I liked it when we were actually playing and disliked it when the mean kids seemed to use it as an excuse to pick on the unpopular kids and hated it when I was the unpopular kid being picked on... though even then I found it somewhat satisfying that I was always a lot harder to knock out of the game than people expected.

I think it kind of depended on the gym teacher - we had some who were so completely ineffectual and/or assholish that they didn't care if the entire thing degenerated into a beatdown, and others who actually ran it like any other game/sport.