Last night, a roommate and I were trying to decide what makes a sport a sport. Why, in other words, do we all see basketball as a sport while some claim that golf is a game?
At first we decided this: a sport requires more raw athleticism than a game–of course, this theory was deflated by baseball players and the fact they can be borderline obese & have a mouthful of chaw the whole game. We realized that bowlers & baseball players are sometimes indistinguishable, physically. So we threw that out. What we decided on was this: Bowling, golf, darts, pool, etc. are indeed sports, but of a different variety. There are action sports & reaction sports, and reaction sports are the ones we, as a culture, most often equate with “real” sports.
So, to illustrate: Basketball or soccer are fluid games and the outcome depends on game plans and REACTIONS to a moving ball. No two games are ever the same. These games move quickly and demand near instinctual skills. Golf, on the other hand, is an action sport. Your approach is the same for every shot & no quick reactions are necessary. You can set up for an hour. The ball moves only when you hit it.
With this definition, ping-pong becomes more of a sport than golf. Probably more of a sport than baseball.
Thoughts? Rebuttals? Qualifications? I want a working definition here.
A sport is a contest of physical skill with a defined victor, played for its own intrinsic purposes. (e.g. war isn’t a sport.)
Darts is a sport. It’s not a sport that requres great cardiovascular fitness, but it’s a sport. Nobody said all sports had to be equal. Golf is very obviously a sport, as are ping-pong, bowling, and automobile racing.
I agree and really like the definition a Sports Illustrated author introduced a few years ago. He basically said that a sport is any athletic competition in which defense is employed.
So track and field could be called athletic competitions, but not “sports” because no defense is employed. However, NASCAR could be a sport because defense is employed and it’s an athletic competition.
I like this definition because it makes a distinction between directly adversarial athletic competitions (sports) and non-directly adversarial athletic competitions (and non-athetletic competitions like Chess.)
I think that the definition that describes practice best would be something like
Sports are:
games that depend on physical skill and prowess
games that are played to such a high level that some of its practitionars have become professionals
I would personally prefer to limit the term sports exclusively to the games for which top level players (or at least certain members of a team, in team sports) will be athletes.
Martin Hyde ,don’t be too impressed because it came from SI, its still only one mans opinion.
Defense is certainly an important element of some sports but it shouldn’t be used to define what is and what isn’t.
Try telling Carl Lewis what he does is not a sport!
Arwin , I really didn’t understand your post. It seemed to me that you were implying that the worlds great chessmasters were playing a sport . Now, I have the highest regard for what they do, at the level they do it but I can’t call it a sport. If I misunderstood, please correct me.
Well personaly I do not think of judged competitions as sports, diving, gymanstics, figure skating, etc… I suppose athletic competition would be more appropriate. This is just my personal opinon, of course.
I haven’t perused over any discussions of this subject here past this thread (except a quick search, which revealed nothing in the linked thread), but under many of your definitions of “sport” videogames, and specifically a particular set of PC games, falls under the category of a “sport.” Lots of people in the community don’t feel that sounds quite right, which has led to “e-sports,” which at least passes the laugh test.
I’ll explain since I imagine a lot of people won’t understand.
many games have large, highly visible tournaments where large prize purses are available ($100k for large events).
although consisting of a small percentage of the overall gaming population, there are several teams and individuals (depending on the type of game; some games are 1v1 while others are team oriented, like Counter-Strike) who earn a living off playing games, whether that is by being endorsed by companies or winning so often.
these type of games either require intense reaction times, strategy, understanding of the game mechanics, and possibly chemistry with many other players. Even after a ‘casual’, non-pro tournament or intense match you will be sweaty and the adrenaline will be flowing.
The industry only grows larger and larger each year. South Korea is the most advanced in this area, followed by Europe, the US/Canada, and then even other developing nations, like Turkey and certain South American countries.
E-sports are certainly a big business, a quote about the Painkiller world tour:
A $500,000 1st place prize in a 1v1 tournament is certainly enough to make you a professional. E-sports are what first made me ponder the question posed by the OP, I don’t believe they are sports at all, but struggled to come up with a decent definition of a sport that excluded e-sports but didn’t exclude other activities I do consider to be sports.
Why do we need a distinction? I grew up in a household that considered chess a sport and I never thought twice about it until I met people who didn’t. I’d say a sport is a game where skill is the defining factor, rather than luck. As in if you took a skillful player and a newbie, and plotted their games, the skillful player would come out on top 99% of the time or greater. That makes certain recreational games, such as monopoly, just that, games, but serious games like Basketball, Chess, Poker, or Soccer sports.
Someone once offerred this definition to me (and I have to admit, I kind of like it):
A sport is a game in which it is possible to get injured.
Not bad, huh?
(Actually, his first definition was that a sport is a game in which it is possible to get killed. So by this definition martial arts and motor racing are sports, while basketball and soccer aren’t. I prefer the injured definition.)
No, you didn’t misunderstand. In Dutch, when we talk about the thing that the great chessmasters are doing, we call them Schaaksport, which means literally “Chess Sports”. I think competition is a very important part of the definition of sport and that you will generally find that this is so in most parts of the world. The Sports section isn’t called ‘Sports and Games’, after all, but you’ll still find news on Kasparov’s retirement and so on.
Isn’t there a German word meaning ‘Mind Sport’? (Denksport?)
Chess is a world-wide competitive activity, involving pure skill, with professional players earning millions a year. There are thousands of useful books and the theory is still developing even after 500 years of analysis. The judgement of top players is so good that they can even take on modern computers (and chess is a game that is easy to program).
However chess doesn’t involve physical effort, so many people say it isn’t a sport. The problem comes when you look for an alternative word. A ‘game’ is usually something played for fun only. A ‘hobby’ doesn’t have to be competitive. An ‘activity’ can be anything from painting to potholing.
