Is it safe to say that hockey and soccer are essentially the same game?
For that matter, aren’t there a whole bunch of sports that are all the same, basically?
Lacrosse, field hockey, team handball, water polo, and quite a few others are the same as hockey and soccer – the object is to put a ball/puck into a target goal.
And if you stretch it, you could say that basketball and American football are also in that category. But unless you’re going to claim that Wayne Gretzky would be a world-class soccer player, or that Pele would be amazing at hockey, I think it’s justified to call them different sports.
I’ve often wondered about this concept. Whether there’s some official category scheme or not, I like to think there are these types:
-
Goal games
– American football
– Basketball
– Soccer
– Hockey
– Golf
– Archery -
Court games
– Tennis
– Badminton
– Volleyball
– Ping Pong -
Combat games
– Boxing
– Wrestling
– Fencing
– Karate
– UFC
– Sumo
– Judo -
Speed games
– NASCAR
– Marathon
– Track
– Rowing
– Swimming -
Grace games
– Diving
– Gymnastics
– Ice dancing
– Figure skating -
Baseball
Ha. No wonder I don’t like baseball.
Would you place cricket in the same category as baseball?
Aren’t baseball, softball and cricket traditionally grouped into the category of “ball and bat” games (i.e. someone throws a ball and someone else hits it with a bat)?
That won’t work for the category, though, because kickball is clearly close kin to baseball, and it doesn’t have a bat. I’d say that the base-running is the key, not the bat.
I’d add a category for “accuracy” sports and games like curling, shuffleboard, bowling and darts. I’d put archery in that category as well.
Variations on a theme, perhaps; but then you could apply such a broad generalization to the dope - and I’m sure almost every one here would be offended at the thought that the dope is just another message board.
I think golf fits into that category as well.
Latest version:
-
Goal games
– American football
– Basketball
– Soccer
– Hockey -
Court games
– Tennis
– Badminton
– Volleyball
– Ping Pong -
Combat games
– Boxing
– Wrestling
– Fencing
– Karate
– UFC
– Sumo
– Judo -
Speed games
– NASCAR
– Marathon
– Track
– Rowing
– Swimming -
Accuracy Games
– Golf
– Archery
– Curling
– Shuffleboard
– Bowling
– Darts -
Grace games
– Diving
– Gymnastics
– Ice dancing
– Figure skating -
Ball & Running games
– Baseball
– Softball
– Kickball
– Cricket
– Jacks
8 1/2) Calvinball
I think “Base Games” better describes baseball and its myriad variants and predecessors, as well as cricket. The purpose of such games is not to hit the ball, it’s to advance players along bases. You can win a baseball game without ever hitting the ball.
I’d broaden our categories into eleven:
- GOAL GAMES: Games in which the object is to propel an object into a target goal. Hockey, basketball, soccer, water polo, polo, etc.
- COURT GAMES: Games in which the object is to propel an object into a part of the playing area in a way that the other team cannot legally return it. Tennis, raquetball, volleyball, badminton, table tennis, etc.
- SPEED GAMES: Games in which the object it to move oneself a specified distance faster than one’s opponents. Sprinting, swimming, skiing, speed skating, all motor sports.
- STRENGTH GAMES: Games in which the object is to move a greater amount of mass than one’s opponent. Weight lifting, “Strongest Man” competitions, etc.
- THROWING GAMES: Games in which the object is to propel a projectile further than one’s opponents do. Javelin, shot put, hammer throw, discus, dodgeball.
- BASE GAMES: Games in which the object is to repeatedly move players from position to position on the field of play. Baseball, softball, cricket, kickball, etc.
- ACCURACY GAMES: Games in which the object is to propel projectiles in an accurate manner, either purely for accuracy or to interact with other objects. Bowling, golf, darts, croquet, curling, archery, shooting.
- TERRITORIAL GAMES: Games in which the object is to move a person holding an object into a specific place on the field. Rugby, football, Australian football, ultimate frisbee.
