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On What Constitutes a Sport

Michael Ceraolo

Many activities are called sports
I offer three criteria I believe necessary
for an activity to be called a sport;
they are not listed here in order of importance,
none is predicated on another,
all must be met

One.
Objective judging must be more important
than subjective judging; i.e.,
if artistic merit is the primary thing being judged,
it’s not a sport
Thus, figure skating, diving, gymnastics,
and most so-called extreme sports fall short
This isn’t to say that those who those aren’t athletic,
or that objective judging is always correct,
or that mistakes made don’t affect the outcome,
only that no amount of corruption
from French or Soviet-bloc official
can turn a flyball caught by the outfielder into a homerun,
or say that a basket witnessed by the world wasn’t a basket
(okay, a rare exception or two on the basket example)

Two.
The person using the equipment must be more important
than the equipment being used;
thus, any ‘motor’ sport falls short,
but, say, bicycling does not:
I could have the highest-tech bike imaginable,
Lance Armstrong could have an old no-tech Schwinn,
and he would still win by a wide margin

Three.
There must be some period of time,
no matter how short that period,
when a person is approaching maximum physical capacity;
where such capacity is never remotely approached
(golf, bowling, darts, poker, etc.)
the activity can’t be considered a sport

Let the debate begin

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