Dave was the authority. Or at least that’s what everyone assumed...
Back when I was making nine bucks an hour working for the YMCA, Dave was the Sports Director and (for much of the time I was there) my de facto boss. And I say de facto because half of the time I was working for someone else, and the other half I was hanging around Dave’s office, asking when the next poker night was and badgering him to give me hours sorting shirts or pumping up basketballs.
Dave was a great guy, well-respected for the work he did within the Y, and knowledgeable about most aspects of youth sports, so I guess that’s why everyone trusted him.
Even though he never came up with a shred of proof.
See, being that we worked in a sports-focused environment, ran sports programs all day, and were surrounded by a staff of mostly dudes, it’s understandable that most of our conversations were about sports (or chicks...or pizza...but mostly sports.) And, over the years there’d inevitably be young guns, fresh off their HR paperwork, wanting to toss around bowling stories or talk about the latest NASCAR gossip.
As you can imagine, it never took long before we sent that weak sauce back to the jar.
You have to understand, as professional purveyors of sport, we took the term seriously. That’s why when a 17-year old high school kid spoiled a perfectly good football conversation by bringing up the X Games, we felt it was our responsibility to take him to school. Certain activities are sports, we’d say, and certain activities are games. And then there are certain activities that are barely activities at all, which is why card tables and game rooms were invented.
Call us elitists, but we felt it was our duty as YMCA educators to delineate between the good, bad, and completely irrelevant in the world of sports and leisure. If for no other reason than so our students didn’t get shitcanned on the schoolyard for talking about Motocross.
Usually we had no problem making our case, because like most things in life, sports can be “passed” or “failed” via your basic smell test. However, anytime we ever had someone coming in with delusions of diving or skateboarding, someone who was unwilling to listen to reason, we’d have to resort to Dave’s “list.”
Which would have been great if, ya’ know, it actually existed.
As legend has it, when he was in school for his exercise science degree (or sports administration, or kinesiology, or something like that), Dave crafted a term paper that would revolutionize the way people everywhere would come to view sports. Maybe it was an assignment, or maybe he was just sick of people calling Secretariat an “athlete.” That part of the story was never clear. Either way, Dave’s creation was said to be the be-all-end-all for these particular debates. It was a compilation of airtight tenets, rules, and conditions which were said to put every possible activity into one of two baskets: Sport, or Not-a-Sport. This list was known to be a brilliant contribution to academia, and was rumored to have been cited in several Title IX hearings and at least one episode of Dr. Phil (entitled Why All Our Kids Are Huge.).
The only trouble was, after almost 10 years of working for the Y, Dave’s carefully crafted tome had somehow fallen through the cracks. There were whispers that some of the longer-standing staff members had gotten a copy “ a few years ago” or had seen it “that one time last July”, and of course Dave always maintained that it was real and still existed in some form somewhere. But as I sit here today, I can honestly say I never saw it. I suppose people just trusted Dave’s judgement, assuming his position of Sports Director somehow brought with it the wisdom and impartiality of a seasoned arbiter. I, however, was never convinced.
A couple weeks ago, I was reminded of Dave’s “list” (and yes, I refuse to remove the parentheses until i see the damn thing in the flesh.) My coworker, Percy, and I were entrenched in an argument which was similar to most of the debates we’ve ever had (me trying to convince him he’s a moron.) Percy, a 30-something, somewhat nerdy-looking records clerk/medical assistant, was trying to tell me that a night of bowling can be a rigorous workout. It would follow, he contended, that bowling is as legitimate a sport as any other.
My first reaction was to offer to help him retrieve his head from his bunghole, but not only did that seem gross, it also could have been construed as inappropriate for the workplace. Instead, I resorted to telling him that putting bowling in the same category as football was nearly as ridiculous as those white stick-figure decals he has on the back windshield of his mini-van. (Really, Percy? You have three kids, a dog, and two cats? So does every other family in America. Call me when you get a dragon.)
As I proceeded to completely dismantle Percy’s arguments (it wasn’t that hard, seeing as he just kept repeating “but I’m in a league!”), I thought back to Dave, and how he might have handled this scenario. Not that I needed any help to squash Percy, but it would’ve been helpful to be able to point to an authoritative document instead of just showing him pictures like this.
