Every summer, we’re confronted by the same question.OK, so the truth is more like, every summer we’re confronted by a number of different questions. How long until football season? They really have all-star teams for seven-year-olds? Why does the All-Star Game not start until 7:45, when the actual broadcast starts at 7? What exactly are they doing for those 45 minutes, anyway?
But the question that drives me (what is the matrix?) to column-writing today is a different one. Specifically, how does one define sport?
Since the dawn of ESPN, it seems, there has been an ongoing struggle to define exactly what is a sport and what isn’t. The all-sports network, of course, began this struggle during their infancy, when, in lieu of any contracts with major sport leagues, they put on television any event which remotely involved any level of competition (miniature golf, paintball, dominos).
Today, you can thank ESPN for the hoopla surrounding the NFL Draft, the World Series of Poker and that interminable half-hour every day where Skip Bayless and Woody Paige scream at each other.
But, ever since I was old enough to understand what a sport was, there has always been a conflict over that definition. Is it a sport, or is it something else?
Fishing, for example. I love to fish. It’s one of the things I enjoy doing with both my brothers, my dad and most of my friends (my small group of hippie friends who have never left their suburban neighborhoods except to find the nearest shopping center never really made it out with us).
But is fishing a sport? Certainly, there’s strategy involved. And it’s physically taxing, particularly if you actually catch anything.
There are even head games involved. After my last fishing trip with my dad and my brother, I determined I probably shouldn’t go with them again, simply because they take it way too seriously (my dad had the best day of the three of us and didn’t stop reminding everybody for quite a while).
So fishing isn’t that big a struggle for me. But what about, say, NASCAR?
My friend, Dr. Botany, weighed in on this issue some time ago.
“In my opinion NASCAR is not a sport but an event,” he said, “an event that should not be in the sports pages of a newspaper. Air shows aren’t in the sports pages, and a race is very similar to an air show in an ‘event’ sense of word.
“Also, the drivers are not athletes; they just drive a car fast. The pit crew pumps gas, changes tires, and works on the engine. They aren’t athletes either. Maybe sports writers should start visiting local car garages and cover the speed of mechanics much like they cover local amateur softball leagues and stuff.”
Hmmmmmmm … interesting. I confess to not being much of a racing fan for much of my adolescence, so I can see his point. Of course, since I have attended two races at Talladega Superspeedway, I’ve learned a little. It’s far more complicated than I realized.
But is it sports? Is horse racing a sport? In both cases, the pilot of the vehicle has to be in top physical form, and be at the peak of his wits … but it’s the vehicle itself that does most of the work.
What about bowling? Having never been much of a bowler, I never realized there was anything to bowling other than smoke-filled lanes and poorly-made rental shoes. But, apparently, there’s plenty about it that makes it sporting as well.
Perhaps I anticipated I would have a firmer grasp on how to answer these questions as I got older. That’s certainly not the case. In fact, the potential answers seem to only grow more complicated.
More and more events out there now call themselves sport. Cheerleading is considered a sport. So is competitive eating. So too, to reference my former home in South Georgia, are hubcap throwing, belly-flopping in a mud pit and bobbing for pig’s feet.
And we haven’t even talked about poker, dominos, paintball or all that weird stuff they do in the Winter Olympics.
Oh well. I guess some questions are more fun if they’re left unanswered.
