Sport - A New Definition

So I'm channel flipping and I come across a hotdog eating contest on ESPN. 


A hotdog eating contest.


That shouldn't have surprised me when I recall that I've recently watched a spelling bee, snowmobile and airplane races (separate, not racing each other, as cool as that would be), poker, billiards, skeet shooting, and fishing all on the same network.


Now, I'll grant this--the E in ESPN does stand for entertainment, and those things are no doubt entertaining to some segment of the viewing public. I love airplane races and did get sucked into a riveting half hour of spelling where I at least once shouted at the TV, "Get the language of origin!" So I'm not suggesting such things aren't entertaining or competitive. They can be. I just can't help but wonder if there shouldn't be clearer lines drawn, lines that would separate things like rugby from kids spelling words-you've-never-heard-before or football from men playing card games. ESPN is the sports network, right? There should be clearer lines around this stuff, right?


I think, yes. So I'm going to help ESPN by proposing some new lines, a change in the definition of the word sport. This should help their programming decisions immensely.


Here it is...


Sport: n. an activity in which two or more participants engage in all of the following: 1) they compete with each other directly; i.e. both competitors are present simultaneously in the area of play; 2) it's athletic: a majority of the body's muscles must be skillfully utilized; 3) there is a ball (or some other object: e.g. puck, shuttlecock) that acts as the central point of contest; and 4) there is a clear method of scoring that does not require a third-party judge (referees and umpires notwithstanding).


That's it. Four simple criteria that anyone can apply to any competitive situation for a quick assessment as to its sportness. No more guessing, doubting, guffawing. It's black and white.


This doesn't mean there aren't athletes in other activities. This isn't about that, it's about semantics. I'm just not going to refer to those activities any longer as sports, and it's my hope that the world will join me. Boxing, biking, skiing, all forms of racing--these are not sports. Are there athletes competing in them? You bet. They're just not athletes competing in sports; they're competing in...well, boxing, biking, skiing, and racing. Competitive activities, but not sports.


It's a realigning of categories, that's all.


So the biggies are still in: football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis, cricket--yes, cricket--rugby (trying to think internationally). These all meet the criteria. They're all sports. Admittedly, the new definition does allow for some questionable entries--ping pong, for example. At the gut level, ping pong (or anything else you can do in your basement) just doesn't seem like a sport. 


But wait! We don't need the gut any longer. The objective criteria will tell us. Two competitors directly and athletically involved in a clearly score-able contest using a ball? Yep, ping pong's a sport. How about skateboarding--is that a sport? Let's see, two or more participants in the same space? Nope. Is it athletic? Yes. A ball? No. Is it self-score-able or do you need a Judge? Judge, so no again. That's one out of four, folks. Skateboarding's not even close to being a sport. Not anymore. We all knew that intuitively, but now we can say it to the punks in front of 7-11 with some confidence. 

So congratulations to ping pong and dodgeball. Apologies to my many golfing friends (you lost sports status on point #1). But guys, you knew all along didn't you? Deep down, I mean, you knew that anything you could do while drinking that much beer could not possibly be a sport. 

ESPN, I look forward to seeing what you do with this. You're Welcome.

Sports II

H.G. Wells imagined a world where the globalists could quietly go about their business of world dominance because the masses - that's you and me - would be too busy cheering on their local deities as they competed in gladiator-type games in giant stadiums.


I think of that when I see this commercial: it's the one where the guy's watching NFL on TV, and as he walks out of the room he grabs the TV and folds it up into a laptop, then it becomes a phone, then he arrives wherever he's going and it's a TV again. The point being that you can always be watching the NFL, no matter where, no matter what, no matter the season.


I think about it because that commercial scares me as much as Wells does.


I get the feeling sometimes that sports are hypnotizing us. I watch ESPN and think, "these are really smart people spending their whole lives analyzing boys' games played by adults." (they used to be boys' games, then college sports came along, then pros; and all of that is relatively modern). Have you ever listened to a good sports analyst? It's like listening to a scientist or an economist or any expert on a topic complex enough to be analyzed. It's really quite impressive when the person knows his stuff.


I mean, what are we doing? Aren't there worthier endeavors? Wouldn't studying the stock market bring more happiness and prosperity to humanity? Or what about teaching? If those smart guys on espn had all gotten their degrees in teaching or went on to be college professors teaching other teachers, maybe our educational woes would be less woeful. Maybe. Or what if they all gave up their sports and put their heads together to stop global warming. Is there global warming? Or are we getting colder? Yeah, they could answer those questions first. And what about time travel, or flying cars, or toilet seats that aren't cold in the morning, or pot-hole-proof roads? 

