What is Sport?
Being someone who follows a number of sports, I hear (okay, fine, I think I hear) numerous arguments between people who can't decide on what a "sport" is. Merriam Webster OnLine defined "sport" in several inexplicably useless ways, so as such, dictionary.com defines it as "physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively". This immediately eliminates Golf as a sport. If you think that standing, moving your torso once every five minutes, and then walking a few hundred yards is a sport, you might be a pig, a cripple, or a sitting Vice President.
In my mind, what defines something as a "sport" is being a rigorously physical, competetive activity governed by a set of rules which allow your opponent to affect your performance. Since "rigorously physical" is subjective, I have to take that term out of my definition (in reality, it was just a scheme to eliminate Baseball as a sport, but alas, I have to relent and accept Baseball's admission as a "sport"). In other words, if your opponents in Golf stood five yards in front of you with metal shields, trying to block your drive, Golf would be a sport.
Additionally, the type of injuries that occur in a competetive game are a good indicator of whether or not the game is a sport. Once again, this eliminates Golf, as the only truly troublesome injury anyone ever got related to the play of Golf was cirrhosis of the liver (live viewers hit on the head with balls and flying clubs don't count). Water polo, on the other hand, despite not being very exciting to look at, is a good example of how injuries can indicate whether or not something's a sport, as the injuries its players get range from broken noses to, well, death by drowning. When looking at the types of injuries that polo (the kind played on horseback on dry or sometimes dewy land) players get, it's probably a safe bet that it's a sport on account of all the broken necks. As for football, virtually everything indicates that football is a sport, from the fiercly competative play often described as a "battle" to the broken necks and the legs split like toothpicks (I'm lookin' at you, Theisman!).
Virtually no form of racing is a sport because you typically aren't allowed to compromise your opponent's position in anyway other then passing them (or cutting them off, but even then, it can't be too sudden; we wouldn't want these assholes to have to touch their brakes). Hell, in NASCAR you can't even bump into the asshole or spin him out. However, there are, in theory, forms of racing that would be considered sport. Mario Kart, for instance, would be a sport if it were real, since you can shoot shells and what have you at your opponents to knock them off the course, sometimes into lava or, more entertainly, an endless void.
ESPN, which stands for the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (despite having long ago having started showing non-entertaining non-sports), was promoting the "World Series Of Darts" last summer. Darts is not a sport. Nothing that you have to get drunk in order to get excited about doing is a sport. I don't care if your opponent has to stand in front of the dartboard and you have to attempt to throw the dart through or around him. It's not a God damn sport. As for the "World Series Of Poker" (which you know gives ESPN a hard-on because it literally requires them to do almost no work and devise no thoughtful analysis regarding it), well, if you think Poker is a sport on any level, you are an idiot. I don't mean your normal drink-the-stuff-under-the-sink idiot, although I am impressed you've survived long enough to read this. I mean a full-fledged, non-voting, neo-conversvative, Golf fan IDIOT.
As for hunting, well, this is a bit more complicated. Hunting is a sport in certain circumstances. If you're going toe-to-toe with an animal who can move eight times faster and quieter then you (SEE: Cougar) armed only with a spear and a cross, it's a sport. On the other hand, if you're hunting birds with anything that has a scope on it, you're a jackass (and this also isn't a sport because you have to be drunk to want to shoot at birds, and you have to be even drunker to need a scope to shoot at them). As for hunting Cougars and other large, magician-eating felines, while a firearm does level the playing field, certain firearms tip the scales grossly in your favor (SEE: the Smith & Wesson Model 500 Revolver*) by giving you five quick shots that can be easily reloaded. The only appropriate gun for hunting creatures that might as well have the ability to teleport is a double-barreled, 12-gauge shotgun, the kind that takes you as long to reload as it takes the beast you're engaging in a duel with to eat a Gazelle (HINT: Keep lots of spare Gazelle on-hand to cut loose as a distraction in case you need to reload). Still and still, a true sportsman uses nothing more then a crossbow.
As a public service, I will be keeping a running log of what, by my moral standards, are and aren't sports, which can be found at the following link: [link not yet available]
*I do not have any particular gripes with the Model 500 Revolver--In fact, it occurs to me as a fantastic weapon to kill people of terrorist descent with (see: that ugly Park Avenue bitch who got a modeling gig solely by being bin Laden's neice)--I just don't think it's appropriate for hunting large wild life with, which Smith & Wesson claimed it was designed for.