So, the very next day, I set out to create a list of my own. The only difference, of course, would be that my list would actually exist and be available for reference, whereas Dave’s evidently resides in a crypt somewhere. Now, as confident as I am in my knowledge of sports (as well as my ability to be impartial), I decided to exercise due diligence and enlist the assistance of a friend of mine. For a document like this one, I needed a couple sets of eyes, and I needed someone who could be as even-handed and analytical as possible.
As usual, I followed my instincts and called the most calculating, cold-blooded S.O.B. I know, a friend from college who I refer to only as “Pickford.” I’ve known Pickford ever since we were freshmen at the College of Wooster, where he lived right across the hall and had a sign over his desk that read “Caution: Genius at Work.” Later, Pickford would be known to stock up liquor in his room and sell shots at exorbitant prices, a move that was just as shrewd as it was annoying. He also was the housemate of mine who, during our junior year, had sex with a fugly chick and then offered her a pillow from my bed ( I was out of town), only to have sex with her again a few minutes later, on said pillow.
In short, Pickford’s basically been my good friend/nemesis for going on 11 years, and I couldn’t think of a better person for the job than him.
For a few weeks, Pickford and I communicated via e-mail regarding every possible angle of this debate. Our primary intent was to come up with a few hard and fast qualifications that every activity should have to meet in order to be called a sport. However, we tried to tackle the question from a few different directions. For example, we made it a point to bring into question areas such as origin, function, popularity, and equipment usage, and we were also there to correct each other when personal biases threatened our mission (“I dare you to say that to Triple-H’s face” is a direct quote from one of Pickford’s e-mails.)
By the time we were done, I’m proud to say Pickford and I were able to accomplish two things. First, we were able to take Dave’s original concept and recreate it, to what we believe is the fairest and most accurate degree. And second, instead of compiling a 37-page Constitution, we were able to reduce our arguments to the simplest of denominators. Anything that wasn’t completely necessary was scrapped, leaving only the most essential and relevant elements (all for your reading pleasure).
Here’s what we came up with. Feel free to argue, but please know that at the end of the day, there really is no debate.
In order to qualify as a sport, an activity must...
1) Be athletic in nature. That is, requiring an exceptional degree of coordination, agility, cardio-vascular endurance and skill, relative to normal human function. This is FAR AND AWAY the most important of all the tenets, which is why let’s just say it is 1A, 1B, and 1C combined. Pretty much every definition you can find of “sport” will include some verbiage about “physical activity” or “physical exertion.” That a sport should involve some sort of physical element should not be debated. However, on this point we correlated “sports” very strongly with “athletics”, which is to say that sports must include levels of physical exertion that should far exceed pretty much every other aspect of normal day to day activity (shopping for groceries, getting gas, walking home from work.) To put it another way, if you take an “athlete” out of their chosen “sport” and pit them against others in a variety of other athletic events, will they acquit themselves well, sheerly based on their physical prowess? If so, you’re probably looking at a sport. If not, you’re looking at an activity that may or may not require skill. The two are different.
The main activity that comes into conflict with this primary tenet is golf. Golf is immensely popular - but there’s a reason for that: people can do it, even when they get old and out of shape. (Of course, this isn’t the only reason golf is popular, but it’s surely the reason it’s still loved/played by people in their 60’s, therefore making it universally appealing.) Now, golf proponents will immediately scoff at this, citing how strenuous it can be to play an 18-hole course while carrying a bag full of clubs. To that, I would urge them to simply take a second to reflect. So, what you’re saying is, a round of golf contains the requisite athleticism, because it requires you to walk for a couple hours carrying a heavy bag? Forget all that strength/speed/agility stuff - golf is a sport because it makes your feet sore. Is this really the argument?
Take your average golfer, put them in a neutral athletic competition with a basketball/football/hockey/lacrosse player (or any real athlete, for that matter) and they’re probably going to get crushed. To put it plainly, golf is a skill game, not an athleticism game, and that’s not enough to satisfy tenet number one.
