sport – A game or competition between two or more willing opponents where each side has the ability and opportunity to react and impact the other’s actions. The final result should leave no room for judgment or interpretation.

You won’t find this definition in Webster’s. It’s completely my own creation.

Most fans probably won’t agree with my terminology, but I feel it makes more sense than the terms we as fans often toss about without consideration.

I’m a fan of sports. Baseball. Football. Hockey. Basketball. Tennis. Curling. Chess. Sports one and all.

Golf? Bowling? Figure skating? Gymnastics? Entertaining and difficult to master, but non-sports across the board.

So now you’re sitting there digesting my seemingly preposterous few lines of blather and thinking, this guy is nuts. Tiger Woods is clearly an athlete but doesn’t play a sport? What about all those Olympians we trot out every four years? Surely they are all athletes.

Well, yes. There are plenty of folks considered athletes that don’t actually play a sport. (Go Check out www.Canon-Fodder.com for another article where I come up with the definition of an athlete.)

I think the best way to approach this is to look at games we don’t consider sports and work forward. Let’s start with something involving a certain measure of skill and can be performed competitively, but lacks the qualities of a sport. Take juggling. It’s definitely a skill. With practice, one could become an extraordinary juggler. A person could “challenge” someone to a juggling contest. Maybe the most balls (or flaming pins or chainsaws, the material doesn’t really matter) in the air wins. Keeping half-a-dozen running chainsaws airborne is certainly a feat of considerable skill, but that hardly makes it a sport. If your opponent is not permitted to impact your performance then does it even matter if there’s an opponent? Whether in a competitive setting or in a relaxed practice setting, the act would be exactly the same – the performer can either juggle a designated amount of items or he can’t. The only real opponent to juggling is gravity, not another juggler.

Bowling and golf are excellent examples of this principle. In bowling, the biggest impact a player can have on an opponent’s game is by drying out a certain area of the lane. (And bowling facilities do their best to combat this.) On approach, one bowler isn’t allowed to distract or impede the other. There are rules strictly against that type of behavior. The same goes for golf.

Another telling aspect of these “non-sports” is how opponents don’t even have to play against each other simultaneously. A golfer could shoot a 68 and then have an opponent come back and beat them by shooting a 67 the following day. The only thing the two players had in common was playing the same course. Bowling is similar in that a bowler throws 270 on lanes 1-2 and loses to a guy throwing a 280 on lanes 23-24.

Some readers will argue that players like Tiger Woods can intimidate opponents when going head-to-head. Sure, but isn’t that really an example of a player psyching themselves out? It’s not like there’s the threat of Woods tackling the player as he sets up for a winning put. It’s the golfer versus the course. When it’s man versus an inanimate object, it’s no longer sport. (I’m intentionally leaving the door open for miniature golf, but only the holes that fight back – windmills, moving clown faces and such. That’s when a course is doing its unknowing best to prevent a player from winning. That’s right; Putt-Putt is more of a sport than PGA golf. There. I said it. Of course, a Putt-Putt course isn’t necessarily a “willing participant” so miniature golf is right back to being a non-sport.)

So if golf and bowling are out of the realm of “sports”, how can we classify them? I say we acknowledge the skills necessary to play these games effectively – one can even argue those playing these games at the highest level are athletes, but these are nothing more than skills competitions. They are hardly different than an eating or jump rope contest.

This brings us to hunting and fishing and tests of man versus animal. Though animals offer more of a challenge than a non-moving golf course, it’s hardly two opponents squaring off in a winner-takes-all. Hunter versus a charging rhino? Okay, failure has serious repercussions for both participants. Hunter versus deer? I’ve never felt threatened in the few years I’ve been in deer camp. The whole hunting as sport concept falls apart when you realize the animals don’t really want to participate. They’re doing so against their will. (And fish striking a lure is instinct, not a conscious decision to engage the alcoholic in the waders in an epic battle of wits. Keep in mind, the typical fish has a brain the size of a pea meaning both contestants are at least on even footing intellectually.)

So what about those games we don’t think of typically as sports? Say checkers? Red versus black. Jump an opponent and they’re off the board. Winner-takes-all. I would call this dance of offensive and defensive strategy a sport. Chess falls under the same guise.

How about a barroom game like quarter bounce? One player’s ability to sink a shot indirectly affects the opponent (they have to drink) thus impeding their offensive ability. Verdict: sport.

Auto-racing? A driver can purposely place their car in the way of another and prevent them from passing. That obviously impacts an opponent’s game. Sport.

Olympic long jump? Non-sport. The guy that can jump the farthest wins. There’s nothing one participant can do (within the rules) to prevent another from giving his best possible effort.

100-meter sprint? Because each runner is confined to their own lane, it really doesn’t make a difference as they’re not allowed to make contact with other runners. Non-sport.

And while we’re on Olympic non-sports, I’m going to wrap-up by taking a few pokes at gymnastics and figure skating, two obvious non-sports. Sure, they take an incredible amount of athletic skill to perform, but it doesn’t make them sports. Being a circus performer employs a similar athletic skill set, but we’re not handing goal medals to Buckles the Clown. Why? Because he’s not competing with anyone. A clown is performing aesthetically versus competing.

Isn’t that really what is taking place in gymnastics and figure skating? One could argue gymnasts and skaters are forced to perform certain moves and tasks in their routines and they would have a point. But then the judges get to voice their opinions and there should be as little room as possible in sports for opinions. How many times have we seen a technically perfect gymnastic routine downgraded because the gymnast lacked a degree of grace?

Does anybody recall the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer? Oksana “The little orphan girl” Baiul bailed out of nearly every technical aspect of her routine and took home the gold because she of “artistic impression”. Nancy “Ow, my knee” Kerrigan actually completed a more technically difficult routine without error but lacked Baiul’s innocent presence. That and Kerrigan was impeded by having two living parents.

My point? When outside influences are directly factored into determining a winner, the competition in question is automatically suspect and should not be considered a sport. The Salchow jump takes incredible skill to pull off, but that doesn’t make figure skating a sport. Olympic figure skating is little more than Disney on Ice tryouts with a medal ceremony thrown in.

I’m sure some of you are going to disagree with Canon Fodder’s assessment of the sports landscape and I welcome your feedback. Is there a hole in my logic?

Come to the site and point it out. If you can change my mind I might even include you in a future rebuttal article.

But who are we kidding here? You know I’m right.

Come visit www.Canon-Fodder.Com where I also have a post where I separate the athletes from the non-athletes.