Quote:
Originally Posted by Newkie
I appreciate I'm probably not going to add a whole lot to this debate, but I'm just going to come out and say what I feel, which is no. So many real life situations you could apply to being competitive, or playing for cash or whatever. Are these tournaments? Sure, why not. But why do they have to be labelled a sport. Does it genuinely matter to someone who partakes in this if they are considered an athlete or not? If they are worried about some sort of social stigma or a lack of recognition because what they do isn't considered a sport well, that won't go away if it did become listed at the olympics because it would still be considered a bit of a joke.
Like Curling.
I mean can't you pretty much list anything as a sport against the initial criteria? If you go out on a Saturday and try and pull, do you think of yourself as a sportsman? You're engaging in physical (albeit often ridiculous) activity, competing with others for the "gold medal", those who are the best often become "Popular" whether in social circles or because of modern society-actual celebrities ala Jersey Shore/Geordie Shore/The Valleys. They have spectator audiences-people will often wonder "what's he doing that I'm not?" or they will gauge female reactions and try and figure out their own approach later. Finally there is a depth to it, you need good motoring and conversational functions and whether these be impaired by a beverage or aided by recreational drug use, you need to keep your focus and your eyes on the prize.
Forget all that-is trying to have sex and then having sex considered a sport? Because if so we can just all be athletes and be done with it. I realise I'm probably coming across as an insincere **** here GB but it was the easiest example I could find. And this isn't taking anything away from games or gamers, I'm all over that ****.
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Lets say we try to define sex as a sport.
The immediate problem we run into is -
1 - Winning at sex is subjective. Just having sex is not a winning condition. There must be a degree by which one can compete with others - is that bar number of orgasms had, number of times had sex, number of places had sex in, etc etc? By which metric can one beat "competition" in order to become a world champion of sex?
2 - Assuming one defines such a metric, how does one verify it? Is there a system in place which defines and specifies the conditions by which one can be agreed to have achieved the set goal, and can be relied upon to not be erroneous or otherwise biased? Other sports use either a points based system of definite moments, such as goals, baskets, shots on target, etc. In subjective disciplines an impartial panel of judges is chosen and their scores averaged to provide a fair representation.
3 - Assuming we have both of those things, to who do we turn if there is a disagreement with the set criteria, or if someone is suspected of illegitimate play (IE hiring prostitutes when the rules forbid it)? In a sport, there is a body, set of bodies, or a multiple of bodies that may run concurrent, independent, or joint events, to whom competitors can turn in the event of a need for external arbitration.
Note, that a casual fling or one night stand or even a committed relationship, has none of these attributes - this doesn't devalue those things, but it does prevent them from being a consistent and self-contained sport. Same for games - a casual game of Quake with friends isn't bound by any of these attributes save for the rules of the game itself (Which are frequently modified by the whims of those involved, for example players challenging each other to melee only matches, or imposing voluntary weapon restrictions for the sake of fun.) This doesn't devalue a casual game of quake, but it does mean that it's not eSport.
In the same way, a casual kickabout with your mates falls to the same thing - that doesn't mean you can't have fun, doesn't mean its better or worse exercise, nor does it mean you shouldn't do it whenever you feel like, but it does mean you can't describe yourself as a sportsman/woman just for the sake of having invited your mates for some 5 a side.