2) Be acknowledged (as existing) by at least 50% of the population where it is played, and be upheld by a legitimate governing body. To illustrate this point most effectively, I’ll hearken back to the fall of 2001, when Pickford and I were freshmen living in a dank, cramped dormitory. Being the restless 18-year olds that we were, we and the other guys on our hall came up with a game to pass the time on nights when we should have been doing homework. Basically it started with a couple of us tossing a Frisbee at a beer can someone had left down the hall on a ledge to see who could hit it first. A few hours later, we had a full-blown competition on our hands, with rules, boundaries, penalties, and even seedings for future tournaments. Hall Frisbee had morphed into an interactive, extremely popular activity for all of us, and was a great way to take our minds off things like boobs, parties, the quad, and boobs. Still, outside of our 15-person crew, no one in the world had heard of Hall Frisbee, so what seemed like a sport to us couldn’t really be considered legitimate. The flip side of this argument (and part two of this tenet) is what we’ll refer to as the Buzkashi Principal. The goal of Buzkashi, reportedly, is to grab the carcass of a headless goat, get it clear of the other players, and pitch it across the goal line. Now, if you ask a thousand people in America wtf Buzkashi is, you’ll probably get 990 different answers, and then of course ten people that just call you a terrorist. However, I guarantee you’ll get a different response in Afghanistan, where it’s the NATIONAL F-ING SPORT (kind of badass, actually.) Basically, just because it’s not legit here, doesn’t mean it’s not legit elsewhere, xenophobia notwithstanding (America! Fuck yeah!)
3) Be competitive in nature, and must be decided as a result of two or more entities competing concurrently under the same circumstances and conditions, wherein the goal is to pronounce one entity the winner. Ok, so there are a couple different things going on here, but they’re all important. First, besides physical exertion/activity, competition is the key ingredient of any sport. In sports, there are winners and losers, and if at the end you find yourself to be neither, you’re probably either playing YMCA T-ball or something weird that has ties, like soccer. (I kid, soccer fans - chill, you’re safe.) Without competition, we would never have come up with crazy concepts like “standings” or “the score”, which I think we can all agree are now pretty commonplace.
Second, in order to be classified as a sport, the activity you’re involved in must feature you or your team against another person(s) or team(s). The pursuit of personal bests doesn’t really count, nor does that competition you used to have with your invisible friend Randy. Third (and this is where people will start loading up tomatoes), to be a sport, an activity must be waged on an even playing field, wherein two or more entities are pitted AGAINST each other, and where one entity's performance will affect the other’s. In most sports, this is a no-brainer. In baseball, hockey, lacrosse, and most other sports, you have two teams or two individuals competing at the same time, directly affecting their opponents’ chances of winning the game/match. However, in sports like swimming or track and field (or really just races of any kind), while opponents don’t DIRECTLY affect one another, the competition is still held all at once, so runners are affected by the progress of other runners, etc. Even though no one is knocking each other over or swimming into each other’s lanes, it’s still obvious that there is a competition that’s about to be decided.
4) Be concluded/decided per an objective criteria (points scored, time elapsed). This one seems obvious, but it’s still necessary. Judgement calls should have no place in sports, unless we’re talking about fat umpires who are slow to get into position or NBA referees who protect Lebron and Kobe like they’re Robert the Bruce. When the time runs out, or when you hit 21 points, you should know who won. Holding up signs with a 10 or 8 on them doesn’t cut it, no matter what those biased French judges might tell you.
5) Be played via a field, court, rink, or other large, contained and specified area. This is the one area where Pickford and I differed, and I had to basically end up playing the JOURNEYMEN dictator card. Pickford, for whatever reason, was pretty staunch in his belief that ping-pong is a sport, citing “proof” like “it’s played in the Olympics” and “Ummmm, Forrest Gump??” I, however, would contend that this is one way sports can be separated from games (by emphasizing “large”.) Sure, some games require you to move around a bit (darts, bocce, ping-pong) and sure, they may even have leagues for those games (or federations, designations, and configurations), but that doesn’t make them sports. I will not accept ping-pong (a game meant to be played for fun in a tweener’s basement) as a sport, just as I won’t accept air hockey, shuffleboard, pinball, or crossfire. Sorry cornholers, but you need to keep that gym membership.
Those were our five tenets, but we didn’t stop there.
It’s not a sport, just because...
1) It’s in the Olympics. This is a HUGELY popular argument, mainly because it’s the one that seems to offer the best hope at legitimacy. But consider this: the Olympics are run by the International Olympic Committee, a group of world delegates tasked with preserving the traditions and rituals of the ancient Olympic Games, while at the same time ushering in positive change and enforcing standards of conduct. At its roots, the Olympic Games were created to bring people together and to put on a show, and that’s exactly what they’re geared for today. Just as the eighth century BC Games featured competitions that weren’t sports (combat drills and chariot riding), the 21st century Games do as well (riflery, skeleton.) Pomp and circumstance rule the day when the Games come to town, and any activity that is popular enough around the world (and that will provide entertainment) could get voted in. Plus, let’s face it, if the Olympics were our sport-barometer, things like lacrosse, baseball, and rugby would be included. They aren’t, but figure skating is. Next.
