Your "How's that a sport?" moments

[Pieturli]

Golf. I get that its really fucking difficult, but come on. In my mind, a sport requires strenuous physical activity in addition to the competitive element. A golfer is playing a game, and I can't see them as athletes. Is someone who plays shuffleboard an athlete?

 

[smithy_2045]

Cricket, it´s just a waste of time..

You're just a waste of time!!!


I never liked sporting contest where the winner is determined by a judge's decision. It's too subjective for determining who wins IMO.

 

[Denamic]

"Sport is all forms of competitive physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical ability and provide entertainment to participants".

Thus, if there is a following to it, it involves physical exertion and win/loss conditions are defined, it could be a sport. Wanking contests could even be a sport if there was enough people behind it. They could even be put into the Olympics.

What in the actual fuck, world.

Anyway...chess and eSports.
Sitting on your arse, eating Doritos and living in horrible conditions is not sports.
They are only sport-like on the entertainment/following side of things.

Chess and e-sports are also physical activities that require physical ability. E-sports require intelligence, skill, and speed. All of them are physical abilities. Sports is not just something you need to exert your self physically. People that play e-sports dedicate a shitload of their time studying and practicing to keep their ability to play the game up to par. They don't just sit on their ass and eat doritos; they put actual effort into it. Doesn't really matter what you think about it though. They're sports no matter how much you don't want them to be.

 

[Candidus]

Racing. Not like track and field, I get that. I mean auto racing. I just don't get how that is actually a sport. A competition, sure. But a sport?

Also, e-sports as a genre. Sorry, League of Legends, I enjoy you, but you're not a sport.

I agree with you on League of Legends, but not on e-sports in general.

Starcraft II is like any other olympic sport (including chess). It is a competitive endeavour that takes the athlete to the very limit of human capabilities. If someone is willing to call Chess a sport, but not Starcraft 2, that's simply prejudice and/or ignorance.

If someone calls neither Chess nor Starcraft II a sport, then that's just a fundamental disagreement we've got there.

 

[NightmareExpress]

Chess and e-sports are also physical activities that require physical ability. E-sports require intelligence, skill, and speed. All of them are physical abilities. Sports is not just something you need to exert your self physically. People that play e-sports dedicate a shitload of their time studying and practicing to keep their ability to play the game up to par. They don't just sit on their ass and eat doritos; they put actual effort into it. Doesn't really matter what you think about it though. They're sports no matter how much you don't want them to be.

Everything that you could possibly do is a physical activity, but are you honestly suggesting that chess requires physical ability? Other than moving a piece on the board and pressing a timer button, it does not. Even if a person was reduced to a head in a jar in the far future there would be a way for them to compete thanks to technology.

I posted the definition of what a sport is, and a shocking amount of them actually require somebody to be really healthy to get somewhere. When I look at the average eSport player/professional gamer, I do not often see a picture of good health. A lot of them would appear to be stunningly average to unhealthy, oftentimes a result of their "practicing" it would seem. Malnutrition, bad blood flow, heart conditions and sleep deprivation are quite common in professional gaming sects (or at least overseas).

This is in broad comparison to almost every other sport out there which requires good overall health as a standard.
Full body workouts and full body integration in the competition, with the goal of improving health alongside skill. If finger twaddling, time burning and intelligence is what constitutes something as a sport, then I'm a goddamn gold medal Olympian when it comes to the eSport of coding.

eSports are eSports. Not sports. They are sport-like, but they're still not sports.
You can convince yourself that they are, in the same way that I denounce golf.

 

[Heronblade]

Curling (especially this one, and it somehow squirmed into the Olympics to boot)

staged wrestling

dressage

 

[omega 616]

Darts, if you can drink a pint while playing, it's not a sport

How anyone can look at darts and think it's a sport is beyond me... The hardest part is the maths.

It's not like the pros are even that good, it's like they get 180 only 1 in every 20 attempts.

 

[SSJBlastoise]

if you can drink a pint while playing, it's not a sport

Well, to be honest, you can do that with just about every sport, just takes a certain amount of skill

 

[Denamic]

Chess and e-sports are also physical activities that require physical ability. E-sports require intelligence, skill, and speed. All of them are physical abilities. Sports is not just something you need to exert your self physically. People that play e-sports dedicate a shitload of their time studying and practicing to keep their ability to play the game up to par. They don't just sit on their ass and eat doritos; they put actual effort into it. Doesn't really matter what you think about it though. They're sports no matter how much you don't want them to be.

Everything that you could possibly do is a physical activity, but are you honestly suggesting that chess requires physical ability? Other than moving a piece on the board and pressing a timer button, it does not. Even if a person was reduced to a head in a jar in the far future there would be a way for them to compete thanks to technology.

