On Sports That Aren't

“It’s more than a game, more than a game

All the fortune and fame, it’s more than a game”

~ ‘More Than a Game’, by Darren Sanicki & John Albert

performed by Chris Doheny as the theme song to The Footy Show (AFL), 1994

In the last On Writing Blog I wrote about the difference between a sport and a game.  To my mind, any contest where overweight and/or middle aged individuals can be competitive at the elite level is not a sport, it is a game.  Sports include football (of almost any variety), rugby (ditto), tennis, cricket, many Olympic sports, that sort of thing.  Games include Monopoly, Scrabble, chess, tiddlywinks, golf, and the like.

Golf, anecdotally described by Mark Twain as "a good walk ruined", is very much a game.  Many players have supreme strength and fitness, I grant you.  Professional golfers are frequently dedicated to improving their skills and can certainly be considered elite athletes.  And then there are blokes like John Daly.  John Daly is a hard-living chain smoker who drinks like a fish and has a girth that would bring a Biggest Loser contestant to tears.  I likewise point you towards Jack Nicklaus, who played his last major tournament at the age of forty-six, after which he joined the senior’s tour.  Examples such as these gents go a fair way to proving that golf well and truly sits within the realm of a game rather than a sport.

Other similar games-not-sports are darts and pool/billiards.  Tremendous skill involved, for sure, but as long as you're pretty good at geometry and basic physics, you're already half way there.  Darts, much like golf, can lend itself to those with physiques on the rotund side as an activity of choice.  In addition, you can actually actively participate in darts while holding (and not spilling!) your beer.  While we're on that subject, what kind of game has participants flinging sharp objects around indoors, and not just any old indoors, but the kind of indoors where alcoholic beverages are often a fixture?  When does that particular idea start getting clever?

Another activity that is in serious need of a shift from the sports section of the newspaper is horse racing, for several reasons.  Firstly, it would cease to exist entirely if the gambling component was to stop - that is to say, horse racing is unable to sustain itself on its own merits.  Secondly, there are two primary human competitors in horse racing: trainers and jockeys.  It can be confidently argued that it takes some serious skill and discipline to ride a race horse, but let's face it, the horse is still working much harder than the rider.  Black Caviar would still be winning races even if it were me in the saddle.  That leaves us with the trainers, of which there would be one less if whichever geriatrician who is keeping Bart Cummings alive was slightly less skilled.  On balance, therefore, horse racing fails the sport/game test.  Thirdly, the largest proportion of the live Spring Racing Carnival audience are overdressed Kath and Kim wannabes who care far more about celebrity spotting, swilling bubbly and drunkenly disposing of their dignity than admiring horse flesh.  This audience does nothing to promote the activity as a worthwhile and substantial pursuit.

Anything where shooting a gun is an element is not a sport, because putting guns in the hands of most civilians is just usually an idiotic excercise.  I would suggest this is the case regardless of whether you're firing the weapon at an inanimate object or not, but let's run hunting under the microscope a bit shall we?

Have you ever seen those car stickers that read "I hunt and I vote"?  They are second only to those mind-numbing "My Family" stickers on my list of dumb things to display on your car (here's a thought: who even remotely cares about the members of your family while one is stuck in traffic and forced to stare at your car's back window?). Let's get one thing straight: the fact that you hunt does not make your vote any more valuable than anyone else's, rendering your moronic little sticker as witless as the act of hunting animals for 'sport'.

Let me explain.  There's a comic book story I love*, in which a character is being mentored at gardening by an older man in her father's employ.  As it turns out, the man was an assassin in a civilian resistance during World War Two.  When the young girl accidentally kills a sapling, the old gardener is distraught.  She asks him why, since he has no issue killing weeds, he would be so upset over one small tree?

"It is a living thing and it is in our care," he says.  "We kill the weeds, but we are careful not to take any pleasure in it."

Hunting is bloodthirsty and barbaric.  I can appreciate the need to kill for food and I understand the need to cull animals that become pests and a hazard to ecosystems.  I have experienced firsthand the need to euthanise animals to ease their suffering.  We kill, but ought to take great care not to enjoy it.  The mindless slaughter of animals for entertainment is not in any way, shape or form a sport.  Not only does it fail the sport verses game test, but it's ridiculously one-sided.  First camouflage and arm the animals and then we can talk.

Fishing?  Not a sport, more of a diversion and an excuse to not clean out the garage, or perhaps the means by which one acquires the perfect complement to hot fried chips.  Big game fishing?  Certainly it takes a great deal of knowledge and skill, but fails the sport verses game test once again.  And, as with hunting, it's got barbarism written all over it.

Novelist George Orwell is quoted to have said: “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting”. I beg to differ.  Sport can be taken too seriously, to be sure.  However, sport, real and genuine sport, can also be the thrilling pursuit of physical and mental excellence, the search for outstanding human achievement, where men and women look to find their measure and often uncover the extraordinary.  Whether you win or lose, first or last, the achievement is not just in the result, but in the act of competition.  As such, sport is far too important a pursuit to be lumped in with the silly, the pointless, the simple and the cruel.

* The story is found in Wolverine, Volume 1, No. 102, written by Larry Hama, published by Marvel Comics in June 1996.

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