Disclaimer: Whenever I'm talking about these varying categories of what makes something a sport or not, mainly in my last post, I'm not saying that it's fact or even that I believe it, just different approaches to the topic. Because after all it means absolutely zero.
In my last blog post (hope you read it) I discussed different categorizations of sports and what could potentially make something a sport. Maybe you may have noticed I left out competitions with elements of subjectivity in them or at least high amounts of subjectivity involved. This is a big part in newly categorizing competition. The Olympic games just happened and you may notice that a interestingly high amount of the games are scored by judges, which makes it subjective based. These sports are Gymnastics, Diving, Synchronized Swimming, Trampoline, and many more. These are easy to say that they are subjective because there's no clear objective way to score points or rules. You can't mathematically judge or officiate the game, it must be a human with human behaviors. It's important because in all these events different people could think different things and that leads to disputes over who won, which team is better, and who is the best. Really illegitimatizes lots of statistics involved in my opinion.
Subjectivity is not a clear line at all though, even if it may appear to be. It's a spectrum. You have sports such as synchronized swimming that are all based on judges, and then darts where there's no way anyone could argue over opinion because it's all very clear. There's in between though, a big example being officials/refs/umpires in sports such as football, basketball, soccer, baseball, and more, almost every sport to varying degrees. So while there's a clear way to score without much dispute in basketball, there's still disputes over which events are fouls or not. And even further on the spectrum are fighting sports such as boxing, wrestling and UFC. They are mixes of both aspects because there are technical ways to win such as knocking out an opponent, but if that doesn't happen its up to judges to decide, and as I'm sure many of you are aware, that can end poorly often.
When I was young and we'd create backyard games with the extended family and due to hypercompetitivity any small crack in the rules would be exploited and result in endless arguing. If any rule was subjective neither team would admit they were in the wrong so we had no choice but to make all rules objective and clearly defined. As a result of this, I believe all competition should strive to have as little subjectivity as possible and the less it has the more of a "sport" it becomes. I'm very into ranking teams and players and comparing statistics and as I mentioned earlier, it's hard to compare that when its all a result of some dudes' opinions.
The question we (me) are all wanting to know the answer to is whether the level of subjectivity effects the sporty-ness of it or not. Not just me but I think many people believe it does, many people when asked if cheer leading or dancing, even in their competitive atmospheres are sports, they'll respond no, I think it's a valid opinion but many probably think otherwise. I just think such a beautiful part of competitive is the ways you can mathematically approach it and its much harder hwne subjectivity is involved.
Really lame post this week but next time I'm talking about solved forms of competition and how luck plays a role, will be very exciting. Thanks
I really liked this post. Your way of describing how sports are judged was very flowing and easy to understand. I'm excited for your next post!
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting question. Dance, for example, is not a "sport," even though it's a very competitive field (in terms of who gets places in top dance companies, etc.) But there are fields of endeavor very closely related to dance, like gymnastics and figure skating, that are considered sports. It's quite a blurry line. (Though I guess anything with an element of competition can theoretically be called a sport. I have a friend who runs a "World Series of Poetry" in SF every year, and it's not such a stretch, given the competitive nature of, say, slam poetry. There's also chess, which is not subjective, but few would consider it a sport, even though the IHSA does.)
ReplyDeleteI figure skate and used to be a gymnast, so this is an interesting view. I had never really thought much about how "subjectivity" affects different sports and it's cool to think about the ideas I encountered in your post. In addition, many people say that dance and gymnastics aren't sports, but they say so condescendingly, implying that something like football is better/harder. I really appreciate how you managed to explain your ideas in such a way that I never felt you had a bias against games that may not be sports, so great job on that. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI am looking forward to see how you deal with this. I am a Tae Kwon Do instructor and often times, we question the legitimacy of competition itself, not just the judging aspect of it. I enjoyed the personal spin you gave the post. Great job!
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