What makes a sport a sport?

[nicodemus]

My coworkers and I have been arguing about what makes a sport a sport recently. The discussions often get heated but as always I am right.

Sports:
Soccer
Football
Basketball
Tennis
Volleyball
Sprinting/long distance running
boxing

non-sports:
golf - I shouldn't even have to explain this one, but I will. I find golf to be skillful, but non-athletic to require success, you can be an old man, and still really good.

baseball - this is the one that going to stir up the biggest storm, but I will stick to my decision. First of all, anything you can eat and chew tobacco while playing and still do well in couldn't possibly be a sport. I'm not saying that there aren't athletic folks playing baseball, but it is a waste of athleticism. John Kruk said it best when talking a reporter about his "training" habits of smoking, eating a lot, "Lady, I'm not an athelete, I'm a baseball player." Not only that, but each player has 9 people in the starting line up. However, there is a maximum of 13 people playing at anyone time. That leaves at least 27.8% of the starting lineups sitting down at anyone time. You can have 44.4% sitting at anyone time. Ridiculous. Don't even get me started on the designated hitter crap either.

horse racing, horse jumping, hunting, fishing, etc. If it involves animals, it isn't a sport, I'm sure they would rather not be playing your silly game.

anything judged - ice skating, diving, gymnastics (while these things require athleticism, there is too much arbitrary stuff involved to decide who the winner is.)

Auto racing - takes skill, takes stamina sure, but it involves machines and that just takes the sport out of it.

I did come to a semi-agreement with one guy. He says a sport is anything that involves head to head competition along with offense and defense. I agree excepting the case of baseball and most forms of racing involving the body.

There are tons of others I could add to both lists, but this should be enough to kick start conversation.

[skyforge]

Better to start with definitions rather than uninformed prejudices.

athlete: a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, coordination, stamina or strength.

sport: an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature.

(source: Random House Websters College Dictionary)
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athlete: a person trained in exercises, games, or contests requiring physical strength, skill, stamina, speed, etc.

sport: 1. any activity or experience that gives enjoyment or recreation; pastime; diversion 2. such an activity, especially when competetive, requiring more or less vigorous bodily exertion and carried on, sometimes as a profession, according to some traditional form or set of rules, whether outdoors as football, golf, etc., or indoors as basketball, bowling, etc.

(source: Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition)
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Anyone who thinks this sort of thing is worthy of discussion might be interested in this site: http://www.csh.rit.edu/~wxs/images/humor/youare.swf

I am truly sorry about that; I just had to get it out of my system.


__________________
"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatsoever that it is not utterly absurd." Bertrand Russell

[Khansingh]

A sport, in my opinion, is any event in which two or more parties attempt to accumulate a point total within a given period of time or course of events while simultaneously impeding one another from doing likewise. That's the critical test, offense and defense. That includes: baseball, basketball, cricket, football, hockey, soccer, etc. It excludes: track and field, golf, target shooting, running, swimming, bicycling, figure skating, ice dancing, gymnastics, weight lifting, etc. Events such as those, wherein you are implicitly barred from even attempting to prevent someone from beating you, are simply tests of excellence. "Anything you can do, I can do better." To those who criticize baseball players as being unathletic, name me one other activity in sport more difficult than hitting a pitched ball with a bat for average. Baseball may not necessarily engage athleticism, but it requires more skill than virtually every other sport. On the other hand, the best ballplayers are almost unerringly excellent athletes. Someone once raised this ridiculous statistic that there's only six actual minutes of action in a baseball game. By that same logic, there's only four minutes of action in soccer. Those four minutes when the ball is played at the goal. Of course that's ludicrous.

[nicodemus]

Originally posted by Khansingh
To those who criticize baseball players as being unathletic, name me one other activity in sport more difficult than hitting a pitched ball with a bat for average.

I would think considering the soccer scores are much lower than baseball scores that scoring goals in soccer is much more difficult than getting hits in baseball. We are all accustomed to 1-0 and 2-1 scores in soccer. There are many more hits than that in baseball. I would think most strikers average of goals per shot would be something much lower than 30% (batting .300). I could be wrong, but I would think their average would be lower.