2) ESPN broadcasts it. Three words: World. Poker. Tour. If you aren’t on board with that argument, chances are you’re the person that suggested first-person RPG's be added to the Summer Olympic program. And if you knew what first-person RPG’s were without looking at that link, chances are you just proved my point.
3) A lot of people do it and love it. This isn’t so much an argument, as it is a reason why a lot of people might get up in arms over a debate like this. NASCAR is perfect example. Every year, millions of people pack raceways to watch short guys in coveralls turn left at really high speeds. It’s known as one of the most curiously popular phenomena in our country, and if I had any faith at all that racing fans read blogs, I might be worried for my safety for even suggesting that this spectacle isn’t a sport. But here’s the thing: just because something is popular, doesn’t mean it’s a sport. If it did, we’d be including things like the WWE, which is more Broadway than anything else (where outcomes are predetermined and grown men in Speedos writhe in pain after getting fake-chopped.) We’d also probably need to include competitive eating (which, to me, is almost the polar opposite of a sport - or at the very least a sworn enemy), billiards, and Twitter. Yes, NASCAR is popular. You know what else is popular? Watching porn. Sicko.
4) YOU Couldn’t do it! I’ve found that this is the go-to claim for fans of luge/diving/curling/anything that takes a ton of technique but that very few people would ever even want to do. It’s true, I can’t steer a metal coffin down an icy tube at breakneck speeds, and I can’t jump off a two-story platform into a body of water without making splash. But then again, I also can’t operate on a brain, land a helicopter, or birth a baby out of the vagina I don’t have, but that doesn’t make any of those strenuous activities sports.
So ladies ‘n gents, that’s the list. It’s airtight. It’s righteous. It’s complete.
Stuff that makes the cut, even though they seem kind of lame? Dodgeball, ultimate frisbee, and polo. Exclusions that are most likely to get me shot in the parking lot? Golf, NASCAR, Horse Racing, golf, pro wrestling, and golf. But that’s the risk you run when you deal in hard truths like these. You can’t please everyone, but you can be fair. We believe we were.
It’s been awhile since I’ve spoken with Dave, but I might just reach out to him with this one. I know he still works for the Y, still runs sports programs like a bawse, and still hires teenagers who probably wear flat-billed hats forwards and love to watch MMA. Perhaps he could use this list, or at least use it to resurrect his own.
Either way, courtesy of the hard-working slaves at JOURNEYMEN, I think it’s safe to say there’s a new authority in town. Now please excuse me while I go give this to Percy so I can watch his brain explode.
By: Reed Domer-Shank
JOURNEYMEN Founder and Head Gavel Banger
And featuring:
Pickford
JOURNEYMEN Content Developer and Notorious Pillow Thief
Back when I was making nine bucks an hour working for the YMCA, Dave was the Sports Director and (for much of the time I was there) my de facto boss. And I say de facto because half of the time I was working for someone else, and the other half I was hanging around Dave’s office, asking when the next poker night was and badgering him to give me hours sorting shirts or pumping up basketballs.
Dave was a great guy, well-respected for the work he did within the Y, and knowledgeable about most aspects of youth sports, so I guess that’s why everyone trusted him.
Even though he never came up with a shred of proof.
See, being that we worked in a sports-focused environment, ran sports programs all day, and were surrounded by a staff of mostly dudes, it’s understandable that most of our conversations were about sports (or chicks...or pizza...but mostly sports.) And, over the years there’d inevitably be young guns, fresh off their HR paperwork, wanting to toss around bowling stories or talk about the latest NASCAR gossip.
As you can imagine, it never took long before we sent that weak sauce back to the jar.
You have to understand, as professional purveyors of sport, we took the term seriously. That’s why when a 17-year old high school kid spoiled a perfectly good football conversation by bringing up the X Games, we felt it was our responsibility to take him to school. Certain activities are sports, we’d say, and certain activities are games. And then there are certain activities that are barely activities at all, which is why card tables and game rooms were invented.
Call us elitists, but we felt it was our duty as YMCA educators to delineate between the good, bad, and completely irrelevant in the world of sports and leisure. If for no other reason than so our students didn’t get shitcanned on the schoolyard for talking about Motocross.
