Your Sport Is A Sport In My Book Of Sports

Recently, some talk has been made about whether Tiger Woods is an athlete or not because he plays golf.

And it begs the question, what makes a sport a sport?

Is it a sport if you have to exert yourself physically? Is it just a matter of if you can make a living at it? Does being an athlete mean you are in a selective club with speed and strength requirements?

That's what it seemed like in high school, right?

Just a way to keep us separated.

Is it just a question to give a guy like me something to type about?

I don't think you can start this conversation without first defining what a sport is.

I have a 1958 Websters Unabridged dictionary that says a sport is: such an activity requiring more or less vigorous bodily exertion and carried on according to some traditional form or set of rules, whether outdoors, as football, hunting, golf, racing, etc., or indoors, as basketball, bowling, squash, etc.

Hey look! Golf is in there. I think the most important line in there is "more or less vigorous bodily exertion".

Let's look at Olympic sports. Curling is golf-like. There isn't a lot of physical exertion outside of the folks with the brooms.

You're basically aiming an object at a specific point. I don't want to call it a sport, but it's in the Olympics. Doesn't that make it a sport by definition?

The fact that it requires a team has to play into it as well. So if it's a sport, then golf surely is.

Equestrian is also an Olympic event. It requires more exertion than Curling. Even though it doesn't seem very sport-ish to me, I think we can call it a sport.

You know, I get to thinking about all these quazi-sports and even though I don't think of them as sports in the same way I do football, they all require a skill set.

And at their highest level, they can be quite enjoyable to watch...outside of Curling.

By the same token, what about bar sports?

At least some of these require some serious hand-eye coordination.

Foosball at it's highest level takes quite a bit of that old hand-eye. I'm not talking about the spin-to-winners out there.

I'm talking about the folks that can control the ball and move it faster than the human eye can see. I think if you go by the definition above, you could stick Foosball in there as well.

Just because a game isn't as sexy or doesn't bring with it the chance for serious injury like football or any of the other major sports doesn't mean it isn't a sport.

If it requires a skill in the realm of competition, whether it's on ESPN or at your local drinking hole, that's what sport is.

And the people that play it at it's highest level, like Tiger Woods, should be considered athletes. And heck, let's throw in Craig Stadler and John Daily while we're at it.

Don't be afraid to use the word athlete loosely. Because in the end, does it really matter? Whether you're cut like Mr. Universe or the Shoney's Big Boy, if you have the skills then you are an athlete.