Troy Polamalu once described football as "spiritual" and "poetry in motion." Tough sensor talk, for a pro football player.
I understand those statements to mean that a person feels an activity inspires and completes them - that the experience represents their own personal loftiest experiences. The external ideas don't relate as closely as the comparison of supposed internal experiences.
I think that competitive, rule-based systems are going to appeal to T. Everything that is mentioned about strategy and absorbing tons of detailed information and creating a system, are all T-based activities. The more physical or sensory the experience, the more that could mean ST, the more internal and cerebral, the more NT. I'm sure there are people who relate to sports in many different ways, but there are also activities that will tend to appeal to certain ways of thinking more than others. ST thinking would be quite strong in engineering, medicine, sports, programming, etc. These disciplines are all applied, and their success or failure is made certain and demonstrable in the concrete world. I'm sure NTs could operate well also in this areas. I suspect the main reason it is offensive to think that sports appeals somewhat more to Sensors is this underlying assumption that Sensor intelligence is less somehow. Sports can be one example of just how intuitive and inventive a concrete based system of thought can be.
In every discipline that a person absorbs every detail from every angle, whether it is sports, firefighting, programming, math, etc. a person develops intuition about that discipline because of their deep storehouse of knowledge. If that intuition is about how systems operate in the concrete world such as putting out a fire, or how the human body reacts, it would seem to align with this idea of "sensors". If their intuition is about a system that is intangible and truly abstract like theoretical physics perhaps, philosophy, etc, one that cannot be demonstrated on the field or chessboard, then the intuitive responses are based on abstract relationships.
A big problem is taking a binary view of concrete vs. abstract or Sensor vs. iNtuitive. As has been said we aren't one or the other, but each has a unique way these concepts interrelate. For some it starts with the concrete and extends into the abstract, and for others the reverse.