If you wore a letter jacket in high school without the letter, you would get your ass kicked by the people who actually earned it.
A few guys had letters for being student managers, but they were mentally handicapped - so obviously nobody’s going to give them a hard time for it.
cthiax the Letter Jacket is a piece of uniform apparel. It is a formal manifestation of the sports colors one wears on the field/court/mat/etc. The art club does not have a uniform.
Think of it as what dress blues are to battle fatigues.
Dude, you’re taking this waaayyy too seriously. A letterman’s jacket is an overpriced memento. It’s not a war medal; it doesn’t need to be “earned”; it doesn’t confer respect or power; it’s not handed out by Presidents or angels; and it’s not a freakin’ uniform.
The football uniform is a uniform. You do earn your place on the field to get one of those.
We only didn’t sell the letters because we weren’t an embroidery shop. We sent people across town for that stuff.
We’re all familiar with strategy video games, and the difference between real-time (RTS) and turn based strategy games?
Sports are real-time; turn based activities may indeed involve some form of defense, and may even be athletic, but in a sport the defender can participate in real time.
Which would knock out curling, tiddlywinks, croquet, etc…
It would also knock out all races with heats and single runs, like speed skating, skiing, bob-sled, skeleton and luge. It would also knock out all of the figure skating events and most of the snow-board events (but not the four-person run, since the leader and second boarder are involved in defensive moves).
In all of these, once you’ve done your bit, you just stand around and see if anyone else can beat your time. You have no defensive option.
So really, if that’s your definition of sport, it would knock out most of the activities at the winter games - sort of an odd result.
All sports are contests, but not all games rise to the level of a contest. Contestants create sports. Sports are less playful and much more intense. Sports are strived toward living which is why sports have seasons. Games are short-lived for recreational enjoyment.
What differentiates a sport from a game: sports tend to have teams and/or support staff (even “one-man” like golfers have caddies, coaches, trainers and physical therapists); rankings; preparations before competition; a certain level of keen physical or reactionary skills not left to chance; players who are compensated (money, trophies, equipment, sponsorships, scholarships) for their play/participation; and spectators.
All professional sports have these. Many not so-easily recognized competitions have these, too. Beauty pageants are sports.
Between the extremes of pure games and pure contests there is considerable overlap of weird quasi-sports like bowling, international competitive chess, competitive eating and Mardi Gras costuming.
I’m sorry if I seem to be overdramatizing. At my high school, you got your varsity letter handed to you by the coach at the awards banquet at the end of the season. You didn’t buy it at a shop.
The letterman jacket can go a long ways to create bonds of cameraderie among athletes off the field at school. It’s definitely a source of pride to be able to have something to show for busting your ass on a sports team. Yes, to some guys it was just an article of clothing. For the wrestlers in particular, it was something special and important.
I still stand by my prior definition, although it could use an additional clause in there somewhere: games are activities in which your options are absolute (draw a card, move a piece, roll a die) and sports are games where you must qualify physically to execute your move (attempt to hit a ball, attempt to get the ball in the basket, attempt to catch a pass, attempt to run faster) but where you will not always physically succeed at the execution.
It can also go a long way to creating bonds of cameraderie between students outside a school setting. It’s also a source of pride to be able to show your school colors for busting your ass in a classroom setting.
I don’t get the idea that only athletes “deserve” to wear the school colors on a cheaply made and overpriced jacket. I thought school pride was a school-wide thing and not reserved for the athletes.
No, the jacket is a thing that people sell because it’s expensive and has a high profit margin. What schools do with it is their business.
The schools in our area had letters for all kinds of things, every damn event you could want, and we sold to them because they had money. They didn’t have to bring in a certificate or a signed note from the coach or anything, and our shop would sell you the jacket and any patches (except the letter) that you wanted. Some schools let you letter in music, in theater, in sports, whatever.
If you want to argue that the letter is the reward, do so. A lot of schools operated that way. But the jacket itself is just a damn jacket.
I lettered in drama. And, yes, I earned it. Over the course of three years I earned points on a pre-determined scale of participation to a goal of whatever number of points. The letter is in the box my year books are in, and I’m very proud of it. The letterman jacket for activities (rather than sports) had different color arms and only one girl in the school actually got one.
It’s an award for doing something, that’s all. If either of the high schools I went to had fencing, I would have lettered in that, but no such luck.
To limit such awards to people physically blessed by age 18 is shortsighted.
I’m confused by that last bit, because sports are most definitely “played”. You play football, lacrosse, soccer, field hockey, basketball, volleyball, etc…
If you don’t “play” it, that would be a strike against it being a sport.
Exactly. Standing around with no defensive option is a big strike against the activity being a sport.
While you might consider it odd to not call the Olympic events sports, I find that to be a very common sense conclusion. Sports are all about pitting humans against humans in head to head physical competition. Racing against a clock makes your opponent time, which is not what sports are about. That’s what races are about.
Of course, my personal definitions are no more valid than any other native English speaker’s, so take of that what you will. But I subscribe to the following classifications:
Races: Racing against the clock, and also potentially other competitors in your same field of play. Incidental contact may be allowed, (rubbin’s racin’), but you can’t just flat out knock a guy out of the race intentionally. Examples would be downhill skiing, sprints, marathons, NASCAR, horse racing, short & long track skating, etc… One of the primary characteristics of a race is that the defensive strategy can usually be summed up in under a paragraph, and sometimes in just a single word: inapplicable.
