why so many people seem to genuinely care so much/get so angry about what some (golfer/bowler/race car driver, etc.) considers his activity.

Not to mention what some traveler considers his personal space...

Hell, golf may be less than a sport than figure-skating.

If that's possible.

No. Figure skating *may* require more athletic ability, but it's judged, therefore disqualifying it from sporthood.

Now that the International Olympic Committee has declared poker a bona fide sport, golf looks pretty good in comparison.

Not to mention what some traveler considers his personal space...

That almost makes sense.

Finance hoodlums aren't generally evil. True evil is far more interesting than anything those guys can muster.

but it's judged, therefore disqualifying it from sporthood.

... I wish people around here used this standard when deciding whether or not to obsess about the baseball bbwaa awards.

Where would you put curling?

Game of skill. It's basically bocce or lawn bowling on ice. Nobody calls bocce a sport.

Maybe not, although neither lawn bowling or bocce involve anything close to the physical exertion of curling. It passes all of Baldrick's tests.

I generally like a good argument over anything, but I've never quite understood the need to determine conclusively what is/isn't a sport.

It's the categorical imperative!

honestly, I know that it's fun to make fun of finance guys, and I assume your comment was in jest, but as a finance guy, the assumption that you work in the field means you're an insufferable hoodlum kind of gets old. Sorry, not to get all serious, it's just frustrating.

"I thought with a job in finance, I'd be cool AND rich, but now I'm just rich. Woe is me."

Who says the MVP vote is a sport?

I've never quite understood the need to determine conclusively what is/isn't a sport. I've never figured out why so many people seem to genuinely care so much/get so angry about what some (golfer/bowler/race car driver, etc.) considers his activity."

I'm mostly bothered by the media. When I read statements like "Tiger cheating on his wife was the #1 sports story of the whole decade 2000-2009", I feel like reminding people that golf is not a sport (and even if it were, an athlete whoring around on his wife is not a sports story. It's celebrity gossip). Mostly I just dislike the media equating golf, horseracing and NASCAR with things that I actually watch and enjoy.

a) running - or perhaps just aerobic activity, b) meaningful interaction with your competitors, c) the realistic possibility that you could suffer some kind of injury (non repetitive stress variety) through a routine process of the game, d) at least some elements of the game aren't stationary.

That settles it. Sex is a sport, which means Tiger Woods really IS a great athlete.

I agree with #111 - this is not a sports story. It is celebrity gossip, where the celebrity happens to be an athlete. Tiger Woods winning X number of tournaments, that is a sports story. Tiger Woods' personal life, not a sports story.

Sports story of the decade: 2001 Seattle Mariners

or for a more extended storyline...

Tim Tebow/Florida dominating college football

"I thought with a job in finance, I'd be cool AND rich, but now I'm just rich. Woe is me."

I'll assume from your post that you're 0 for 2.

The global sports story of the decade is the the rise and fall of the Premier League.

Surfing.

Waves, not the 'net.

Who says the MVP vote is a sport?

i should have extrapolated it wider to something like: when it is sports related, but the outcome is decided by judges, it is lame. although that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

Waves, not the 'net.

But isn't it a shame that there isn't a pro tour for Web Surfing?

I'll assume from your post that you're 0 for 2.

I'll agree that the prospect of sparring in teh interwebs with you would bring my cool quotient down a bit, yes.

As far as rich, well, the only thing I know about finance is, I don't have any.

I'll assume from your post that you're 0 for 2.

Awww, grumpy financier. Would e wike a wittle bottle of champagne? Maybe a wittle bear stitched from silk and griffin feathers? would dat make the wittle financier happy?

I'm sure you work very hard and are a nice person outside of your hateful profession.

I'm sure you work very hard and are a nice person outside of your hateful profession.

Oh, come on. There's no way to be sure.

I'll agree that the prospect of sparring in teh interwebs with you would bring my cool quotient down a bit, yes.

"prospect" implies you didn't already go down that road.

b) meaningful interaction with your competitors,

Depending on what you mean by "meaningful" this could be a problematic definition. I would argue that golf has the same, if not more, interaction with competitors than any number of track events (long jump, high jump, pole vault, javelin throw etc.) or speed sports where you race one at a time (luge, bobsleigh, alpine skiing, cross country skiing (when it's not a mass start/pursuit event)).
Just a minor nit to pick, I agree with your other three defining elements and think they are sufficient.

EDIT: Total failure to read on my part, I missed the "must meet ONE of these criteria" clause

Obviously the definition of what constitutes a sport is hazy.

You could qualify golf (while disqualifying darts and billiards) by defining sports as requiring whole-body coordination. Do you need coordination with your legs to curl or play bocce? Call it the wheelchair test.

what about ping pong? more movement than golf, but no "running" per se.

c) the realistic possibility that you could suffer some kind of injury (non repetitive stress variety) through a routine process of the game

I'm not sure why the possibility of injury is required for sporthood; but following this, you can (non-repetitively) quite easily harm your wrists and forearms with one bad swing and sustain even a career-ending injury. I'm not going to argue about golf being a sport or not, I don't care that much, it's just that if this is one of your definitions, then it is a sport. (And there is most certainly direct interaction between competitors as well in the final group. Unless you want them swinging at each other or something.)

Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-lagunga

Do you need coordination with your legs to curl or play bocce?

Yes for curling, balance is pretty important.

I agree with #111 - this is not a sports story. It is celebrity gossip, where the celebrity happens to be an athlete. Tiger Woods winning X number of tournaments, that is a sports story. Tiger Woods' personal life, not a sports story.

As mentioned earlier, what happens on the field makes it a sports story. But I'm pretty sure Nick Adenhart's death, while not happening on the field, is a sports story because of its impact on the events on the field. Same for ALS with Lou Gehrig.

I don't want to pull a Simmons and equate marital infidelity with tragedies such as those. Still, it is similar in that events off the golf course are (for now) stopping Tiger Woods from continuing his dominance of his sport. Had he simply decided he'd retire to take up estate planning, it would still be a huge sports story. The fact that it's also a gossip story (because of the nature of the off-the-course stuff) a lot of non-sports attention is created. But that doesn't make it any less of a sports story.

EDITed because Adenhart has only one "d"... just like "duh".

Ping-pong is definitely a sport.

You don't HAVE to have running for it to be a sport. And there is definitely a major premium on 'first-step' quickness in table tennis. And if you're a defensive guy, you do actually need to run occasionally.

I tend to agree that another good test for a sport is that the victory condition is established before you start and not wholly dependent on the whim of a judge. Though there are gray areas of course.

Arguments about the definition of "sport" have to be the worst threads on this site.

Who cares whether you think golf is a "sport"? We all know what golf is, what kind of skill and effort it requires, and how one decides the winner. Arguing about whether it is a "sport" isn't an argument about what golf is, it's just an argument about the definition of "sport".

And you're having an argument about whether there should be arguments about whether golf is a sport.

So nyah nyah nyah.

But in all seriousness, golf isn't a sport.

Who cares whether you think golf is a "sport"? We all know what golf is, what kind of skill and effort it requires, and how one decides the winner. Arguing about whether it is a "sport" isn't an argument about what golf is, it's just an argument about the definition of "sport".

But we have to classify and categorize everything! How can proceed with our comprehensive ranking of everything and endless "best-ever" debates if we haven't categorized it all?

you can (non-repetitively) quite easily harm your wrists and forearms with one bad swing and sustain even a career-ending injury.

What you've got to do is cut the hamstring on the back of his leg... right at the bottom. He'll never play golf again because his weight displacement goes back... all his weight is on his right foot and he'll push everything off to the right.

He'll never come through on anything.
He'll quit the game.

And you're having an argument about whether there should be arguments about whether golf is a sport.

Touche. Just to take it one step further, if golf isn't a "sport", then Sports Illustrated needs to re-assign 6 of its previous Sportsmen of the Year awards. (They might not mind that with the last two.)

"Sport" is a word with a pretty widely accepted meaning in the English language. There may be some activities on the margin, but golf ain't one of them. And if you're going to argue for changing the definition of the word, you've got a pretty steep uphill argument to make against SI.

For fun, here's the list of sports for which SI has given the award:

Auto racing
Baseball
Boxing
Basketball
Football
Cycling
Golf
Gymnastics
Hockey
Horse racing
Soccer
Speed skating
Swimming
Tennis
Track and field

By the way, I never watch Olbermann's show, but the clips I've seen make me think he's insufferable. And I probably agree with him on a lot of the substance.

Well, that was me. This was not a response to bs's column, but to Olbermann, and the only negative for Tiger he cited was loss of advertisers. And whether you think he had it comming, doesn't chane the fact that this is a real consequence, and shouldn't be ignored.
And I said in my original post, that the root causes for the 2 situations are completely different, it's not my fault if you can't read...

I read fine. Olbermann appeared to be referring to consequences from thrd party sources based on Ali and Tiger's decisions. Tiger's infidelity and the effect on his marriage are the direct result of his actions, which is different.

I'll save the snarky, unnecessary comments for another time.

...or a lawyer for a financial firm..

[sitting quietly in my chair, trying not to make eye contact with anybody in the room]

Would e wike a wittle bottle of champagne? Maybe a wittle bear stitched from silk and griffin feathers? would dat make the wittle financier happy?

I'm sure you work very hard and are a nice person outside of your hateful profession.

Now that's class.

Now that's class.

It's how I was raised.

Love Keith Olbermann.

I read fine. Olbermann appeared to be referring to consequences from thrd party sources based on Ali and Tiger's decisions. Tiger's infidelity and the effect on his marriage are the direct result of his actions, which is different.

The "loss of advertisers" is a direct result of his actions. And his children are most definately a third party. And if that is Olbermann's standard, than he needs to establish it, which he hasn't done, everything on your part is just conjecture.

