What do you consider a sport?

Strictly based upon definitions

an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.

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So basically for an activity to be a sport it requires physical exertion. Now that is where things get muddy. You can say it requires athleticism. But then you can say baseball you don't really need to be super athletic. Even with football you can get away with not being super athletic if you're a lineman or a nose. So if you're going to simply say it requires your body doing something the list of things that can be sports opens up immensely.

I think most people would consider bocci a game not a sport but I think the hardest one to define to me is golf. I'd say since Tiger revolutionized the game it became a full fledged sport where athleticism dictated ability. But at the same time you can just be extremely honed with your movements and be extremely good at it without ever seeing a treadmill or a weight in your life.

But honestly its just arguing semantics and I don't really engage in arguments like that. Someone can define it one way and I can define it another. No big loss on either side.

I am sure Badminton, curlers sweat.


Does it require practice? Can you compete against another person? Could it be collectivized into a league? It then can be a sport.

I consider e-sports and the like to be a 'sport'. You can "play" pool, but it requires practice to be decent at it. It's a "game", until you practice and compete it at it. ANYTHING can be a sport, it all requires context.

I watch e-sports more than almost anyone but I don't call them sports. They're competitions. If you just say practice and competition = sport then literally you can say anything is a sport. 1 hour hack-a-thon? Sport. Competitive bird watching? Sport. At some point you have to draw the line to where the word has some meaning instead of sport being analogous to simply competition.

lendarios_sl said:

Most winter Olympics i don't consider sports, as they mostly entail letting gravity do its thing.

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Such as? Like do you not consider skiing to be a sport? Because that requires outstanding body control and lower body strength. I think once something starts requiring you to tone and mold your body to better perform it then the "sport" barrier is breached. Darts is not a sport because you could never see a gym or see a gym every day and it wouldn't matter. I'm arguing for golf recently breaching into being a sport because sport science is extremely hot in golf right now post-Tiger. Before Tiger it was just a bunch of drunk fat white guys swinging clubs.

I use game and sport as synonyms so I'm freed from debating this pointless ambiguity, thank god.

Are Nascar drivers athletes? They sweat, have to practice, use their muscles to do their thing...

Brahma_sl said:

You can make anything a sport then. But what wold YOU consider a sport. There is no athleticism in pool.

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Everything CAN be a sport. If i spent hours and hours a day making my mind and body the best pool player that can be, and I can play someone who does the same, then it is a sport.

I am sure there are dudes out there that work out, or super fat dudes get really sweaty and worked up over pool. It's a 100% subjective term.

I broke it down into my own categories several years ago.

A sport requires direct physical opposition, so basketball/baseball/football/rugby.
Anything with a judge is a competition. Cheerleading/figure skating/gymnastics.
Anything with a finish line is a race. NASCAR/marathons
Pretty much everything else is a game. Bowling/Golf/Pool/high-jump

Must combine three things.

1. Must include athletic and physical exertion.
2. Must include strategy directly against an opponent.
3. Must execute a combination of multiple skills.

I also like Djay's breakdown.

Having sex with your mom.

DJay has a good breakdown.

Still hate baseball and wouldn't call it a sport but I'm biased.

Brahma_sl said:

Not a real sport: [..] Badminton [...].

If there is no physicality to said sport then it isn't a sport. It's a game.

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Funny you would say that because badminton, along with squash, ranks among the most physically demanding sport there is, just under things like MMA or boxing. Badminton requires very good hand-eye coordination, explosiveness, balance, proprioception and cardio/endurance as the constant explosive movement with a lot of stop-and-go and jumping along with the core stability and explosive arm movement needed for the smashes, clears and drives are very taxing.

Double play is a little bit less demanding as far as endurance go as rallies tend to be shorter, but the athletic requirements as far as speed and nimbleness go are greatly increased.


I am a big fan of badminton and compete at regional amateur level, but I'll agree that badminton is not a very good spectator sport for a number of reasons and that in singles the top players are so good at moving efficiently and at reading their opponent's play that it seems kinda easy, when, in reality, it is anything but.

If you want to see some high level badminton, you can check the youTube channel of the badminton world federation:https://www.youtube.com/user/bwf/videosIt used to have archive for full matches as well as live streams for a number of tournaments, but it seems that is now region locked and not accessible in Switzerland. Not sure about the US.

lendarios_sl said:

sledding competition->is the same as car racing, don't consider it a sport since the equipment is more important than then person.
long sky jumping, just gravity really, and prey you dont break a leg.
curling self explanatory

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I know it's been well established previously, but you're a fucking moron. The vast majority of Winter Olympic events aren't ski jumping or bobsled:Winter Olympic Games - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not to mention that bobsledders, lugers, etc are basically sprint athletes. I'd agree that curling isn't really a sport, although like Tenks said about golf, in the past 10 years suddenly most professional curlers are now in excellent shape and don't look like Randy Ferbey. Otherwise pretty much every other Winter Olympic event is incredibly athletic, including figure skating (which I also have a hard time considering a sport, for different reasons, primarily the judging and "artistic" aspects). Go watch some training videos of Bode Miller and tell me that skiing is "just gravity".

lurkingdirk_sl said:

Are Nascar drivers athletes? They sweat, have to practice, use their muscles to do their thing...

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No:Dick Trickle smoking in the NASCAR car - YouTube

But in serious terms, I wouldn't consider Nascar drivers to be athletes. At least not very good ones. Formula One and MotoGP drivers? Absolutely. Those guys are in incredible shape. Nascar's "professionalizing" or whatever you want to call it as well like golf, but the nature of the sport (primarily driving on ovals with banked turns) doesn't have nearly the kind of forces acting on the drivers in road/street racing circuits. F1 and MotoGP drivers are constantly accelerating, braking, and turning in two directions. There are numerous Nascar drivers who have competed and been successful well in to their 40's and 50's. MotoGP and F1 guys are done by their early 30's like most other athletes, the occasional Schumacher aside. Again though, that's becoming less of a thing in Nascar as well, but there still is half a dozen Nascar drivers in their 40's today.