Usually we had no problem making our case, because like most things in life, sports can be “passed” or “failed” via your basic smell test. However, anytime we ever had someone coming in with delusions of diving or skateboarding, someone who was unwilling to listen to reason, we’d have to resort to Dave’s “list.”
Which would have been great if, ya’ know, it actually existed.
As legend has it, when he was in school for his exercise science degree (or sports administration, or kinesiology, or something like that), Dave crafted a term paper that would revolutionize the way people everywhere would come to view sports. Maybe it was an assignment, or maybe he was just sick of people calling Secretariat an “athlete.” That part of the story was never clear. Either way, Dave’s creation was said to be the be-all-end-all for these particular debates. It was a compilation of airtight tenets, rules, and conditions which were said to put every possible activity into one of two baskets: Sport, or Not-a-Sport. This list was known to be a brilliant contribution to academia, and was rumored to have been cited in several Title IX hearings and at least one episode of Dr. Phil (entitled Why All Our Kids Are Huge.).
The only trouble was, after almost 10 years of working for the Y, Dave’s carefully crafted tome had somehow fallen through the cracks. There were whispers that some of the longer-standing staff members had gotten a copy “ a few years ago” or had seen it “that one time last July”, and of course Dave always maintained that it was real and still existed in some form somewhere. But as I sit here today, I can honestly say I never saw it. I suppose people just trusted Dave’s judgement, assuming his position of Sports Director somehow brought with it the wisdom and impartiality of a seasoned arbiter. I, however, was never convinced.
A couple weeks ago, I was reminded of Dave’s “list” (and yes, I refuse to remove the parentheses until i see the damn thing in the flesh.) My coworker, Percy, and I were entrenched in an argument which was similar to most of the debates we’ve ever had (me trying to convince him he’s a moron.) Percy, a 30-something, somewhat nerdy-looking records clerk/medical assistant, was trying to tell me that a night of bowling can be a rigorous workout. It would follow, he contended, that bowling is as legitimate a sport as any other.
My first reaction was to offer to help him retrieve his head from his bunghole, but not only did that seem gross, it also could have been construed as inappropriate for the workplace. Instead, I resorted to telling him that putting bowling in the same category as football was nearly as ridiculous as those white stick-figure decals he has on the back windshield of his mini-van. (Really, Percy? You have three kids, a dog, and two cats? So does every other family in America. Call me when you get a dragon.)
As I proceeded to completely dismantle Percy’s arguments (it wasn’t that hard, seeing as he just kept repeating “but I’m in a league!”), I thought back to Dave, and how he might have handled this scenario. Not that I needed any help to squash Percy, but it would’ve been helpful to be able to point to an authoritative document instead of just showing him pictures like this.
So, the very next day, I set out to create a list of my own. The only difference, of course, would be that my list would actually exist and be available for reference, whereas Dave’s evidently resides in a crypt somewhere. Now, as confident as I am in my knowledge of sports (as well as my ability to be impartial), I decided to exercise due diligence and enlist the assistance of a friend of mine. For a document like this one, I needed a couple sets of eyes, and I needed someone who could be as even-handed and analytical as possible.
As usual, I followed my instincts and called the most calculating, cold-blooded S.O.B. I know, a friend from college who I refer to only as “Pickford.” I’ve known Pickford ever since we were freshmen at the College of Wooster, where he lived right across the hall and had a sign over his desk that read “Caution: Genius at Work.” Later, Pickford would be known to stock up liquor in his room and sell shots at exorbitant prices, a move that was just as shrewd as it was annoying. He also was the housemate of mine who, during our junior year, had sex with a fugly chick and then offered her a pillow from my bed ( I was out of town), only to have sex with her again a few minutes later, on said pillow.
In short, Pickford’s basically been my good friend/nemesis for going on 11 years, and I couldn’t think of a better person for the job than him.
For a few weeks, Pickford and I communicated via e-mail regarding every possible angle of this debate. Our primary intent was to come up with a few hard and fast qualifications that every activity should have to meet in order to be called a sport. However, we tried to tackle the question from a few different directions. For example, we made it a point to bring into question areas such as origin, function, popularity, and equipment usage, and we were also there to correct each other when personal biases threatened our mission (“I dare you to say that to Triple-H’s face” is a direct quote from one of Pickford’s e-mails.)
