Last week, I wrote a column about NASCAR. Among other points, I argued that NASCAR is indeed a sport and made a case justifying this assertion.
To race at such high speeds — inches away from the wall and other drivers attempting to swerve past you for three grueling hours — must be both mentally and physically exhausting. I pointed out that if curling was a sport, NASCAR most definitely is, as well. I fully realize, however, that NASCAR drivers are not overly athletic and I’m not going to make any Kobe Bryant-Jimmie Johnson comparisons anytime soon.
This brings up the natural question: “What is a sport?”
There are dozens — perhaps hundreds — of different sports played around the world, and although at first this seems like an easy question to answer, once you delve into it, you realize that the criteria for what constitutes a sport is not easy to flesh out.
The Winter Olympics provides a good backdrop for this discussion. Traditionally, the Olympics are referred to as the “Olympic Games”, but does this mean that they aren’t sports? Certainly not. It would be foolish to believe that they aren’t sports. Most of the competitions take an amazing amount of skill and athleticism. I won’t be trying any kind of crazy maneuvers in aerial skiing anytime soon, that’s for sure.
I keep making fun of curling, but I do believe it’s a sport. It takes a certain type of skill set and physical ability to be successful at curling.
Maybe one of the determining characteristics for distinguishing a sport is that it needs to include quantifiable results. Are there definite winners and losers?
In basketball, there is a winning team and a losing team. The winning team scores more points than the losing team, and no one has to tell us that. In racing, there is a winning driver and there are many losing drivers. The winner finishes the race’s designated number of laps before the other drivers do.
I have a problem with sports that are judged, such as figure skating. The status of a clear winner is uncertain until judges tell us who won by giving the skaters their scores. There’s a fair amount of subjectivity that goes into judging figure skating and determining winners and losers. But there’s no way I can figure skate, and no way anyone can deny the balance and coordination figure skaters possess, no matter how different it is from a more contact-oriented sport, such as football. Because figure skating is an Olympic sport and it requires superb grace and agility, does that automatically make it a sport? Does the fact that subjectivity factors into determining winners make it less of a sport? I have never figure-skated or curled, but curling looks like it requires less athleticism than figure skating. So does that mean it is less of a sport than figure skating? But at the same time, there are definite winners and losers in curling, unlike in figure skating.
There are definite winners and losers in billiards and darts, but they certainly take less athletic skill than figure skating. But I’d argue that billiards requires a great deal of hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. Is billiards a sport?
Perhaps endurance should be assessed when determining the criteria for what a sport is and what it is not. Feel free to disagree with me, but I don’t know if I can think of a sport that demands more endurance than cycling. The sport has been ravaged recently by steroid use, highlighting the difficulty of rejuvenating the body during long races that take several days, such as the Tour de France. I argued that NASCAR takes a special type of endurance — certainly not on par with cycling or long-distance running — but endurance all the same. NASCAR takes a lot more endurance than running the 100-meter dash, but we definitely think of sprinting as a purer sport. Nothing screams “athlete” like the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt. Sprinting requires little-to-no endurance, especially when compared to other sports. But who would dare argue that Bolt isn’t an athlete?
I used to make fun of golf, but it takes an amazing amount of endurance — just ask Tiger Woods.
Seriously, though, I didn’t really respect golf as a sport until I tried it. Not only does it take endurance to play 18 holes of golf and ride in a golf cart — much less walk the course — it’s also an extremely challenging game that takes a lot of time and practice to master. It’s definitely the hardest sport I’ve ever picked up.
Sometimes when I think about this question, I like to imagine myself participating in these different types of events. I could play in an NFL game — really. I would possibly have my bones crushed, but I could be a receiver out there and run routes. Heck, I could catch a pass, even if I would be destroyed immediately afterward and possibly would not get up after getting blasted by some middle linebacker. I could run up and down an NBA court, as well, but I would look really silly trying to guard Dwight Howard and would immediately become “posterized.”
But I don’t honestly know if I could complete a NASCAR race without first completing a much shorter race to get used to the g-forces to which drivers are exposed. And I definitely could not complete the Tour de France — even one stage would probably be a stretch. Of course, there are plenty of people who would probably argue that football and basketball are purer sports than cycling and definitely NASCAR, but what kind of factor does endurance play into it, if any?
My roommate said maybe a sport has to have spectators; it has to be something people gather around to watch. It’s possible to find spectators for lots of different kinds of competitions, though. For instance, ESPN broadcasts the Scripps National Spelling Bee every year and also shows what seems like a trillion hours of the World Series of Poker. I’m pretty confident that even though these events are shown on a sport-centered television channel, they aren’t sports. Or are colleges going to start spelling teams with Lane Kiffin-like coaches who recruit promising grade-school spellers?
Perhaps there is just too much gray area to even bring up this question. In the end, the definition of a sport may come down to a feeling you have deep inside you. If something within the realm of physical competition surpasses normal human functioning and makes you say “Wow,” it may be a sport, whether it’s a thunderous LeBron James dunk or a sick combo on the pool table.
But I’ll put forth the question anyway: What’s a sport?
Hemingway said there are only 2 sports,bull fighting and auto racing (you could die) everything else is just a game.
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It’s helpful to point out that there is a difference between a sport and an athlete. Billiards and archery and bowling and curling may be sports, but their players most certainly are not necessarily athletes.
Cycling in the Tour de France, however, is a serious sport, and its players are serious athletes. They must be able to control their fear and their bike while going 70 mph down the side of a mountain on skinny little tires that are pumped up to very high tire pressure. They must have strong tactics and strategy to figure out the chess game that is the competition between teams and riders. Instead of a NASCAR racer who simply presses a pedal with his foot in order to go faster, a cyclist must use their own body and mental toughness pain tolerance in order to climb up those mountains. Unlike marathon runners, who have to push themselves physically for a few hours for only one day at a time, Tour de France cyclists have to do it for 20 days in a 22-day period of time, 1/3 at high mountain altitudes. It is not unheard of for them to die during competition or training. And most of them do it for chump change, in terms of financial gain.
