My definition of sports

Raymond Ayala / Sports Editor / The USD Vista

What do you consider a sport? I have asked myself this many times, and have had many debates with my friends about the topic. It seems that in our modern sports culture, almost any sort of activity that involves competition can be considered a sport. I guess I am old-fashioned, but I think that the term sport gets thrown around too loosely in the mainstream media.

It seems that the honor of being on ESPN can go to almost any average Joe who is willing to pay $10,000 to enter a poker tournament.

I’m a close follower of the well-known, traditional sports such as football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer. To me, these people are the ones that should be praised for their athletic prowess, not some person who gambles for a living, fishes, eats a lot of food or drives a fast car around a track over and over again.

I would be a liar if I said I did not watch some of the sports I am criticizing, but at the same time I respect the more physical sports far more than the leisure sports. Poker is a fun game to play and let me tell you from personal experience, it is extremely competitive, but it’s nothing like the physical sports in terms of an athletic skill sets.

A sport is embodied by an athlete like Joe Carter hitting a game-winning home run in the World Series, Steve Young throwing a touchdown pass to Jerry Rice to seal a Super Bowl win for San Francisco or watching Michael Jordan juke Bryan Russell out of his shoes and sinking the game-winning shot to give Chicago another championship. There is a huge difference between those athletic achievements, and the achievements of Phil Hellmuth who is a poker player that has won 11 World Series of Poker bracelets.

This is by no means a shot at poker or any of the other “sports,” but more of a personal perspective on the game. Poker is just one of the many activities such as NASCAR, sport fishing and eating contests that I feel require no physical skills whatsoever and therefore should be separated from sports such as football, basketball and baseball. True, these less-physical sports are watched by millions of people and have huge fan followings. The point I am trying to make is just because something is on ESPN, doesn’t make it a sport in my book, and it shouldn’t automatically be a sport in your book as well.