By the time we were done, I’m proud to say Pickford and I were able to accomplish two things. First, we were able to take Dave’s original concept and recreate it, to what we believe is the fairest and most accurate degree. And second, instead of compiling a 37-page Constitution, we were able to reduce our arguments to the simplest of denominators. Anything that wasn’t completely necessary was scrapped, leaving only the most essential and relevant elements (all for your reading pleasure).
Here’s what we came up with. Feel free to argue, but please know that at the end of the day, there really is no debate.
In order to qualify as a sport, an activity must...
1) Be athletic in nature. That is, requiring an exceptional degree of coordination, agility, cardio-vascular endurance and skill, relative to normal human function. This is FAR AND AWAY the most important of all the tenets, which is why let’s just say it is 1A, 1B, and 1C combined. Pretty much every definition you can find of “sport” will include some verbiage about “physical activity” or “physical exertion.” That a sport should involve some sort of physical element should not be debated. However, on this point we correlated “sports” very strongly with “athletics”, which is to say that sports must include levels of physical exertion that should far exceed pretty much every other aspect of normal day to day activity (shopping for groceries, getting gas, walking home from work.) To put it another way, if you take an “athlete” out of their chosen “sport” and pit them against others in a variety of other athletic events, will they acquit themselves well, sheerly based on their physical prowess? If so, you’re probably looking at a sport. If not, you’re looking at an activity that may or may not require skill. The two are different.
The main activity that comes into conflict with this primary tenet is golf. Golf is immensely popular - but there’s a reason for that: people can do it, even when they get old and out of shape. (Of course, this isn’t the only reason golf is popular, but it’s surely the reason it’s still loved/played by people in their 60’s, therefore making it universally appealing.) Now, golf proponents will immediately scoff at this, citing how strenuous it can be to play an 18-hole course while carrying a bag full of clubs. To that, I would urge them to simply take a second to reflect. So, what you’re saying is, a round of golf contains the requisite athleticism, because it requires you to walk for a couple hours carrying a heavy bag? Forget all that strength/speed/agility stuff - golf is a sport because it makes your feet sore. Is this really the argument?
Take your average golfer, put them in a neutral athletic competition with a basketball/football/hockey/lacrosse player (or any real athlete, for that matter) and they’re probably going to get crushed. To put it plainly, golf is a skill game, not an athleticism game, and that’s not enough to satisfy tenet number one.
2) Be acknowledged (as existing) by at least 50% of the population where it is played, and be upheld by a legitimate governing body. To illustrate this point most effectively, I’ll hearken back to the fall of 2001, when Pickford and I were freshmen living in a dank, cramped dormitory. Being the restless 18-year olds that we were, we and the other guys on our hall came up with a game to pass the time on nights when we should have been doing homework. Basically it started with a couple of us tossing a Frisbee at a beer can someone had left down the hall on a ledge to see who could hit it first. A few hours later, we had a full-blown competition on our hands, with rules, boundaries, penalties, and even seedings for future tournaments. Hall Frisbee had morphed into an interactive, extremely popular activity for all of us, and was a great way to take our minds off things like boobs, parties, the quad, and boobs. Still, outside of our 15-person crew, no one in the world had heard of Hall Frisbee, so what seemed like a sport to us couldn’t really be considered legitimate. The flip side of this argument (and part two of this tenet) is what we’ll refer to as the Buzkashi Principal. The goal of Buzkashi, reportedly, is to grab the carcass of a headless goat, get it clear of the other players, and pitch it across the goal line. Now, if you ask a thousand people in America wtf Buzkashi is, you’ll probably get 990 different answers, and then of course ten people that just call you a terrorist. However, I guarantee you’ll get a different response in Afghanistan, where it’s the NATIONAL F-ING SPORT (kind of badass, actually.) Basically, just because it’s not legit here, doesn’t mean it’s not legit elsewhere, xenophobia notwithstanding (America! Fuck yeah!)
3) Be competitive in nature, and must be decided as a result of two or more entities competing concurrently under the same circumstances and conditions, wherein the goal is to pronounce one entity the winner. Ok, so there are a couple different things going on here, but they’re all important. First, besides physical exertion/activity, competition is the key ingredient of any sport. In sports, there are winners and losers, and if at the end you find yourself to be neither, you’re probably either playing YMCA T-ball or something weird that has ties, like soccer. (I kid, soccer fans - chill, you’re safe.) Without competition, we would never have come up with crazy concepts like “standings” or “the score”, which I think we can all agree are now pretty commonplace.