Fights: Boxing, wrestling, the UFC, and basically all hand to hand combat events are a class unto themselves. More serious than sports, and very much more hardcore.
Games: Passive activities that simulate characteristics of sports, such as board games and video games. Can be broken down further into real-time games (like most video games) and turn-based games (like board games.) Some physical activity may be involved, such as bar games like pool, darts, and foozball. The last is the ultimate example of the distinction, as foozball is clearly simulating the sport of soccer. This is also the category of card games and casino table games, and the aforementioned curling. (Damn the US women’s team is smokin’ hot! Too bad they choked, as I’m head over heels for the Johnson sisters.)
Competitions: Athletic events with no competitor interaction whatsoever, often decided by judging. No defense is possible. Figure skating, gymnastics, X-Games (both summer and winter) that focus on tricks and style would all be good examples of competitions. Also included would be weightlifting, the world’s strongest man/woman contests, bodybuilding, marching band, cheerleading, equestrian, golf, field events such as those that make up the decathalon, and no doubt countless others.
Activities: Often competitive, and often involving athleticism, and even sometimes organized, but not truly a sport. Paintball is the prime example that comes to mind. Pickup games of sports would also fall here, such as a two on two playground game of hoops.
Sports: Athletic, head to head strategic competitions with active, physical defense employed by the opponent. Sports are purely human-powered, have highly structured rules, and objective means of determining the winner: the score. Most sports have amazing strategic depth, and all sports have a dizzying array of tactics. Sports are basically a hybrid between games and competitions, employing the best attributes of both. Usually, but not always, they are team oriented. Football and all its derivations (Australian rules, arena, flag, etc…), basketball, soccer, baseball, volleyball, beach volleyball, cricket, ice and field hockey, ultimate frisbee, singles and doubles tennis, rugby, lacrosse, and no doubt many others I can’t think of right now.
These classifications may not be universally held, but they do have the bonus of including like with like. While there are a few wildcard activities that I would find difficult to classify, such as polo, the vast majority fit neatly into these groups. And I would be a bit surprised if a participant in one of them would be offended by the grouping they found themself in.
Except the curlers. While it is true that they definitely require more athletic ability than playing cards, it is hard to get past the obvious comparison to it being a gigantic game of marbles. Even still, I could justify calling curling a sport, but it’d be with reservations; when the opponent is on offense, you are only allowed to watch. That’s just not sports-like.
Trophy makers sell trophies becuase they make money, that doesn’t make the trophy meaningless. Just becuase the athlete buys it himself doesn’t make it any less of a reward, or point of pride.
Judging by the expanding waistlines and growing inactivity of youth, it seems that lessening rewards for athletic participation is the shortsighted move.
I’m not saying lessen the rewards for athletic participation. I was 4’10" and less than 90 pounds until late in high school, there was no way I’d make it on any varsity team.
I don’t think my acedemic letter lessens the honor of other’s athletic letters.
A question: Do football or baseball lettermen think track & field lettermen are less worthy?
The problem I’ve got with that is that it’s not really the case that you’re racing against the clock. It’s not like the rules of the sport say that “you must come down the hill in less than x minutes to advance to the next round.” The time that you have to beat is set by your opponents who have gone before you. It is head-to-head competition - the better the skiers in the competition, for example, the better you have to be to advance. It’s not physically possible to have every one run the same course at the same time, so we use the time as the way to measure how well you’ve done against your competitors.
Your view is that the possibility of real-time defence makes it a sport. But why limit it to defence? Why not offence? If only one team can score in real time, wouldn’t your approach suggest that it’s not a sport? For example, in baseball, there’s an alteration of turns. One team is on offence and one team is on defence. Only one team can score at a time. Does that mean that baseball isn’t a sport?
A large part of culing is defense. You’re not just throwing to score; you’re throwing to keep your opponent from scoring. A big part of the game is placing your shots in a way that makes your opponent’s life miserable. It’s not physical contact, but it is a defensive activity. When the other team’s throwing, you’re watching to see how they respond to your defensive moves, and plotting how to respond yourself.
At bottom, I just don’t really see the significance of the alteration of turns as a defining feature of a non-sport.
As for the gigantic marbles bit - so what? The stones are 40 lb pieces of granite. It takes considerable physical skill and athleticism to throw them accurately.
I’ll agree that the clock you are racing against is defined by your competitors, and that curling does involve a quasi active-passive defense when the other team is shooting. (While you aren’t doing anything, your guard rocks et al most definitely are messing with the offense on the ice.)
But I stand by my classifications, as I really do feel they effectively group like with like, and that the activities in each are easily compared to each other, while they are near impossible to meaningfully compare with activities in other categories.
Sounds like billiards or marbles or bocce ball or horseshoes to me, which are most definitely not sports.
I watched a little bit of women’s curling the other day, and unless men’s curling is different, they were most definitely not throwing the stones but gently sliding them. The “thrower” for Great Britain looked like a frumpy housewife.
