That's like the third time this week I hit "Publish" instead of "Save Draft" on a post that was not done and ready to go! Then I have to take it down all fast.
Sorry about that folks. I assure you, I'm not deliberately being a tease.
So.
Long as I'm posting this, let me tell you what I think on some topic. Otherwise it's just some damn post to tell you "oops." Let me give it a little value-added. Let's see. How about baseball. Baseball is the only sport where the team with the ball is on defense. How about Hockey. Hockey is the only sport where...
Wait a second. NOTE: when I say, "the only sport...", I don't mean these penny-ante non major league sports. I'm not talking the novelty circuit, the carnival circuit. The demolition derby is not a sport, I don't care how many Pepsi decals you're sporting on your crash leathers.
No.
I'm talking about the already more than extensive selection of big-time sports that matter. There are four of these. Precisely four: NFL Football. Baseball. Basketball. Hockey. The Big 4. Hockey squeaks in by a fraction of an echelon, but they're in there.
Nor am I talking about the whole host of lower-tier team sports going on such as Jai-Alai or Lacrosse, or the other similar sports in that category that only connoisseurs can differentiate. Or volleyball, or for that matter the beach/swimming pool team sports such as beach volleyball or waterpolo. Then there are your variants that try to horn in on the "big tough men colliding on the turf" NFL football mystique, such as your Rugby, or your "Australian Rules," and to a lesser extent, Soccer - but to my way of thinking, Soccer is more of a freak hockey variant, played off the ice and with no sticks or clubs. I class Soccer with Polo, really. It's horseless Polo with no sticks.
These are all sports, it is true, technically, but I don't rate them conversation-worthy. They're more sociological curiosities - interesting to consider in an esoteric way, but understood to be excluded from the elite of what we mean when we get down to brass tacks and talk "Sport." With a capital ESS!
Then you have your whole classes of "leisure sports" such as tennis and golf, or the "gentleman leisure" category such as pool, or darts. These aren't sports at all. I'm not saying you don't need to have athleticism to compete at tennis, or that you don't need coordination and aim to compete at pool, golf, or darts. Sure you do. You also need athleticism and/or aim to be able to chuck a javelin, or sprint 1,000 yards. But that's not a sport. You're just tear-assing as fast as you can, or throwing an object with no game or aim at stake beyond hitting a far mark. There's some personal glory in that, sure, but there's nothing really on the line. There's no real progression, or teamwork, or much struggle or strategic wizardry involved. Tennis is just a plein-air ping-pong match. Taking some amusing, competitive diversion and sticking it out in the yard doesn't make it a sport!
I mean, suppose you play a game of chess on one of those gimmicky human-scale lawn chessboards? Fine, sounds fun! It's not a sport.
Note: in the above, I specify "NFL Football" not to dignify Soccer per se, so much as to offer a slight to the minor-league college circuit. Grow up, boys. Men play on Sundays.
Or okay, if they damn well want to, men also play on select Monday or Thursday nights, or Saturdays - especially during the playoffs. But when that happens, it's nationally televised. So you can still tell. Plus they don't have teams with mascots like ducks, hoot owls or a tree. It's easy enough to tell the difference, here.
2 comments:
I beg to differ!
If it involves a competition, I believe it is a sport.
Now whether or not it matters is subjective.
In the big picture I suppose it only matters to the participants.
We set the bar at different places, which is fine. The above is more me advocating for a particular sense of the word, for the sake of the post's discussion. All other senses remain valid. Nobody ever caught me trying to overule the dictionary!
My take: there are distinctions to draw that are useful, and I think it's a good idea to specify what one means if a term is overly broad and its meaning is in doubt. The fact is, the valid senses of a given word often extend far beyond the point where it becomes useless, as a description of what is actually being done.
To me, the distinction between what I'd call "sport" and other sorts of competitions is a useful distinction to be able to draw. We're talking radically different types of activity. A person who calls all competition "sport" is not wrong, but if they're calling a given competition "sport" where I'd call it a dance contest, a beauty pageant, a game of cards, or maybe just "backgammon" - then I'd say their use of the word has diluted its meaning to the point where the word no longer has much denotative value.
That's not to say you're misusing the word "sport"! That's just me saying that in my opinion, I feel it can be put to better use. From a standpoint of getting meaning across.
I mean, some people call running a sport. To me, it takes more than just doing the same thing you do by yourself and having a bunch of other people do it at the same time, to make it a sport.
But all the commonly-accepted senses of a word in English are valid, and available for use. It just becomes a question of how best to get meaning across. Sometimes, discussing competing ideas of meaning can even be competitive! In a certain sense of the word, it could even be sport.
But, you know. I wouldn't call it a sport.
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