I posted the definition of what a sport is, and a shocking amount of them actually require somebody to be really healthy to get somewhere. When I look at the average eSport player/professional gamer, I do not often see a picture of good health. A lot of them would appear to be stunningly average to unhealthy, oftentimes a result of their "practicing" it would seem. Malnutrition, bad blood flow, heart conditions and sleep deprivation are quite common in professional gaming sects (or at least overseas).

This is in broad comparison to almost every other sport out there which requires good overall health as a standard.
Full body workouts and full body integration in the competition, with the goal of improving health alongside skill. If finger twaddling, time burning and intelligence is what constitutes something as a sport, then I'm a goddamn gold medal Olympian when it comes to the eSport of coding.

eSports are eSports. Not sports. They are sport-like, but they're still not sports.
You can convince yourself that they are, in the same way that I denounce golf.

You don't seem to understand that intelligence and skill are physical abilities. Also, the best e-sport pros are actually in decent shape, because they exercise to keep their head clear. People like Idra and WhiteRa are not unhealthy.

 

[Bomberman4000]

Cheerleading, Golf, Bowling, are my big three.

Don' get me wrong, I love bowling and I love golf, and despite what people my think it does take a good amount of coordination and precision to be good at both, but they're not sports. They're games, leisure activities.


I don't want to rile any female feathers, but cheerleading is not a sport. Yes it takes an incredible amount of physical strength, flexibility, and agility to do competitive cheerleading, but it's scored on a completely objective basis, what you do has NO impact on what someone else does, and most of the routines are glorified floor routines that gymnasts do in the olympics. To me that is not a sport.

To me sports are more about the direct competition. What I do changes how you play the game, and what you do changes how I play. You can keep me from winning, and I can make you lose.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Uh, baseball always seemed a bit ridiculous to me. You hit a ball from a spot and if it connect you run around in circles before the other team catches it... I dunno, it never clicked with me. It's really boring.

 

[omega 616]

if you can drink a pint while playing, it's not a sport

Well, to be honest, you can do that with just about every sport, just takes a certain amount of skill

No, it would be like eating a meal on a roller coaster, you can try but you'll just make a mess. With racing there is G forces, swimming is obvious, tennis would cause spills everywhere and it's not like you could drink and play.

In darts you can throw, sip, throw, sip, throw, sip, collect. What are going to do in football? Run around with a pint, sipping between passes?

 

[Longstreet]

Snip

No wonder you don't consider THAT a sport.
Never seen a pattern done so bad, except by new beginner.


Now this however, is done properly. and trust me, you are completely exhausted after half a minute.
Takes precision, concentration, definite skill and a whole lot more

Please do watch the whole video.


OT:
E-sports.

 

[Heronblade]

Curling (especially this one, and it somehow squirmed into the Olympics to boot)

staged wrestling

dressage

Careful there. Most of the WWE personnel are in much better shape than many pro athletes in other sports. Just because the match is scripted does not make the physicality of the match any less real. Getting dropped on your head from 12 feet up onto a mostly unyielding surface is not fakeable. Honestly, WWE performers have a more physically grueling schedule than any athlete alive (Doing a match 300 days out of the year, what other sport does that)?

Sports are not theatre, it is as simple as that. The moment an event is predetermined rather than left up to the participants' personal ability and decisions, it ceases to be a sport, regardless of how physically demanding it is.

In that sense, I would actually claim that WWE has more in common with a beauty pageant or a soap opera than an MMA fight.

 

[Thaluikhain]

IMHO, to me, a sport is any physical activity where it can be impartially decided who the winner is.

For example, if the winner is determined to be "first one to reach point B from point A", then that's fine, anyone can read the rules, look at the results, and work out who won.

Likewise, if it's the person/team with the most points from doing X,Y and Z. You can tell who that is. Maybe some referees to keep an eye of things and make sure the rules are being followed, but otherwise the spectators could independantly determine who has won, even if the points system is strange and convoluted.

When you need expert judges to give marks, especially when you need a bunch of them because they can't all agree, then, IMHO, it's not a sport.

 

[SSJBlastoise]

No, it would be like eating a meal on a roller coaster, you can try but you'll just make a mess. With racing there is G forces, swimming is obvious, tennis would cause spills everywhere and it's not like you could drink and play.

In darts you can throw, sip, throw, sip, throw, sip, collect. What are going to do in football? Run around with a pint, sipping between passes?

First, I am going to point out my comment was a joke but seeing as it seems you took it seriously I can point out that I said "just about every sport" which doesn't mean everyone. Now, swimming, yes, that would be impossible. Racing is 100% possible (very dangerous though). How do you think they stay rehydrated as they race for hours at a time? A lot of racing categories have methods that allow the driver to drink water (through straws in the helmet) so it would be easy to replace water with alcohol. With tennis you can play but like you said there would be spills but who says you need to take the game seriously.

The reason I mentioned taking the game seriously is because in the darts tournaments on TV I haven't seen one of them drink alcohol. I will acknowledge that after a quick search there was a problem with it but the Professional Darts Corporation wants competitors to only drink water.