Wednesday, November 25, 2009

What's a Sport?

NPR has an article on their website today that made me revisit my thoughts on the question above.

So, what's a sport?

Generally speaking a sport is any athletic activity that involves the following: objective rules and scoring, a field or court of play with relatively fixed dimensions, equal-opposing sides (individual or team) whose strategies directly impact the progress/scoring of the other team, a certain level of spectator freedom, and an understood winner and loser determined by the aforementioned objective scoring system.

For example:
  • Basketball is a sport. Two opposing sides, objective rules and scoring, a court, a time clock that declares that whoever is in the lead at its expiration is declared victor.
  • Football is therefore a sport...as is soccer, hockey, tennis (though lack of crowd liberty almost gets tennis in trouble), volleyball, rugby, et al.
So what is not a sport?
  • Golf - Golf is a game. It's played against courses that are without fixed dimensions. Though it's scoring system is objective, scoring is not done against an opponent--nobody is allowed to guard the cup or tries to block the ball. Plus, golf's spectators are not allowed to cheer with any measure of freedom. (Bowling is also a game. Though bowling does have fixed dimensions and objective scoring, none of us would ever be comfortable calling it a sport. If bowling had a goalie I might consider it a sport.)
  • Gymnastics, figure skating, diving, skateboarding, etc - These are not sports either. These are competitions. No doubt these activities require athleticism, but because of their subjective scoring systems they cannot qualify as a sport. 
  • NASCAR and Horse Racing - These are races. And since they are largely decided by something other than the human element (car and animal) they don't meet the criteria to be a sport. 
  • Swimming, Track and Field  - These are timed events. There is no fixed scoring system. (except when determining team achievement), but even with that the athletes are not ever opposing one another. They could perform all their events individually and a winner could be determined with the exact same criteria (the clock). Not sports.
  • Boxing - Boxing is often called a science, and for good reason. I am leery to call it a sport for the fact that most bouts are determined by a subjective scoring system. If every fight were determined by knockout or TKO it would be a sport. Therefore boxing is also a competition...but I'm not settled on this. Maybe we could call it a fight.
  • Baseball - Baseball is a pastime. It defies category. I quote John Kruk, "I'm not an athlete...I'm a baseball player."
Thoughts???

Monday, November 16, 2009

The Childrens

The whole squad:
It's amazing what you can get for three bucks the day after halloween (not the girl, but the costume):
Avery spent one whole day last week in this get up:
Jackie Boy was a monkey for halloween. He got the flu and didn't venture out, but we still tortured him by making him wear his costume:
Rocky Balboa:

International Headline

"As a datable event in our own history, the resurrection cannot be shoved into a closet of personal piety. Everyone has to deal with it. This isn’t just another religion story. It’s the international headline."
-Michael Horton