Written by Dave Homsher on Monday, 25 February 2008 Category:Sports Hits:2913
What is a sport? Sports tie us together. Their fierce competitions entertain hundreds of millions around the world. They create feelings of brotherhood throughout cities, throughout regions, and sometimes even throughout entire countries. They also create amazing rivalries pitting Philadelphia against New York, Philadelphia against New Jersey, Philadelphia against Dallas, etc. (Yea, sure, your teams MIGHT have some good rivalries as well.) But, have you really thought about what sport actually IS? The dictionary definition:
SPORT
–noun
1. an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I find this definition to be totally inadequate. It allows room for such WEAKSAUCE activities as fishing and hunting to possibly be considered sports. Therefore, I propose a new, BETTER definition.
A sport shall contain all three of these items:
1. Ball
2. Athlete
3. Opponent
BALL
A sport has got to have some sort of ball. What game have you ever seen that was worth playing that didn’t have a ball? Track? Run, for the sole purpose of running faster than everyone else? Running is a waste of time unless you are running to an endzone or to a basket or around the bases. Swimming? Certainly a challenging activity, but shouldn’t a sport be fun. It seems that the sole purpose of swimming is to KILL yourself and your body for 1-2 minutes so you can STOP killing yourself at the end. NO WAY!! Give me a ball of some sort any day of the week. As far as I’m concerned, a ball doesn’t have to be a perfect sphere, so footballs and hockey pucks clearly apply.
ATHLETE
You have to be an athlete to play a sport. A sport has got to make you sweat through physical exertion. This does not mean that if you decide to play a game of pool in a SAUNA that it is a sport. Sweating because its 100 degrees outside or because you are that nervous guy who always sweats during office presentations does NOT make something a sport. For something to be a sport you need an athlete who is supremely skillful, while at the same time is pushing their physical limits.
OPPONENT
In a sport, there needs to be someone in direct competition with you. There has to be someone trying to directly stop you from doing what you want to do. For example, in football, the linebackers try to bring down LT before he can pick up a first down or score a touchdown. In basketball, Allen Iverson wants to shoot a layup. There is a defender trying to slow his path to the basket and block his shot. Thankfully, AI is much better than they are. SWISH!!
Listen if you don’t have a ball, an athlete, and an opponent, then YOU DO NOT HAVE A SPORT. PERIOD. With that in mind, here are some items which are definitely NOT sports:
NASCAR
Airline pilots go WAY faster than racecars and I don’t hear anyone claiming THAT’S a sport! Guess what homes? My car has to make BOTH right and left turns. That’s TWICE the number of directions that a racecar has to turn, I say that makes it TWICE as difficult. Some say you haven’t seen a big fat racecar driver, and that they are all athletes. Well, guess what? The ONLY reason there are no fat racecar drivers is because they have to climb in through the window of the car. I’d LOVE to see some great big WALRUS of a man trying to cram himself inside the window of a car. If driving to work isn’t a sport, than neither is those MORONS driving in a CIRCLE. WHO’S THE ATHLETE? IS IT THE CAR?? GIVE ME A BREAK!! NASCAR is a great big bowl of FAIL when it comes to being a sport.
Looks a lot like the highway I take to the office.
GOLF
I love golf. Golf is a fun GAME, but it’s not a sport. Listen, hippos like John Daly are not athletes. WALKING does not make something athletic, otherwise the elephants you see that walk to the breakfast truck at work would be considered athletes. Plus there’s no opponent whatsoever. I don’t see anyone trying to dive in front of Phil Mickelson’s tee shot to block it. Maybe golf might want to institute that rule only for Tiger, so that the other guys finally have a shot to beat him.
HORSE RACING
First off there’s no ball, but let’s not even go there. Who is the athlete?? THE EFFING HORSE is the athlete. The horses running around on freaking farms aren’t playing a damn sport. You know what, let’s rewrite rule #2 so that the athlete has to be HUMAN. Horses, cars, ducks, airplanes, pumas, and whatever other non-human things you can think of DON’T qualify.
Horses DO NOT count as athletes
FISHING
Fishing actually manages to FAIL ALL THREE categories. How can people think that something is a sport when it has ZERO of the categories covered? I know fishing requires some skill, but do you REALLY think the guy that won the Bassmaster Classic was actually a BETTER fisherman than the other guys? All that guy did was PARK HIS BOAT in a better spot!!
BOWLING
Well, it’s got a ball. And…well, that’s it. Certainly your beer buddies can’t be considered athletes. You’ve seen them and their 7.8 second 40 yard dash time. If they can actually be GOOD at something competitively for an extended period of time, then it CAN’T possibly be a sport. Besides, there’s no opponent whatsoever. If you threw the ball and a goalie tried to jump in front and block it, bowling might have a case. Otherwise, nope, bowling is NOT a sport.
CURLING
People get OLYMPIC MEDALS for this game. What a complete joke!! It’s glorified shuffleboard!!! I have nothing more to say about this atrocity.
Is this my mom sweeping her kitchen, or an Olympic event?