Second, in order to be classified as a sport, the activity you’re involved in must feature you or your team against another person(s) or team(s). The pursuit of personal bests doesn’t really count, nor does that competition you used to have with your invisible friend Randy. Third (and this is where people will start loading up tomatoes), to be a sport, an activity must be waged on an even playing field, wherein two or more entities are pitted AGAINST each other, and where one entity's performance will affect the other’s. In most sports, this is a no-brainer. In baseball, hockey, lacrosse, and most other sports, you have two teams or two individuals competing at the same time, directly affecting their opponents’ chances of winning the game/match. However, in sports like swimming or track and field (or really just races of any kind), while opponents don’t DIRECTLY affect one another, the competition is still held all at once, so runners are affected by the progress of other runners, etc. Even though no one is knocking each other over or swimming into each other’s lanes, it’s still obvious that there is a competition that’s about to be decided.
4) Be concluded/decided per an objective criteria (points scored, time elapsed). This one seems obvious, but it’s still necessary. Judgement calls should have no place in sports, unless we’re talking about fat umpires who are slow to get into position or NBA referees who protect Lebron and Kobe like they’re Robert the Bruce. When the time runs out, or when you hit 21 points, you should know who won. Holding up signs with a 10 or 8 on them doesn’t cut it, no matter what those biased French judges might tell you.
5) Be played via a field, court, rink, or other large, contained and specified area. This is the one area where Pickford and I differed, and I had to basically end up playing the JOURNEYMEN dictator card. Pickford, for whatever reason, was pretty staunch in his belief that ping-pong is a sport, citing “proof” like “it’s played in the Olympics” and “Ummmm, Forrest Gump??” I, however, would contend that this is one way sports can be separated from games (by emphasizing “large”.) Sure, some games require you to move around a bit (darts, bocce, ping-pong) and sure, they may even have leagues for those games (or federations, designations, and configurations), but that doesn’t make them sports. I will not accept ping-pong (a game meant to be played for fun in a tweener’s basement) as a sport, just as I won’t accept air hockey, shuffleboard, pinball, or crossfire. Sorry cornholers, but you need to keep that gym membership.
Those were our five tenets, but we didn’t stop there.
It’s not a sport, just because...
1) It’s in the Olympics. This is a HUGELY popular argument, mainly because it’s the one that seems to offer the best hope at legitimacy. But consider this: the Olympics are run by the International Olympic Committee, a group of world delegates tasked with preserving the traditions and rituals of the ancient Olympic Games, while at the same time ushering in positive change and enforcing standards of conduct. At its roots, the Olympic Games were created to bring people together and to put on a show, and that’s exactly what they’re geared for today. Just as the eighth century BC Games featured competitions that weren’t sports (combat drills and chariot riding), the 21st century Games do as well (riflery, skeleton.) Pomp and circumstance rule the day when the Games come to town, and any activity that is popular enough around the world (and that will provide entertainment) could get voted in. Plus, let’s face it, if the Olympics were our sport-barometer, things like lacrosse, baseball, and rugby would be included. They aren’t, but figure skating is. Next.
2) ESPN broadcasts it. Three words: World. Poker. Tour. If you aren’t on board with that argument, chances are you’re the person that suggested first-person RPG's be added to the Summer Olympic program. And if you knew what first-person RPG’s were without looking at that link, chances are you just proved my point.
3) A lot of people do it and love it. This isn’t so much an argument, as it is a reason why a lot of people might get up in arms over a debate like this. NASCAR is perfect example. Every year, millions of people pack raceways to watch short guys in coveralls turn left at really high speeds. It’s known as one of the most curiously popular phenomena in our country, and if I had any faith at all that racing fans read blogs, I might be worried for my safety for even suggesting that this spectacle isn’t a sport. But here’s the thing: just because something is popular, doesn’t mean it’s a sport. If it did, we’d be including things like the WWE, which is more Broadway than anything else (where outcomes are predetermined and grown men in Speedos writhe in pain after getting fake-chopped.) We’d also probably need to include competitive eating (which, to me, is almost the polar opposite of a sport - or at the very least a sworn enemy), billiards, and Twitter. Yes, NASCAR is popular. You know what else is popular? Watching porn. Sicko.
