What is a Sport?

By James Greenspan: SPM NJ Writer (Commentary)
Posted Wednesday, April 16, 2008

It is The Eternal Question for sports fans everywhere. One debated over late night cards games, on the train, in dorm rooms and in cubicles. What is the exact definition of a sport? Today I attempt to answer that question once and for all. Will it be a precise answer? No. But it will set out certain guidelines, some criteria that will help to answer this age old question. Let me be clear, I have a much narrower definition of sports than the average person. I think that many activities belong in other categories such as “races” or “contests” rather than being classified as a sport. Finally, if something is not a sport, the person engaging in the activity may not be called an athlete under any circumstances.

I propose that the following factors should be taken into consideration whenever the debate begins over whether an activity is actually a sport. Some factors are pluses towards becoming a sport, and others are minuses. Any single event need not pass every single factor, but a totality of the circumstances held up for analysis should weigh heavily in helping us decide the answer to the question at hand.

A sport must have some physical exertion.

This is a big one. If the typical person engaging in an activity wouldn’t break a sweat while performing it… it quite simply isn’t a sport. Sorry “International Federation of Competitive Eating” but your sessions of sitting and devouring 103 Krystal Burgers in 8 minutes (October 28, 2007 by Joey Chestnut) simply don’t qualify. The only sweat a competitive eater has ever broken was when the chicken-wings at “wing-bowl” in Philly were slightly “off” that one year.

A sport must have competition directly against an opponent.

This is a much debated category, and does include some grey area, but in my opinion is one that must be considered a negative for an activity that doesn’t include it. To me, without competition directly against your opponent, an activity takes a big hit on the "Sport-O-Meter". Sorry Golf. This year’s winner at the Masters, Trevor Immelman, said he wasn’t even aware of his standing on the leader board until he got to the final green. He said that once his caddy told him he was 3 strokes up he started to get really nervous. Pressure is part of sports, and without competition directly against an opponent the pressure of having to step up and perform in the clutch can be taken out of the equation. Unacceptable. If you can’t stare your opponent right in the face and then beat him, it isn’t a sport.

A sport cannot have purely subjective scoring.

This is another killer category. Sorry figure skating, cheerleading, boxing, and most of the X-games. Something simply cannot be a sport if there isn’t a concrete way to “score” or “gain points.” As long as two people can look at the same activity and score it totally subjectively (enter the Russian judge in the Olympics), so subjectively that a different winner might be named, that activity cannot be a sport. The typical objection to this category is that umpires call balls and strikes in baseball. True. However, for the most-part the strike zone is exactly the same, and baseball does have the objective scoring of a runner crossing the plate. While this is a slight hit on baseball, it does come through in flying colors in all of the other categories. For boxing, figure skating, cheerleading and the X-games however, this is the end of the line.

A sport cannot involve the use of machines in actual competition.

An absolute no-no. Sorry NASCAR. In NASCAR the car isn’t just tangential (you may look that word up in a dictionary if you are actually a NASCAR fan) it’s essential. How many times have I heard that the best car wins in a race? The teams spend weeks tweaking gas flow and air intake (and no I don’t know what either of those mean) and the race itself, while involving strategy, is nearly secondary to the performance of these supped-up cars that the teams have produced. This goes for motocross, boat-racing, and drag-racing as well. Driving a car/boat/fiberglass frame with a jet engine attached to the back at 200+ MPH is a skill, a difficult one to master, but still a skill and does not require the drivers to be athletic at all.

A sport cannot involve any alcohol consumption.

Quite simply, if you can (and usually do) drink a beer while you’re engaging in the activity, it isn’t a sport. Sorry bowling, golf (again), and World Series of Poker. If Johnny Chan can sit at a table for 15 hours, sniffing his orange and downing martinis, poker playing cannot be a sport. It is a game. Deal with it.

While there may be other factors that the creative mind can come up with, this is my list and I'm sticking to it!

The following are some activities that make the cut and some that miss it.

Sports:

• Baseball
• Football
• Hockey
• Basketball
• Soccer
• Tennis
• Cricket
• Lacrosse
• Field Hockey
• Rugby
• Dodgeball
• Ping-Pong
• All types of running (sprinting, marathon etc.)

Non-Sports:

• Boxing (Contest) (If the scoring was adjusted to only include ties, KO’s & TKO’s I would move it to the sports category)
• Golf (Contest)
• NASCAR (Race)
• Figure Skating (Contest)
• Card Playing (Game)
• Competitive Eating (Contest)
• Darts (Game)
• Swimming (Race)
• Wrestling (Contest)
• Billiards (Game)
• Hunting (Hobby)
• Mountain-Climbing (Hobby)
• Everything else…