Going under par in golf is ludicrously difficult too, but that doesn't make it a sport because its difficult. If that were the case then chess and rocket science are sports too.

[timmy409]

if it has a ball its a sport

[skipshady]

Originally posted by timmy409
if it has a ball its a sport Like pinball or writing with a ball point pen?

[Jacen McCullough]

Originally posted by timmy409
if it has a ball its a sport


Then Alphonso Soriano would be two sports while John Kruk is only one sport?:) All kidding aside, Baseball is a sport. A sport is anything that combines skill and athleticism in a competitive nature. Yeah, some baseball players are fat pigs who are only there because they do one thing (pitch, hit) extremely well. Look at it from another perspective though. Is Ariel Graziani any help on defense? Nope, but he's a great goal poacher. Will Brandon Prideux score alot of goals? Not likely, but he's great on defense. Then you have midfielders, who are good at both offense and defense. It's exactly like baseball, just shorter and with more running.


I tend to split "sports" into three categories: sports, games and damned if I know.

A sport would be something like football, baseball, soccer, basketball tennis and the like.

Games are things that require skill, but not necessarily athleticism. Golf, bowling and curling (to throw a bone to our Canadian posters:)) are good examples.

In the damned if I know category go all events involving animals and auto racing of any kind. That having been said, I have a simple plan to turn horse racing into a sport. At the halfway point, the horse and the jockey switch positions, with the jockey carrying the horse down the stretch.

JMac

[Boro_lad]

i think sport is defined as a competative game.....

this makes games like snooker sport.
maybe a flawed explanation but it is correct.....

things like going to the gym a lesuire not sport.... etc...

[otterulz]

Originally posted by nicodemus

non-sports:

baseball - this is the one that going to stir up the biggest storm, but I will stick to my decision. First of all, anything you can eat and chew tobacco while playing and still do well in couldn't possibly be a sport. I'm not saying that there aren't athletic folks playing baseball, but it is a waste of athleticism. John Kruk said it best when talking a reporter about his "training" habits of smoking, eating a lot, "Lady, I'm not an athelete, I'm a baseball player." Not only that, but each player has 9 people in the starting line up. However, there is a maximum of 13 people playing at anyone time. That leaves at least 27.8% of the starting lineups sitting down at anyone time. You can have 44.4% sitting at anyone time. Ridiculous. Don't even get me started on the designated hitter crap either.


Alright, you try to be one of those 44.4% sitting in the Big Leagues. You left hockey off the list of sports. My opinion, hockey might be one of the hardest sports. You're on skates first of all. Plus you have to handle the puck with your stick. Not to mention you have some angry guys looking to paste you into the boards.

[nicodemus]

Originally posted by otterulz


Alright, you try to be one of those 44.4% sitting in the Big Leagues. You left hockey off the list of sports. My opinion, hockey might be one of the hardest sports. You're on skates first of all. Plus you have to handle the puck with your stick. Not to mention you have some angry guys looking to paste you into the boards.

I had totally forgotten about hockey...which is DEFINATELY a sport. Hockey doesn't really come on my radar too often though. I live in Alabama where it rarely ever gets cold enough for ice to be naturally made, so we don't really like cold weather sports.

[CrewStadium227]

Originally posted by Khansingh
A sport, in my opinion, is any event in which two or more parties attempt to accumulate a point total within a given period of time or course of events while simultaneously impeding one another from doing likewise.
Chess?

Originally posted by Khansingh

Someone once raised this ridiculous statistic that there's only six actual minutes of action in a baseball game. By that same logic, there's only four minutes of action in soccer. Those four minutes when the ball is played at the goal. Of course that's ludicrous.
The ball is "In Play" for 90 minutes in soccer, so I'd call that 90 minutes of action. In American football, the clock runs when the ball is not in play. It works out to about 10 minutes of actual "action" in American football. In baseball, there's never any action.