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The following was an extensive research project carried out by an innovative group of UVA undergrads from the class of 2004, under the direction of Dr. James L. Beam PHD.
There are several different levels of the Sports Pyramid.
1. Athletic Competition (pure sports like track, rowing, swimming, cycling requiring raw athleticism and endurance)
2. Sport Competitions (team or individual sports where athleticism matters more significantly than refined precise motor skills, often team oriented: tennis, baseball, football, basketball)
3. Skill Games (athleticism can propel to success, but refined hand-eye coordination and motor skills are more key: golf, billiards, curling)
3. Physical Feats (weight lifting, shot put)
4. Athletic Artistic Performance (subjectively judged athletic talents based on precision and artistry: ice dancing, diving, synchronized swimming)
5. Machine/Beast Aided Competition (involves rigor, endurance, and potential athleticism but the main output is powered by another machine or creature under competitors control: NASCAR, horseracing)
6. Sportsman Activity (Often involves outdoors activity requiring varying levels of athleticism, physical endurance, patience: hiking, rock climbing, fishing, hunting. NOTE: could transition into Athletic Competition if encounter wilderness animal like bear)
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If you use some physical excertion and then keep score to determine winners and losers either against each other or teams or even the elements of nature then it’s a sport. The levels of athletism will vary greatly from competition to competition.
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I’m not really sure why i’m just now commenting on this, but I just wanted to say that I really liked your column and I agree completely.
When I was in High School, I played volleyball and a lot of my guy friends played football. We would always get into arguments about whether volleyball was a “hard” sport or not. I would, of course, say it was and that even though we didn’t make contact with other people, we make it with the floor.
To me, a sport is anything that you trian for and work extremely hard to be good at. Even the less “athletic” things like billiards or curling are still a sport to me because they take a ton of training and hard work. I don’t think anyone, including myself, can criticize anyone else for the sport they play until you’ve tried it. The easiest sport could be and probably is harder than you think.
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To those guys with the long list, you’ve gotta be kidding me. 2-4 are totally arbitrary…well actually you have 3 on there twice, so 2,3 and 3 are arbitrary. What’s the difference between shot put and curling, or golf and tennis? And what about bobsled smart guy? The main momentum comes from gravity and human pushing, not the machine, so no fair sneaking it into category 5. And hiking isn’t a sport, it’s just slow running.
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Toi – There’s a reason its called a pyramid. 2 and 3 aren’t arbitrary – John Daly and people that shoot trick shots with a cue stick aren’t necessarily athletes (and with all due respect to curling, its just doing sweeping chores in a much cooler way, but with no allowance). Bobsled. Yeah good point. I went over to the Chuck E Cheese ball pit the other day and saw some kids getting a running start down the slide and immediately thought “how athletic”… Hiking can take a lot of physical endurance to wander aimlessly through random wilderness with no end in sight and no real goal or thoughts in one’s head – nice blog posting by the way.
Michael – Uhhh, maybe if you were battling a lion in the Roman Collosseum. And next up on SportsCenter “Doves 27, Hunters 0.”
Holly – was anyone on your HS team ever taken to the hospital after the floor blitzed and then tackled them only to stand up and do a Ray Lewis celebration dance over their motionless body (hopefully sans firearm)? And I have played billiards, many times and its not as much a sport as volleyball or football. There’s a reason they have pool tables in bars for drunk people to play and not volleyball nets or football fields. Because it’s a game.
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MaisonBoys,
I noticed your taxonomy of activities stops short of its pinnacle. That’s ok, I’ll pick up where you left off. You wanna know what the ultimate sport is? Easy: ice hockey. The best hockey players combine speed, agility, toughness, steely nerves and astonishing skill. Sid Crosby is a combination of Barishnykov, Mozart, Michael Jordan, and an NFL running back (with less protection). Basketball, football, baseball–these sports just don’t demand the same combination of qualities from its athletes. In sum, hockey should be in a category of its own; and when it comes to hockey, as you know, your friendly neighbors to the north are in a category of their own.
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Holly – I hope that we all strive to be good at whatever our chosen careers are, although I’m sure that you would agree that we are not all professional athletes. Like hundreds of dedicated men and women across the country I am “trianing and working really hard” to become a surgeon. However, I’m pretty sure that I am not an athlete. Perhaps we could recommend “circumcision” as the next new Olympic sport.
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GrillMaster – No, none of my football friends were ever taken to the hospital, but I was during volleyball. I can never play volleyball anymore because one practice I came down off a spike and landed on the shoe of the defender across from me. I dislocated my knee tearing my MCL almost completely, fracturing my tibia (shin), cracking my knee cap, and bruising most of the tissue in my knee. I ended up enduring at 2 hour surgery and had a metal screw placed in my knee to keep my newly rebuilt ligaments in place. I wore some type of brace on my knee from October to June of my sophomore year of HS. I went through physical therapy, weight therapy, and special training to learn how to run again. I still suffer from pain in my knee and muscle atrophy, but the worst part, I will NEVER be able to play volleyball competitively again.
PDoc – I didn’t mean to word it the way I did. I’m training to become a kindergarten teacher since I can not longer play sports to the ability level that I could before I hurt my knee, but athletes train in a different way, it’s up to the individual to decide whether they consider them selfs an athlete or not. Like you, I don’t consider my teacher training athletic. Best wishes in becoming a surgeon! Sorry for any confusion. =)
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