- COMBAT GAMES: Games involving the physical defeat, in some manner, of the opponent. Boxing, tae kwon do, MMA, fencing, wrestling, etc.
- GRACE GAMES: Games in which the competitor wins by executing certain maneuvers in a manner considered technically superior to the opponent’s maneuvers. Gymnastics, figure skating, diving, and the like.
- DISTANCE GAMES. Games in which the object is for the competitor to propel themselves a greater distance or height than their opponents. Would include long jump, high jump, pole vault, ski jumping, etc.
Some games combine elements of these ten. Moguls skiing, for instance, has elements of both speed games and grace games; ski jumping includes elements of grace and distance. Dodgeball is a combat game, but with a mix of accuracy game. Show jumping is both a speed game and a distance game. Biathlon is a speed game and an accuracy game. And some events have multiple games, like the decathlon.
I like your list, RickJay (and I like the idea of putting sports into categories by their most base qualities), but I might combine a few.
Territorial games, really are just goal games where the goal is a much wider area of land, rather than a narrower area of basket.
Combat games can be combined with strength games, I think, since both involve interacting with an item that is fighting back, either by force (people) or gravity & friction (inanimates).
Distance games, also, seem to be an unnecessary category, given the presence of both Accuracy and Speed games.
(Man, I love the straight dope boards.)
Let’s see, here, trying to come up with counterexamples…
Four-Square would be a court game, albeit a rather odd one with no net and four players vying against each other rather than two.
Parkour is a combination of speed game and grace game.
Laser Tag and Paintball are, like Dodgeball, a combination of accuracy and combat.
To the extent that skydiving is a competitive sport, it’s a grace game.
How about dance marathon? There’s an element of grace, to be sure, but the winner is usually regarded as the last couple still dancing, not the couple that danced the best in the meanwhile. Alternately, you could have a competition of balance or some such, where the last competitor to fail is likewise the winner.
I like your list too, RickJay. American Football may seem like a “goal game” (from the “original list” there), because there is a goal. But it’s so vastly different than soccer/basketball/hockey. It’s so much slower. Play stops after each pass, unlike the others. It’s definitely much more about territory than goals. Good work!
Just since we seem to be solely defining competitive sports now:
Is Parkour done competitively though? I know most “official” associations yell and scream loudly at anybody who tries to make it a competitive event.
I’d buy this argument; I could go either way on it. I felt there was a distinction between players putting an object (a puck, a ball, etc) into a goal, and moving themselves into a “goal” area. (Of course, rugby and football have goal-scoring elements, too.) But your point’s a good one; that distinction might not be as big a distinction as I assumed. In most popular territorial games, the eprson entering the goal must have the football/frisbee/etc with him to score, and so the distinction may just be that in some goal games you can put the object in from a distance and in some you have to carry it in.
Here I don’t agree; I think you’re mixing “fighting back” in its literal sense (a boxer literally fights back) with a metaphorical sense. I don’t even think it’s a good metaphor, to be honest. The two are, in the sense the OP was going, totally distinct. To my mind, combat sports are actually more different from weightlifting than weightlifting is different from javelin and shot put; you could, in fact, make a good argument that throwing games, distance games and strength games are all the same because they all come down to the athlete overcoming a mass. Defeating a human in a contest of skill, strength, tactical decision and endurance is quite apart from a sport that is purely overcoming mass.
Incidentally, with respect to parkour or free running, since their “competition” is unclear or nonexistent, it’s impossible to classify them without agreeing what the basis of competition is. It’s not a game at all if you aren’t competing. If you were to make them into competitions, you could make them speed games, or grace games, or lots of other things depending how complex you made it.
I also didn’t include non-physical games like chess, poker, or other board games, which I guess would be Strategy Games, but that might be a whole bunch of other categories.
The similarities in some the categories go quite deep. For example, both ice hockey and soccer have an offside rule, and for similar reasons.
Well yes, but the two offside rules are very different and make the strategy of defending very different. Also, I think that you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a third substantive similarity between the two sports.