JoeBob
06-28-05, 04:50 PM
JT265 posted the following in the NHL thread:
Besides, without wheels and aero, it can't be a sport anyway, it's just merely a game.
This is actually a topic I've been thinking about quite a bit lately. About a month ago, I went to see the Killerspin Extreme Table Tennis Championship (http://www.killerspin.com/flash/killerspin_flash.html) and it left me wondering what I had just seen. The participants were athletes, but was it a sport?
I decided that athletes may participate in one of three types of events: Competitions, Games, and Sports.
Here's how I defined them:
A competition is an event that is judged. You can not merely watch and decide who won, a judgement needs to be made. For example, Figure Skating is a competition.
A game is something that has a definitive winner. No judgement is needed to decide who won. You can give someone the video tape, and it will be clear who the winner is. For example, the 100 meter dash is a game. I decided this is the category that the table tennis fell into.
A sport is a game or competition where there is a real possibility you may die. It doesn't have to be likely, but it has to be possible. Football, Hockey, and Auto Racing are sports.
This led me to some interesting realizations.
For example, I had a hard time categorizing basketball. I just couldn't see somebody getting killed playing basketball. This was the only major stick and ball sport that was a game, rather than a sport. You could have a heart attack while playing basketball, but in that scenario you wouldn't be killed by the game - you'd merely die while playing it.
Meanwhile, competitive eating was a sport. I don't know if anybody has actually died during a hot dog eating contest, but it seems to me that there is a very real possibility of choking to death.
Am I on to something here?
Besides, without wheels and aero, it can't be a sport anyway, it's just merely a game.
This is actually a topic I've been thinking about quite a bit lately. About a month ago, I went to see the Killerspin Extreme Table Tennis Championship (http://www.killerspin.com/flash/killerspin_flash.html) and it left me wondering what I had just seen. The participants were athletes, but was it a sport?
I decided that athletes may participate in one of three types of events: Competitions, Games, and Sports.
Here's how I defined them:
A competition is an event that is judged. You can not merely watch and decide who won, a judgement needs to be made. For example, Figure Skating is a competition.
A game is something that has a definitive winner. No judgement is needed to decide who won. You can give someone the video tape, and it will be clear who the winner is. For example, the 100 meter dash is a game. I decided this is the category that the table tennis fell into.
A sport is a game or competition where there is a real possibility you may die. It doesn't have to be likely, but it has to be possible. Football, Hockey, and Auto Racing are sports.
This led me to some interesting realizations.
For example, I had a hard time categorizing basketball. I just couldn't see somebody getting killed playing basketball. This was the only major stick and ball sport that was a game, rather than a sport. You could have a heart attack while playing basketball, but in that scenario you wouldn't be killed by the game - you'd merely die while playing it.
Meanwhile, competitive eating was a sport. I don't know if anybody has actually died during a hot dog eating contest, but it seems to me that there is a very real possibility of choking to death.
Am I on to something here?