What Defines a Sport and Why Does it Matter?

It must be a slow summer in the sports world. After recently watching ESPN coverage of a hot dog-eating contest, I wondered to myself what the next ridiculous activity will be that gets crammed into the already overcrowded sphere of "sport." Let's think about it. We have competitive eating, poker, ballroom dancing, disc (Frisbee) golf, fishing, and a thousand other activities and pastimes that have suddenly become worthy of consideration as a sport. The traditional giants--football, baseball, and basketball--still sit atop the sports world, but they continually lose ground to challengers once considered to be mere amusements. The popularity of the X-Games continues to grow, poker has made it onto network TV, and now man's propensity for overeating has edged its way into what was once believed to be impenetrable territory. And I shouldn't even have to remind anyone of the National Spelling Bee craze!

This phenomenon should force us to consistently reevaluate what it means to be a sport. Is it just the combination of strategy, physical skill, and training that vaults something into the kingdom of sport? If so, then all of the above have some degree of each. Wait... I was a district spelling bee champion in sixth grade and I don't recall much physical strain in rising from out of a chair and standing in front of a microphone. Nervousness, yes. But I don't know if too many spelling contestants peruse their word lists while on the bench press. Yet the "Bee" receives national coverage as the Superbowl in the strange land of competitive spelling. Thus, physical skill is not required to change an activity into a sport. They say that competitive eaters train year round. I used to be 40 pounds overweight and once hit up a Taco Bell three times between 5-10 pm. Now I realize that I wasn't fat. I was a gifted athlete in training.

It must be that magical element of competition that transforms something like cow-chip tossing into a sport. Put one person against another, regardless of what they're doing, add a little money to sweeten the pot, and wait for ESPN to come knocking on your door. I can see it now. I'll finally break down and by the 60-inch behemoth flat screen so I can invite my friends over for the big rock-skipping championship party. Analysts will wonder aloud whether the size of the waves on the water will affect Johnny's throwing motion while a color commentator narrates Paul's improbable rise to rock-skipping stardom. "He was just a boy on the shores of Lake Michigan...."

Should it bother us that there seems to be no definitions, no ground rules, in deciding what to make a sport? I say, emphatically, yes. First, real sports lost something special the day that someone decided that bass fishing, ice dancing, and skateboarding deserved to share the same title as football or hockey. It meant something to work hard enough to become a pro sports star. You were a rarity, a physical specimen with a skill level few people could match. Now networks that brought us the exploits of Michael Jordan and Walter Payton bring us the exploits of someone lucky enough to correctly decide when to fold or keep bluffing. You can't make it as a baseball player? Fine. Just put on your extra baggy sweatpants and stuff hot dogs in your mouth until someone gives you the same amount of airtime and notoriety.

Yet allowing anyone to become a "sport star" sends a dangerous message to our youth. Pleas to stay in school because few people make it to the pros now fall on deaf ears more than ever. Kids know that if football doesn't work out, they can fall back on competitive mountain-bike riding rather than on geometry and algebra. The poor schlub that's too lazy to learn his three R's, now knows that three Jacks makes a great poker hand and might get him a big paycheck.

I'll admit it. Many of the activities that I'm degrading take a good deal of talent in some area or another. I know bass fishermen use strategy, must know the seasonal patterns of their prey, and understand how weather, fishing pressure, water clarity, and a million different other factors affect their searches. Heck, I love to bass fish and realize how tough it is sometimes. But I still know that it isn't a sport in the true sense of the word. To me, names like Denny Brauer, Tony Hawk, and Chris Moneymaker will never carry the same clout as Joe Montana, Wayne Gretzky, or Hank Aaron. Maybe they don't to anyone else, either. Maybe they never will. Yet when legendary sports teams like the Yankees, the Red Wings, and the Packers must share notoriety with teenagers on BMX bikes or card players wearing shades, a little piece of Americana disappears.

I don't know how to define a sport. The skills needed to excel in football and basketball are also required to excel at surfing and ice-dancing. The preparation, the physical exertion, and the strategy can all be seen to some degree or another. Maybe there is no way to pinpoint what makes a true sport a true sport. Maybe that, in the end, is it's definition. Deep down you just know a real sport when you see one.