Your "How's that a sport?" moments

[teebeeohh]

Boxing is not a sport? How the hell do you make the ridiculous logical leaps to arrive at a conclusion that silly? It's physically exhausting, competitive and requires a ridiculous amount of skill and smarts at the highest levels. My wife used to think it was just two people wailng away at each other until she started paying attention to slow motion replays and started to grasp the ridiculous precision and timing of top level boxers. It's one of the purest forms of sport in existence and is also a highly effective martial art to boot.

Yeah, sorry, no epiphany, I still disagree. Even after watching slow-motion (and I do a lot of that, because my job involves a lot of various sports and so-called-sports stuff), I still see nothing more than two people hitting each other until one is knocked out cold, and a crowd all but calling "FINISH HIM!". It's a display of violence in my eyes. (those things have their own painter tho)

I don't have a problem if you see it as "one of the purest forms of sport in existence". I don't. Hope you have no problem with that.

so you dislike boxing because it's violent?
because it really is but it's not just two people hitting each other, just like all martial arts it involves a lot of technique and precision that the untrained observer will not pick up on. Most highly successful boxers are also quite smart, which makes them good partners in an interview and increases popularity.

 

[Julius Terrell]

Table tennis, seriously, i don't see fussball/tablesoccer/airhockey as sports.....

I would watch the fuck out of competitive airhockey at the Olympics.

I will throw a vote behind LoL or Starcraft

As a table tennis player, table tennis is pretty physically demanding at high levels of play. Most people never get good enough to get to that point. I vote for golf,cheerleading,bowling.

Also dance games can surely be a sport. The higher tier players have an inhumane amount stamina. These guys deserve far more recognition that they get. In the Groove and Pump it up. It takes real athletisism to be exceptional at those games.

Edit: Half of the so called sprorts they show on TV are full of lazy people who just happen to be good at throwing a ball or hitting one.

I'm a runner and I KNOW I derserve a hell of a lot of more respect than the people who make millions of dollars on TV. Talk about our society's priorities being backwards.

I run 15 miles 5 days a week, and people only say I'm exercising. WTF?????

 

[Techno Squidgy]

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?

It's motorsport as opposed to an actual sport. I don't know of anyone that actually considers it a sport in the same way of thinking as football, rugby, athletics, etc.

 

[cojo965]

i remember during the summer olympics, while eagerly awaiting the brazilian beach volley ball girls team, i saw a few strange "sports" in there. handball, water polo, something else... i dont remember.

Idk about you, but to me handball sounds like a really uncomfortable sex act.

 

[Julius Terrell]

I had to post this:


Edit:

This guy is the best In The Groove player in the world. His youtube channel is all the proof you'll ever need. I'm just sort of suprised that dance games didn't come up. Finally a video game can be considered a sport! Enjoy!

 

[DudeistBelieve]

I don't understand how figure skating and Freestyle Gymnastics are a sport but Professional Wrestling isn't.

Same damn thing, it's a dance. Dance on ice, dance on a trampoline, dance in a ring.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Hunting. Whether it's in a forest trying to shoot deer or in an enclosed space trying to shoot small flightless birds with shotguns 10 people and hounds. It's just a bullshit excuse to compensate for your own cowardice/lack of penis size.

 

[SSJBlastoise]

Just remembered that, even though it's not a sport, ESPN shows fucking spelling bees here. I mean what the actual fuck? I know contestants are smart but why is it shown on a sports channel?!? Also poker, I'm sure most people don't really consider them sports but I respect the skill they require but why are they shown on dedicated sports channels?

 

[sXeth]

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)?

If we're throwing in figure skating and gymnastics as sports, choreographed wrestling stunts are probably in the same general area. (Actually, most pro wrestling moves (beyond your punch/kicks) are pretty intense gymnastic or acrobatic maneuvers.


I've never really understood how all the Poker shows keep getting sports channel slots, myself.

 

[cojo965]

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?

If anyone would try, I would bet Roy Keane. That guy is a freaking maniac.

Oh, oh, oh, that's not right!

 

[Rick Oortwijn]

I don't get how people constantly make up their own definitions of sport.

