Sport vs. Not A Sport – Debate Over

For many years I’ve heard friends, family, and coworkers discuss whether certain events are sports or not. In the days where ESPN airs the National Spelling Bee, it’s not too surprising to hear. Although I may make plenty of people angry, I’ve made a 100% solid way to make the classification. But first, we must distinguish that even though all things may not be “sports,” it doesn’t make them any less athletically challenging or require any less skill. We also have to dethrone the term “sport” as some form of elitist nomenclature that only the true champions can use, because there are gonna be plenty of duds in the sport heading. In short, I’ve created two crystal clear categories and one relatively hazy one. SPORT, COMPETITION, and GAME.

A SPORT is an event in which there is a clear winner by some feat of athletic skill. Whether by time, points scored, or distance, there is an undisputed champion. In the 100 Meter Hurdles, whoever crosses the finish line first wins. In football, whoever scores more points than the other team wins. In shot-put, whoever throws the further distance is claimed the victor. No questions, just a winner and a loser. The only problem with this form of judgment is that it leaves room for things like chess, but the amendment to the rule is that it requires some athletic skill, leaving events like chess, out in the cold.

One of the usual suspects of this debate is cheerleading. To me, this clearly falls under the category of COMPETITION. A competition is where the winner of said event is determined by an objective ruling, in other words, a score given by a judge. Placing competitions, like cheerleading in the red zone. The unfortunate part of deeming these contests outside the realm of “sport,” is the fact that it leaves out several items that have been deemed “sports” for years, including several with Olympic stature. The major players are the events like figure skating, gymnastics, and diving. And here’s a good example that shows I’m not biased against “girly” sports, snowboarding, skateboarding, and BMX are all really “cool” sports, but any X-Games event outcome that is determined by a judge is not technically a sport. While all of these require extreme athletic ability, grace, and skill, and could easily be deemed as some of the most difficult events, due to the way a winner is determined, it cannot be declared a “sport.” A quick explanation of this is comparing all of these types of events to dance, which is not too far of a stretch considering most of them have a large element of dance in their judging. While dancing in itself is very physically demanding, most dancers won’t tell you that they compete in a sport, it’s a “dance competition.” Is doing amazing acrobatic skills to music on the ice or using props in a floor routine in rhythmic gymnastics closer to a dance competition or to a swimming match? Nothing about this devalues the validity of the competition, it’s just a different class of events.

Now we get to the short bus. While “sports” may not technically be in the same class as “competitions,” they are essentially equals in terms of respect for their category. There are duds in both, but there are several major disciplines in each. GAMES are essentially the left-overs. The things you sometimes see on ESPN or Fox Sports and say, “what the heck is this doing on here?” Games are events where the outcome is controlled completely internally by the player. While there may be an outright winner, there is no athletic ability whatsoever, which is where this category gets a little hazy. For instance, let’s take the headlining Scripps National Spelling Bee. Essentially, it’s an extremely difficult version of Scrabble without a board. Chess is also one of these events. Both of these require much higher mental capacity than I would ever be capable to match, but these are not in the same stratosphere as the first two categories. Here’s a really good example. Competitive video-gaming is on the rise and one of the new out-of-place-shows on ESPN is a show called Madden Nation. It’s essentially a reality TV show that has a bunch of guys who still live in their mom’s basement competing in Madden NFL on the Xbox to win a certain amount of money. These guys claim to be “athletes,” but unless eating Doritos and Mountain Dew qualifies as serious training no one in their right mind should be putting them in that category. It’s a friggin’ VIDEO GAME!

This categorization method has nothing to do with the training required, money made, or anything other than the technical aspects of each event. I am not some biased guy throwing down every event that I don’t like to watch. This is purely analytical. There are other methods out there that try to use a more "numbers" approach like the John Hollinger, but I've tried to simplify it by just focusing on the process of determining the outcome. While there is plenty of room for debate, the rules and regulations of each sport don’t lie, and this is just about as good as any other determining environment that I have come across. I know I make a lot of you synchronized swimming fans out there irate, but we have to remember that the term “sport,” is not a be all and end all term to describe something that is a legitimate contest. So all of you sports talk radio wannabes, here’s the end of the debate. Three categories: Sport, Competition, and Game. Use them well.