4) YOU Couldn’t do it! I’ve found that this is the go-to claim for fans of luge/diving/curling/anything that takes a ton of technique but that very few people would ever even want to do. It’s true, I can’t steer a metal coffin down an icy tube at breakneck speeds, and I can’t jump off a two-story platform into a body of water without making splash. But then again, I also can’t operate on a brain, land a helicopter, or birth a baby out of the vagina I don’t have, but that doesn’t make any of those strenuous activities sports.
So ladies ‘n gents, that’s the list. It’s airtight. It’s righteous. It’s complete.
Stuff that makes the cut, even though they seem kind of lame? Dodgeball, ultimate frisbee, and polo. Exclusions that are most likely to get me shot in the parking lot? Golf, NASCAR, Horse Racing, golf, pro wrestling, and golf. But that’s the risk you run when you deal in hard truths like these. You can’t please everyone, but you can be fair. We believe we were.
It’s been awhile since I’ve spoken with Dave, but I might just reach out to him with this one. I know he still works for the Y, still runs sports programs like a bawse, and still hires teenagers who probably wear flat-billed hats forwards and love to watch MMA. Perhaps he could use this list, or at least use it to resurrect his own.
Either way, courtesy of the hard-working slaves at JOURNEYMEN, I think it’s safe to say there’s a new authority in town. Now please excuse me while I go give this to Percy so I can watch his brain explode.
By: Reed Domer-Shank
JOURNEYMEN Founder and Head Gavel Banger
And featuring:
Pickford
JOURNEYMEN Content Developer and Notorious Pillow Thief
Golf is a sport. If you still believe it is not, then you need a new argument because Golf hits all the criteria you listed above. Your argument that "people can do it, even when they get old and out of shape." Is flawed. This same group of old and out of shape people also enjoy sports like tennis. Are you saying tennis is not a sport and Roger Federer, Pete Sampras or the great Andre Agassi are not athletes because my 75 yr old grandma still plays in her weekly tennis league? The difference between golfers and professional PGA Tour golfers is "exceptional degree of coordination, agility, and skill, relative to normal human function." Golf is competitive, ruled by a governing board, accessible to well over 50%, scored and is played on a field/course.
ReplyDeletePick a new argument why Golf isn't a sport and the PGA tour players are not athletes. Cause your wrong.
Mr. Brenton - I noticed you conveniently left out "cardio-vascular endurance" from your description of pro golfers. Tell me, if golf requires such immense degrees of athleticism, how can a major tournament be won by a guy wearing what Ricky Fowler wore Sunday (or, what basically every golfer wears, which can most accurately be described as dinner-wear for a cruise)?
ReplyDeleteGolf clearly does not satisfy tenet number one - as athleticism is not fundamentally required (despite how athletic a few of the top players in the world might be.) For every Tiger who can bench 350 pounds, there are probably 100 professional (or really good) golfers who are completely athletically average (besides, of course, their golf skills).
Ms. Brenton, If I may, I would like to weigh in here. Let me cut to the chase, Golf isn't even close to being a sport. First of all, if you have to take turns and can not defend your opponent, that alone disqualifies it. Second, golf is an elitist activity that is too inaccessible to the vast majority of youth. What inner city kid has a set of clubs and $100 to go shoot a round of golf? No wonder there is only 1 Tiger! Further more, its about as physically demanding as me slapping you in the face for thinking its a sport. Golf breaks Laws 2,3,6&7!
DeleteNow get back in your golf cart and head back to your all-male PGA club house.
If you want to know how to distinguish a sport from pink & fluffy puppy play, visit Isitasport.org?
All your foolishness will be addressed.
I will end this fictional story, one being at a time!
Yours Truly,
Judge'N Jury
Mr. Reed,
ReplyDeleteI very much enjoyed reading your May blog “What's A Sport, What's Not, And Why: An Authoritative Essay”. It’s quite a story with a twist of legend and mystery. The subject matter in fact is quite near and dear to me. It is my personal mission to end this fictional story claiming everything we do is a sport and all who participate are athletes. This mission of mine over the years has lead me to develop the “10 Laws of Sport”. You may find this helpful during your next conversation with Percy. This is the end-all, real deal, defining framework and definition of what a real sport is. You’ll also find a helpful matrix with many activities listed, noting which Laws are followed or broken. To qualify as a true sport, the activity must satisfy all The “10 Laws of Sport”.
It is no legend my Padawan friend, they are real. Keep up the good work and enjoy,
Yours truly,
Jude’N Jury
www.Isitasport.org