Anyhow sport was invented as a form of training for war (ancient Greece, I think), the competitive element made for recruits to train harder, so as far as I'm concerned every "sport" that can be even the tiniest bit helpful for a soldier is a sport. So everything with cars, motorbikes, horses are sports, I mean you could go to war with horses or cars for that matter.

Every other "sport" that enhances strength, stamina or something like that is a sport, since being tougher helps in a war. As long as it has that competitive element in addition to it. So no staged wrestling.

Now I understand we don't use horses in wars anymore and being fitter doesn't nescessarily help you fight better, but it used to be and still can.

Sneaking up on enemies with your dressing horse, diving gracefully into the water when bullets surround you, race a bomb into enemy camp with your racecar. That sort of thing.

 

[Mouse One]

OT: I don't understand dressage. To me, it's just the horse doing everything. I have friends that ride and apparently it's hard, but it seems pointless to me.

A lot of bagging on dressage here. Never done it competitively, but no, it's not "the horse doing everything". It's kind of hard to explain how freaking difficult it is unless you ride, though. Horses at the top levels read the slightest movement, weight shift and pressure. Joe Sit on a Horse would have about as much chance of controlling one, much less competing as the average driver would have of driving a NASCAR at top speed-- if the NASCAR were an artificially intelligent machine that got seriously moody at times.

I admit, it does look goofy to the uninitiated. But for what it's worth, all the maneuvers have their origin in combat horsemanship. No really, think about it-- the ability to control your horse completely meant the difference between being positioned to whack and being whacked.

 

[themyrmidon]

Depends, are you carrying your clubs from hole to hole or wimping out and using a cart? If you walk the whole 18 holes, golf is a sport. If you ride then golf is most definitely not a sport.

I also really want to say curling, but I cant.

 

[Julius Terrell]

The more I hear about golf on TV, the more I want to puke. I mean these guys are clearly NOT athletic. If you can be overwieght and considered an athlete just because you can hit a little ball in a hole. I don't care how much skill it takes.

 

[mitchell271]

OT: I don't understand dressage. To me, it's just the horse doing everything. I have friends that ride and apparently it's hard, but it seems pointless to me.

I admit, it does look goofy to the uninitiated. But for what it's worth, all the maneuvers have their origin in combat horsemanship. No really, think about it-- the ability to control your horse completely meant the difference between being positioned to whack and being whacked.

I guess it's the same as rowing then. To those that don't row, it looks pretty easy and simple because it's just one movement over and over again. In reality, it's one of the hardest sports out there. At a regatta, it's unusual to have no one throw up after a race due to sheer exhaustion. When we do 2k's, we go through 7 minutes of physical hell. And 6k's might as well be a death sentence because it's a slightly slower pace (maybe -5sec/500m) compared to a 2k but it lasts 20 minutes instead, so it's supposed to be faster overall.

 

[MetaKnight670]

Olympic speed-walking.
Absolutely no clue why this was in the Olympics at all. Meanwhile baseball was taken out of the Olympics? (As far as I know anyways.)
Also darts I suppose. I mean I'm sure it takes skill and all and I am not very good myself but that's just my opinion.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

i remember during the summer olympics, while eagerly awaiting the brazilian beach volley ball girls team, i saw a few strange "sports" in there. handball, water polo, something else... i dont remember.

Idk about you, but to me handball sounds like a really uncomfortable sex act.

which brings us full circle back to me watching the brazilian girls beach volleyball team...

 

[DugMachine]

"professional rock, paper, scissors"

Yes, this is a thing. How there is any sort of skill involved besides 'reading' your opponent is beyond me. I'm sure they have fun and hell but please take it down a notch.

 

[Braedan]

Golfing, boxing, MMA, snowboarding/skiing, car racing and darts are not sports, no matter how hard fans try.

 

[cojo965]

i remember during the summer olympics, while eagerly awaiting the brazilian beach volley ball girls team, i saw a few strange "sports" in there. handball, water polo, something else... i dont remember.

Idk about you, but to me handball sounds like a really uncomfortable sex act.

which brings us full circle back to me watching the brazilian girls beach volleyball team...

Ba dum tish!