SPORT

THE DEFINITION OF SPORT

For an activity to be considered a sport it must satisfy four standards. These criteria are as follow.

1. It must have a competition.
2. It must have a social comparison.
3. It must have universal rules.
4. It must have an uncertain outcome.

Call a competition what you will, a struggle, a race, a meet, or a match. Competition illuminates the better entrant. This point rarely goes contested (ha-ha, get it…).

Sports have standards which must be considered.

A social comparison means there are two parties who interact as a result of the competition. If nobody watched sports, there would be no point in the clash. Originally sports were invented to compare soldiers. The contests were less costly than the alternative, war. From these contests, the Olympic Games were born. This is where athletes gained their name; a citizen of Athens, Greece (Perrottet, 2004).  

Universal rules happen to be the standard I am opposed on most frequently. Look at it like this, if we have a football (soccer for the Americans nobody plays American football in China) game in China played by different rules than a game played in Brazil the two games cannot be compared fairly. NFL and NCAA rule differ in American football. The games are not the same so they cannot be compared equitably. World-wide, common, general, and unanimous are several synonyms for universal.

The WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is classified as entertainment because there is no uncertain outcome. It is scripted to degree or totally. If the game is “fixed” or “rigged” it is not a sport.

This is the working scientific definition of sports in the sports sciences realm. Scientists once stated that the world was flat. We must explore these standards and expand on our identifiable definitions of sports. Without standards, there are no baselines. Without baselines, we have no points of comparison.

The social comparison more often than not concludes in argument. Different opinions result in disagreements. This is why competition exists. To end the comparison of opinions with conclusive evidence. The New England Patriots are the best team in the NFL this year. I was rooting for the Falcons but somehow knew it was not to be so. Up 21-0 I was ever so confident. The Falcons’ strength and conditioning coaches need to do more work on the strength side of things. They ran out of skills and concentration when they ran out of strength. There’s an opinion for you!

-         Doc

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References

Doc. (2017, February 6). docs-gym.com. Retrieved from docs-gym.com.

Perrottet, T. (2004). https://books.google.com/books?id=B2VPMUBAxUUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PR17#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=B2VPMUBAxUUC&source=gbs_navlinks_s.