And if that's the standard, I disagree with it. Again, I've acknowledged that the Ali story is more serious. But what you are doing is like saying Michal Vick's jail time doesn't matter, because it was self-inflicted. That's just a bizzare standard.

We can all agree that corporate lawyer and finance men are evil. But what about finance women, are they evil as well?

We can all agree that corporate lawyer and finance men are evil. But what about finance women, are they evil as well?

All women are evil. As all men know, women require time and money.
=> Women = Time * Money

As time is money:

Time = Money

=>Women = Money ^ 2

And as money is the root of all evil, we get:

Money = (sqrt) evil

=> Women = ((Sqrt) evil) ^ 2 = evil
QED


jk, of course :)

Auto racing

Wish fulfillment. ####### cutting people off and passing everyone crashes and is enveloped in fire.

Baseball

Best sport in existence

Boxing

Impaired natural human activity, not a sport. A potato sack race is not a sport, and neither is pummeling each other with headgear and two staypuffed marshmallow bags on your hands.

Basketball

Definitely a sport, but too repetitive and annoying.

Football

A sport lightly crafted around people's desire to just watch violence.

Cycling

Transportation is not a sport. It's how you get to work. Me taking the CTA to school is not a sport and neither is my best friend biking there.

Golf

Bad, dated Bud Light commercials about full contact Golf are closer to a sport than Golf is.

Gymnastics

Circus of the Sun or whatever is not a sport. It looks cool and it's a good excuse to employ some good musicians; it even requires to be in better shape than most athletes, but no, not a sport.

Hockey

Hockey is pretty awesome. It's another one of those sports that the actual rules seem like a second thought to the opportunity to smash into other people.

Horse racing

Horses are delicious; they are not sportsman.

Soccer

Soccer is some sort of world language and I have deep respect and admiration for the people who play it, but it's more like a cruel joke than a sport--you run around non-stop for like 3 hours and nothing ever happens, and then you have to play spin the bottle to see who wins.

Speed skating

Chad Hedrick is an #######.

Swimming

The coolest people I know are all swimmers. But I see it more as "doing something that's scary as ####\". It's like sitting in a room covered with spiders or something like that.

Tennis

Sure. Why not?

Track and field

I'm kind of slow, so I've never been able to figure out what this is. It seems like there's some relation to cicadas--it's this group of really cool organisms that nobody gives a #### about that sudden emerge every 4 years and take everything over and then disappear again soon after.

The coolest people I know are all swimmers. But I see it more as "doing something that's scary as ####". It's like sitting in a room covered with spiders or something like that.

There are people who swim and people who don't. There seems to be no middle ground. A housefly is scarier than a body of water to me.

The "loss of advertisers" is a direct result of his actions. And his children are most definately a third party. And if that is Olbermann's standard, than he needs to establish it, which he hasn't done, everything on your part is just conjecture.

And if that's the standard, I disagree with it. Again, I've acknowledged that the Ali story is more serious. But what you are doing is like saying Michal Vick's jail time doesn't matter, because it was self-inflicted. That's just a bizzare standard.

The perspective I thought Olbermann was taking was differentiating between the known risks of the actions and the financial response to those actions. If you repeatedly cheat on your wife, slaughter dogs, or dodge the draft, you know that getting caught means family problems for Tiger and jail for Vick and Ali. That's the risk they took and the results are predictible.

What isn't as predictible is the response from advertisers or the boxing commission. A lot of people agreed with Ali and didn't think he should be stripped of his license. That decision could have come with some bias. Some think Tiger's affairs are a personal issue and Gatorade should stay out of it.

Those ramifications, while a direct result of their actions, are a lot less clear cut than jailtime or alientation of ones family. Tiger knew his wife would be pissed. He probably didn't think Gatorade would drop him. Ali knew he could be arrested. He probably didn't think he would lose his boxing license. Gatorade and the boxing license could have gone either way.

True evil is far more interesting than anything those guys can muster.

"True evil is when a rose begins to sing" -- Arthur Machen (or so I would've sworn on my mother's grave, but Google is really inconclusive ...)

#145 is awesome.

Those ramifications, while a direct result of their actions, are a lot less clear cut than jailtime or alientation of ones family. Tiger knew his wife would be pissed. He probably didn't think Gatorade would drop him. Ali knew he could be arrested.

Well, then Olbermann can't use "loss of freedom" with regard to Ali's case. You're claiming that Olbermann is making a claim that he gives no indication of making. That aside, the original comparison was always made with regards to the ramifications only. Trying to frame it the way you are is being disingenuous, by shifting the goalposts.

Again, nobody is claiming that the blame is distributed radically differently in both cases, but that doesn't change the consequences in the slightest.

I actually don't have a very strong opinion about this. You're probably right. I just thought your "learn to read" comment to me was rude and unnecessary so I thought I'd waste your time for a little while.

Now I'm bored and you're still rude so the fun has worn off.