The following are unequivocally sports. I have never heard a person, sober or drunk, claim that they aren't: Football, baseball, hockey, soccer, rugby, boxing, tennis, basketball, and lacrosse. There are many more sports that can fit this list, but this'll do for now. What do these have in common? Well, they all require strength, speed, endurance, finesse and quickness. I personally have played all these except for rugby and boxing, although I have been in a fight, it lasted three seconds, I was 8, and your dad typically doesn't kick your ass and dry your tears after a round of boxing.
So what is a sport? Is it an activity that relies on athletic ability? Is poker a sport? Is hunting a sport? We often use the phrase, "He hunts for sport", so you would assume it is. But somehow, in our minds, sports are a higher level of athletic activity. Poker is not a sport. Neither are darts. Horse racing is, but only for the horse, according to most people. Those same people say that auto racing would be a sport if the car was alive (which to some enthusiasts, it is a living breathing machine.) I supposed whenever I claim that such and such isn't a sport, the first argument back at me is some form of "It's incredibly hard and you couldn't do it." So does being hard make something a sport?
Here is my personal definition of a sport. Many people dispute it, argue it, and call me names like idiot, but it's the one I've crafted over the years.
1) Requires physical endurance, strength, quickness, finesse, and/or speed.
2) The outcome of the contest is determined by an objective measuring system.
3) The death of humans isn't the objective.
The reason for the third is that in these debates, someone in their brilliance asks if war is a sport, as if going to the complete extreme invalidates the entire argument. No, war is not a sport. People die in war, and that seems to be the objective in some form or fashion. No one in their right mind would think killing a guy is a sport. Let's be adults. By the definitions I've outlined, the following would be considered sports: darts, pool, chess, and dodgeball. The following would not: Diving, cheerleading, gymnastics, boxing, and driving a car. The definitions clearly need some work. The problems are that a) somehow being a sport makes it better and more cool than being an activity or a game. It validates it to a higher level, like somehow football is more intense, more manly, than a game like poker; and b) everyone wants their activity to be validated with the sports label. No one will dispute that boxing is a sport, but unless there's a knockout, the outcome is determined by judges who tally points based on hits. And while that sounds objective, if you've ever seen the 1988 gold medal fight between Roy Jones Jr. and Park Si-Hun you'll know that judges aren't objective. Of course, by that notion, you could say that anything from football to basketball aren't sports because referees are biased.
Here's the thing. Everyone instinctively knows what a sport is. But no one can actually define it. It's like the Stewart definition of obscene. "I know it when I see it." If football a sport? Is boxing? Yes. No sane person would dispute this. The shady areas seem to always fall to the same three or four activities. Golf, auto racing, and those weird things you only watch every four years at the Olympics, like air rifle shooting and gymnastics. Are these things incredibly difficult? Yes. Try playing a round of golf and hit the fairway consistently. If you are off by a fraction of an inch on any of your mechanics, your ball will fly into the trees. Driving a car at 180 mph, with the hand-eye-foot coordination and the reflexes necessary, in the heat of the car, is incredibly difficult. Gymnastics, air rifle shooting, curling (well, maybe not curling), these are things I couldn't hope to do at a world class level, or even a competitive one. I used to be able to do a hand stand, but now I can barely do a pushup (Note to female readers, I can do many many many pushups). But are any of these sports? I'm not sure. I used to vehemently fight against gymnastics. It was determined by judges, it was like dancing, incredibly hard, athletic, but determined in a subjective manner. Then I relented after reading about the scoring system. There were set deductions and the judges merely determined if it was a tenth deduction big step or a quarter point big step. Then, like the sick bastards they are, the sports gods taunted me into watching the uneven bars performance, see the top two gymnasts tie, and have the home team gymnast win by a tie breaker that seems half a step ahead of "heads or tails." So is gymnastics a sport? I don't know.
All this to say, it's a debate that I hear every two years. And there never seems to be an answer because there is no definition. I suppose if we really need to set a rule of a sport, we should go to the man's man, Ernest Hemmingway, who once said, "There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering. Everything else is a game."
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