. Streaming online works so well for events like this that the money that would require to do something like wouldn't be worth it. It's not like you never see gaming on ESPN at all anyway, but being able to watch SC2, Halo, CoD (lol), and League of Legends and chat about it online is way better anyway. Actually, seeing it in person destroys watching the stream every single time, but not everyone can travel the country/world just to see events, so that's why the stream is so important.
As for the "cheesy commentator," how are they any more cheesy than Chris Berman on Monday Night Football? Some people would say that he's way too into football, but most Americans see that as okay since football is so popular. The commentators, arguably, make or break the matches, just like in televised sports. Think about watching a football game with crappy commentators. Maybe they don't have knowledge, or all they do is talk about what they see. The best commentators don't tell you what you can see with your own eyes. They know you're not stupid. They explain WHY one team did this thing instead of another, or explain some rule, or maybe give their predictions on what they expect to see. They also need to have the ability to make uninteresting things seem interesting. Imagine that the game on MOnday Night Football was between the Packers and Colts (best and worst teams in the league). Do the commentators go "Yeah well the Packers are obviously gonna kick the crap out of the Colts and there's no chance of anything else happen, so whatever." No, they point out certain interesting things that could happen, maybe one play on the team is doing really well, maybe one player is slipping in the ranks, got sick, etc. They need to make people care about something that otherwise would be uninteresting to watch, which is way harder than many people realize. This is no different at MLG. commentators are pretty much necessary.
And not sure why you put quote around "fans." Are they not fans because they follow something that you may not like/understand? People have a favorite poker player to root for, a favorite track and field star, etc., and when they do well, they cheer. Maybe they cheer simply because it was a good match, who knows? There's a whole business to competitive gaming that I think very few people know exists, but I'd recommend looking into competitive gaming/esports more if you enjoy video games and competition. Like Vari3ty said, I also play games for story and immersion (then again I prefer playing single player games), but I could sit down and watch Instinct play Warriors in the Halo Reach finals for hours and not be at all bored. It's certainly possible that you just don't enjoy it, which is fine, but I'm very sure competitive gaming is going nowhere but up.
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