# Are judged events really sports? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [August 18, 2016, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-judged-events-really-sports/763143 "2016-08-18T02:53:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2016, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-judged-events-really-sports/763143/21 "2016-08-19T13:03:11Z")
Competitive “Cheerleading” has little cheerleading; it’s basically a variant of rhythmic gymnastics, just with a big team. It’s as much of a sport as rhythmic gymnastics, by any rational examination. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2016, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-judged-events-really-sports/763143/22 "2016-08-19T14:21:05Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Not really, no. There are different levels of judging, though. > > 1. Mechanical judging of an objective measurement. Track and field is mostly this. Machines, with virtually no realistic chance of error, decide who was first to the finish line, or jumped the furthest, or threw the javelin the furthest, or whatever. In most cases there is very little else to be judged and it’s usually verified by a machine. > > 2. Sports that involve judged application of rules. This would include, for instance, soccer or baseball or volleyball. In such cases the objectives are very clear and measurable, but elements of action are judged by a person - whether a runner is safe or out, whether the ball landed in or out, whether the player was offside or not. Often machines are being incorporated into these judgments (e.g. instant replay, of tennis’s electric eyes to spot serves that go a little long) but humans are still involved. > > This level of judging can be easily verified in some cases and not so much in others. For instance, a baseball umpire calling a ball fair or foul is either right or wrong, and an instant replay will correct a bad call almost all the time. Conversely, a soccer referee calling a hand ball can be a tricky thing now, because the referee must make a judgment of intent; the “ball to hand” guideline, if you will. American football is hideously complex and difficult to officiate because of the complexity of the rules, and hockey is famously hard to officiate because so many elements of the rulebook rely on judgment of intent. In theory the rules are totally objective; in practice they can be hard to apply. > 3. Sports ion which judges ascertain the athletes’ technical proficiency. This is true of, obviously, gymnastics or diving. There is no true “Artistic” element to most such sports, contrary to popular belief; there’s no Artistic Expression score when a guy is doing the vault. However, the excellence of the athlete must be judged by a person; there is no way it can be done automatically. > > 1. Sports in which subjective measures are openly judged. Figure skating is the #1 example, obviously. Synchronized swimming is another. > > In some cases a sport might have elements of more than one type of judging. Ski jumping, to my admitted bewilderment, has both a purely Type 1 measure (the length of the jump) but adds a Type 3 (a judgment of the quality of the landing.) IMO, the more important distinction is between 1 & 2 on the one hand and 3 & 4 on the other. Specifically, _do judges declare the winner?_ This is where people have a lot of problems. Every sport has refs and disputable calls. The real issue is where at the end of the game one guy is declared the winner by a few people, when a lot of other people who have seen the same game - and many of whom have just as valid judgment as the official judges - believe the other guy “won”. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2016, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-judged-events-really-sports/763143/23 "2016-08-19T14:36:33Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Not really, no. There are different levels of judging, though. To me, there seems to be a big divide between categories 2 and 3; in the first two, the winner of the competition is pretty clearly decided by the actual outcome of the competition. One team scores more goals, one person outpaces another, someone throws something farther, etc… There may be an interpretive component to how and why the rules apply, and to what extent, but in a broad sense, that isn’t intended to directly determine the outcome of the event, although it often has a large effect. In the second two, the outcome of the event is directly dependent on non-participating judges, and while watching or participating, there’s no inherent way to tell who won. That’s where people draw the sport/not-a-sport line a lot of the time, with events in categories 1 and 2 being labeled sports, and events in categories 3 and 4 being labeled as something different. Personally, I’m kind of torn; there IS a large and valid difference between the two sorts of competitions, but ultimately it all comes down to how words are defined, and I tend to think “sport” applies to all of them, as the only difference comes down to how the winners and losers are determined, not to the athleticism or ability of the participants. There’s also another divide between category 3 and 4 that’s pretty serious. Things in category 3 are ideally supposed to be more objective than subjective, but it’s still a matter of human eyes viewing it and someone’s opinion of how well they did. Category 4 is basically how pretty they looked while doing their exhibition. To use an extreme thought experiment, if judging and refereeing were to be done by super-accurate AI systems, it seems to me that categories 1, 2 and 3 would be essentially the same- there would be self-evident winners and losers based on the criteria that determine success. Category 4 would still be different in that it is still fundamentally aesthetic opinion based. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2016, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-judged-events-really-sports/763143/24 "2016-08-19T18:27:16Z")
Yeah, I’m with you guys. The distinction between 1 and 2 is largely one of what is technically possible. It is easy, using machines, to be absolutely certain who ran the fastest. The measurement is straightforward and simple. Conversely, while, say, soccer is objectively measurable - you score more than the opponent to win - many decisions are difficult to make by machine, such as whether a hand ball was intentional. The _intent_ is for complete objectivity, but it’s hard to get there. Major sports are generally trying to get there but there’s limitations to how far and fast you can go. You can’t turn a soccer game into a 4-hour affair to go over every call at nine camera angles. The difficulty of this sort of thing is very obvious if you consider that by my definitions, Olympic boxing is a Type 2 sport. What is being judged should be totally objective; you either landed a hit or you did not. The sport is, however, preposterously corrupt and the decisions are often insane. Conversely, many gymnastics disciplines are awfully close to Category 2. They may not have the super-AI machines bump points out would turn all Type 3 sports into Type 1 sports, but you don’t hear a lot of arguing over who did the rings the best; there is generally wide agreement over what constitutes a proper score. That said, I am not arguing anything on my list is or is not a sport, just trying to define the parameters of what we mean by “judging.” Something is always judged to some extent. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-judged-events-really-sports/763143.md?page=1)