What's the opportunity cost here for humanity by having smart people commit their lives to studying sports? Think about this: just maybe, locked away in some sports analyst's head, is the cure for---sorry, gotta go. Top Ten Plays are on. 


Silly H.G. Wells.

Sports

My son wants to be a professional athlete. He's not particular about the sport - football, baseball, basketball - he'd take any job. I tell him that no one makes it to the big leagues except freaks (the ratio of pro athletes to regular folks qualifies them as freaks), but that doesn't make much difference.

My first instinct when he brings this up is to belittle sports because they're frivolous. They don't manufacture a product like the auto industry does or provide a needed service like a plumber. They don't serve anyone in meaningful ways like a doctor or teacher or social worker does. But then he plays his trump card. He says this to me...

He says, "But Dad, what about Tim Tebow?"

Tebow is to the you-shouldn't-be-a-pro-athlete argument, what dynamite is to rock/paper/scissors--nothing beats it. It's also not fair, just like dynamite.

The Tebow model for justifying a career in pro sports, in case you're not familiar with it, goes like this: professional sports provides a platform for Christian influence, ministry, and evangelism that no other industry provides. Just as look at what Tim's done with it! It has to be good and right! Right?

Like I said, it's unfair.

Here's why: Tebow's justification doesn't work as the justification for a career in sports because it puts the same Tebow expectation on any and every professional Christian athlete. Not everyone is called to be a pastor or teacher or evangelist. Not everyone is called to be Tim Tebow. Some are called to Jason Hansons. Quiet, steady, rock-solid Jason Hansons.

Would it be un-Christian to quietly go about your athletic career, working hard, working as unto the Lord, without praise, and doing it in such ways that only your teammates and coaches know anything about your faith? If the answer is no, if it wouldn't be un-Christian, then the Tebow model doesn't stand up as the justification for such a career. It may be his, but not everyone's, and not necessarily my boy's. If the answer is yes...well, the answer's not yes, it's no.

So there must be more to our choice of vocation than the potential leverage for proclaiming the gospel.

I look again at my gut objection, that pro athletes "don't serve anyone in meaningful ways like a doctor or teacher or social worker does." As I think about the nature of work, I realize that my perceptions of value here are arbitrary. My gut tells me that the work of a doctor is intrinsically more valuable than that of a mechanic, whose work is more valuable than that of a pro athlete, whose work might be just a smidge better than a Hollywood actor.

Why do I think that? I shouldn't think that.

If I work in a plant in Louisville producing baseball bats, will I be doing more valuable work than playing the game for a paying audience? Less valuable? Is writing code for an actuarial table intrinsically better than writing it for a computer game? If so, how does the line get drawn? If not, why do we find it so easy to draw such lines?

I've always thought, and so told my kids, that a career in professional sports is silly and beneath one's dignity. Now, I'm not so sure. Jobs have become so specialized and fragmented that it's hard to qualify one as noble and another as silly. There are extremes, of course, and those tend to be easier to classify. A farmer works hard and feeds people. That's a good job and a no-brainer, right? A drug-dealer or day-time talkshow host destroys lives--his own and others. No-brainer, again. But between the two, where most of us work, it gets difficult. And I think it's difficult because, extremes notwithstanding, it's a futile exercise. To try to assign some value to work based on its cosmic good, or whatever, is just silly. It breaks down as soon as you look closely at it.

If Joe works in a factory producing picture frames, does he need to discern the empirical value of picture frames in society in order to determine the value of his work? We don't need picture frames, not really. They're nice but not necessary. But if Joe stops his thinking there, then he's sunk. He's living a wasted life. On the other hand, if Joe remembers that he's providing for his family through "honest" work, that God hasn't prohibited us from making picture frames (not that I'm aware of), that he's exercising dominion over the earth by subduing raw materials and creating something useful, then Joe has a career to be proud of. One of the leading Christians of the church in Philippi was Lydia, a seller of purple. Does anyone really need purple? No, but God made purple, so it's good. There's no scriptural prohibition against it, and as far as we know, God left her alone to keep selling it.

So maybe the criteria for work's value is not an empirical quality of the service or product, but something in the act of working itself. But that begs a question: what is the something?

The answer to that helps me draw my lines clearly. The something is faith. Paul says in Romans 14, "whatever does not proceed from faith is sin." And what is faith? Believing that God's word is true and that it's our only guide in all of life. If my son's choice (should he have the opportunity) to become a pro athlete proceeds from that, genuinely proceeds from that, then who am I to stop him?

Of course, he'd have to play on Sundays.

Hmm...maybe I need to check my gut again.