In my mind, what defines something as a "sport" is being a rigorously physical, competetive activity governed by a set of rules which allow your opponent to affect your performance. Since "rigorously physical" is subjective, I have to take that term out of my definition (in reality, it was just a scheme to eliminate Baseball as a sport, but alas, I have to relent and accept Baseball's admission as a "sport"). In other words, if your opponents in Golf stood five yards in front of you with metal shields, trying to block your drive, Golf would be a sport.
Additionally, the type of injuries that occur in a competetive game are a good indicator of whether or not the game is a sport. Once again, this eliminates Golf, as the only truly troublesome injury anyone ever got related to the play of Golf was cirrhosis of the liver (live viewers hit on the head with balls and flying clubs don't count). Water polo, on the other hand, despite not being very exciting to look at, is a good example of how injuries can indicate whether or not something's a sport, as the injuries its players get range from broken noses to, well, death by drowning. When looking at the types of injuries that polo (the kind played on horseback on dry or sometimes dewy land) players get, it's probably a safe bet that it's a sport on account of all the broken necks. As for football, virtually everything indicates that football is a sport, from the fiercly competative play often described as a "battle" to the broken necks and the legs split like toothpicks (I'm lookin' at you, Theisman!).
Virtually no form of racing is a sport because you typically aren't allowed to compromise your opponent's position in anyway other then passing them (or cutting them off, but even then, it can't be too sudden; we wouldn't want these assholes to have to touch their brakes). Hell, in NASCAR you can't even bump into the asshole or spin him out. However, there are, in theory, forms of racing that would be considered sport. Mario Kart, for instance, would be a sport if it were real, since you can shoot shells and what have you at your opponents to knock them off the course, sometimes into lava or, more entertainly, an endless void.
ESPN, which stands for the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (despite having long ago having started showing non-entertaining non-sports), was promoting the "World Series Of Darts" last summer. Darts is not a sport. Nothing that you have to get drunk in order to get excited about doing is a sport. I don't care if your opponent has to stand in front of the dartboard and you have to attempt to throw the dart through or around him. It's not a God damn sport. As for the "World Series Of Poker" (which you know gives ESPN a hard-on because it literally requires them to do almost no work and devise no thoughtful analysis regarding it), well, if you think Poker is a sport on any level, you are an idiot. I don't mean your normal drink-the-stuff-under-the-sink idiot, although I am impressed you've survived long enough to read this. I mean a full-fledged, non-voting, neo-conversvative, Golf fan IDIOT.
As for hunting, well, this is a bit more complicated. Hunting is a sport in certain circumstances. If you're going toe-to-toe with an animal who can move eight times faster and quieter then you (SEE: Cougar) armed only with a spear and a cross, it's a sport. On the other hand, if you're hunting birds with anything that has a scope on it, you're a jackass (and this also isn't a sport because you have to be drunk to want to shoot at birds, and you have to be even drunker to need a scope to shoot at them). As for hunting Cougars and other large, magician-eating felines, while a firearm does level the playing field, certain firearms tip the scales grossly in your favor (SEE: the Smith & Wesson Model 500 Revolver*) by giving you five quick shots that can be easily reloaded. The only appropriate gun for hunting creatures that might as well have the ability to teleport is a double-barreled, 12-gauge shotgun, the kind that takes you as long to reload as it takes the beast you're engaging in a duel with to eat a Gazelle (HINT: Keep lots of spare Gazelle on-hand to cut loose as a distraction in case you need to reload). Still and still, a true sportsman uses nothing more then a crossbow.
As a public service, I will be keeping a running log of what, by my moral standards, are and aren't sports, which can be found at the following link: [link not yet available]
*I do not have any particular gripes with the Model 500 Revolver--In fact, it occurs to me as a fantastic weapon to kill people of terrorist descent with (see: that ugly Park Avenue bitch who got a modeling gig solely by being bin Laden's neice)--I just don't think it's appropriate for hunting large wild life with, which Smith & Wesson claimed it was designed for.
posted by Ecksem Diem at Sunday, May 06, 2007
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