Now, that we’ve taken a look at just a few of the games too WEAKSAUCE to be considered sports, it’s time to consider a few of the games that actually ARE sports:
FOOTBALL
Football IS sport. Football embodies EVERYTHING that is sports. Think about it, everyone out there is an unbelievable athlete, everyone’s eyes are on the ball, and the defense tries to stop the offense via 250+ pound men leaping through the air with the intention of DESTROYING the person with the ball. FOOTBALL = SPORT.
If THIS is possible, then it's a sport
BASKETBALL
Obviously, basketball perfectly fits. You’ve got arguably the world’s greatest athletes trying to put the ball into the basket while their opponent tries feverishly to deny them.
BASEBALL
Ball, check. Athlete, check. Opponent, check.
HOCKEY
Think about it, hockey’s got a puck flying around at over a hundred miles per hour, athletes slamming each other into walls at high speeds, and goalies sprawling all over the ice to prevent teams from scoring.
TENNIS
Tennis takes some serious athleticism. Running around like that for 3 hours straight is a seriously grueling activity. And winning the game when Roger Federer is trying to defend against it is not the easiest thing ever attempted.
Slamball is amazing. When they started showing this on Spike TV, it was the new best thing on TV. Slamball is basketball on TRAMPOLINES, where you can tackle people like football. GREATEST. IDEA. EVER. Spike actually CANCELLED this? What were they THINKING?!?!
WALLEYBALL
Walleyball is like Volleyball, only you play it indoors on a racquetball court. There isn’t much better than SPIKING a ball off a side wall, right into your opponents head! AWESOME!
Sports are awesome. Sports are some of the greatest things ever invented, right up there with video games, high definition TV, Chuck Norris, and Philly cheesesteaks. Let’s not tarnish the things that truly kick ass with lesser games and competitions. Remember this simple equation, and there will be nothing but domination:
BALL+ATHLETE+OPPONENT = SPORT.
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Ball, opponent, and if you've ever tried to wield a five-foot long stick from the back of a galloping horse and hit a 5-inch ball before, you'll agree it takes athleticism. At least as much athleticism as "seventh-inning-stretch," "can-take-a-10-minute-nap-between-at-bats," "beer-gut-Babe-Ruth" baseball requires.
I'll also challenge you gymnastics. I'm sorry, but a sport that includes 14 year old girls who are in better physical condition than most football players has enough athletecism to make up for the lack of balls. Seriously, in what other sport is it commonplace and acceptable for a coach to ask you "did you do a giant?" and for your answer to be "I did three."
In fact, I'd go as far as to say as your definition of "sport" is, itself, WEAKSAUCE. Fuck, boxing isn't a sport? "Sport" should be defined, specifically, as the difference between dance and gymnastics. Sport is athletic ability wrought into a science, where every aspect of the sport is a measurable and testable aspect of your own physical ability, and the better your physical strength and skill, the more points you get. The harder you push your body, the better you are, and if you abuse your body your ability suffers.
In order to be called a sport, you cannot have people at the top of the game who smoke more than a pack a day. You cannot have people at the top of the game with beer guts.
Football is not a sport.
Baseball is not a sport.
Basketball is a sport.
Soccer is a sport.
Gymnastics is the manliest sport on this planet, and only the manliest people on the planet can be at the top of the game.
Yes, David Homsher, this 16-year old girl is manlier than Refrigerator Perry *ever* was:
What does smoking have to do with something being a sport? Though I feel that smoking is an epically retarded thing to do, I don't think that having "people at the top of the game who smoke more than a pack a day" should determine an activity a sport.
fishamaphone
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89.138.109.58
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2008-02-26 15:21:01
If you smoke more than a pack a day, you have impaired lung abilities, and you are breathing less efficiently. If you can still effectively play your "sport" on level with the best in the world without the 100% use of your lungs, it's not a damn sport.
mikeyp
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72.237.27.137
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2008-02-26 21:51:23
There are tons of unhealthy habits that people do, yet they are still able to perform at a high level.
If you really do believe what you say, then there are no sports at all. I guarantee you that there are people who play all of the sports mentioned above that have the lack of intelligence to smoke.
fishamaphone
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213.8.226.160
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2008-02-27 03:26:45
There's a reason I specified a pack a day. Less than that and there's a decent chance you won't notice the damage until you're past your prime anyway. But a pack a day immediately effects how much oxygen your body can process, and immediately decreases your level of play. At least in a real sport.
When you play a *real* sport and you make a mistake, you get penalized. Keeping your body in less than peak condition is a mistake.
Originally, I agreed on boxing, it is a sport. Then I thought, its more on an Art. Along with all fighting, and then gymnastics. I believe it is an art that takes extreme skill and physical shape, but I don't think you can compare physical shape from one sport to another. The sport dictates the physical shape. An O-Line men's job is to be unmovable. This is the skill base of that position. If it was as simple as being 300 lbs, then my two uncles would be all pros right now. I will never discredit that gymnastics requires an amazing physical ability and I believe many arts do. But my reason it is not a sport is because it is decided not by facts of the game, but rather opinions of judges.
fishamaphone
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213.8.226.160
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2008-02-27 02:02:03
An art is any medium whose primary purpose is to be visually appealing. To say that gymnastics, and even moreso boxing, is an art is an admission that you know nothing about either sport.
If you screw up a move when you're dancing, but you make it look good, nobody knows the difference and you might even get a more positive reaction. If you screw something up in gymnastics, even if the end result looks better, you are penalized. If you screw something up in boxing, you are penalized immediately in the form of the other guy's fist. It is science. If you knew anything about the scoring of either sport, you'd know that the judges are bound by a set of rules. They don't make opinions. A disgusting insinuation. There are rules for the value of every move. In boxing, it is how many hits, and where. In gymnastics, every single action you take has a specific point value, and good judges know *precisely* that value. Differences in score generally lie in what the judge sees. If one judge underscores one gymnast, chances are they will underscore *every* gymnast that day.
Like I said, the art correspondent of gymnastics is dance. Interesting thing about martial arts is that the "art" part refers to everything *outside* the ring. Everything in the ring is combat. You ever learn a Su-Bahk-Do form? Has that ever helped you in actual combat? it's art. Sport is the scientific distillation of art.
In fact, in order to be a sport, I'd say you have to have an art equivalent.
Look at the sports I singled out above: basketball is the scientific distillation of juggling. Soccer is the scientific distillation of footbagging (which you probably know as "hacky-sack".
What's the art equivalent of football? War? War is a science too, and any contest from monkey knife fights to sidewalk marbles can say the same anyway. What's the art equivalent of baseball? Baseball is no more a sport than golf is. No basis in human behavior, just random rules...
That's a good point by Mark. If judges decide the winner, it can't be a sport. The winner needs to be decided on the field. Now I know that a bad call from a ref might impact a game (see: Georgetown/Villanova a few weeks ago) but those moments when a ref decides things are few and far between.
Bill S
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129.25.31.143
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2008-02-27 08:38:36
I agree with all except for the requirement of a ball (of course, I'm slightly biased since I was a swimmer and a runner). Racing (in the pool, on a track, or on a bike) IS the fun of the sport--thats the beauty of an individual sport. You don't get to rely on teammates or judges/refs to bail you out; all the glory is yours if you win, and the failure is yous if you don't.
Of course, this is coming from someone who defines the term 'Fish out of water' when trying to play ball sports on land...
YoMomma
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192.91.172.36
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2008-02-28 08:39:14
Baseball never has been and never will be a sport. I think we can all agree on that.
Andrew
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63.240.143.78
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2008-02-28 15:25:05
Came in here to say basically the same thing as fishamaphone. Boxing is a sport, and the amount of athleticism required to partake in that sport is several fold more difficult than some of the sports listed here.
After all, the (once) great James Toney said, "You play football. You play basketball. You don't play boxing."
tecmo god
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71.225.70.5
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2008-03-01 21:47:34
Haven't I heard this rant like 6 years ago in Easton, and not the ghetto city. You make an interesting point...again, however I seriously question baseball as a sport given your criteria. Half those guys aren't athletes. John Kruk, 'nuff said. I could also argue other activities being sports but I got better things to do with my time. Time to go run some Okoye off tackle plays.
Liz
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67.83.106.245
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2008-03-02 21:09:53
So does the bow ball on a crew shell count? You cannot deny crew status as a legitimate sport. Besides, what sport allows you to call someone a cox?
Tara
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205.247.229.99
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2008-03-03 07:28:23
So under this definition if Tom Brady and say Lance Armstrong (both athletes) play bocce together, thats a sport...
This definition is just SLIGHTLY flawed.
Running, swimming not sports.... have you ever tried the 3000m steeplechase?
thewayoudidonce
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Oh no you didn't
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153.104.29.121
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2008-03-04 08:42:45
So I have to admit, you started by bashing the most time honored sport of all time, much to my personal chagrin. Track and field had its start in Greece and was the first sport and competition ever created. The heart of this competition is where all of your beloved sports developed from. I think track should be considered a sport and that this discrepancy reveals a MAJOR flaw your first definition. I suggest revising definition 1 from being "ball" to "object of competition". Here is why:
1. You no longer have to make something about how a hockey puck is a ball. C'mon, we all know better...
2. According to your definition, a shot put thrower is an athlete and shot put is a sport. However, javelin and discus (which are identical to shot put) are not sports. The whole concept of ball is too limiting and incorrect.
3. Like I said before, track is a sport. It does not have a ball, but it has a clear object of competition; and that is time. You have an athlete competing against other athletes, running around a track with the object being time.
Therefore, get rid of definition 1 or revise it, before it shoots you in the foot
Crawford
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You are so off base
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74.203.165.30
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2008-08-22 12:07:08
Youare so off base. You seem to have confussed the word sport with game.
The way I see it is:
Sports are generally individual, where the physical capabilities of the competitor are the sole or primary determiner of the outcome.
Games are between 2 players/teams based on score (football, handball, chess, pool etc) A game can not take place if there is no competitor. For example basketball can only be played when there are two or more people.
This does not mean that basketball is to an athletic competition, only that it can not truly be help as a sport.
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