Open Mic - What is a Sport? Hot Dog Eating, Chess, Soccer, Athletics etc.

What is a "sport?"

There is obviously a huge temptation to get all technical and try to define 'sport' as being a "physical test," something that requires your physical maximum, proves your strength, agility, cunning, and strategic intelligence.

However, I decided to go as "back-to-basics" as I could and read the dictionary's definition to help me try to define a topic that causes many arguments, debates, and rivalries.

The term is firstly tagged as an amusement or diversion—a pass-time or game for fun, giving varied examples such as fishing and hunting (not always the first sports that come to mind).

The dictionary entry also goes on to mention a great number of activities that cause debate in terms of classing them as sports, under the entry's many sub-headings.

This considered, quite simply, any such activity can be classed as a sport. I would always try to avoid getting political and claim that any certain activity is not a sport purely because it doesn't test, amuse, or satisfy you in the same way my preferred sports do.

This year's July 4 Hot Dog Eating Contest, won by Joey Chestnut, is a good example of an activity that people can be quick to criticize when it is labeled a sport.

However, it undoubtedly tests the human body in a way that should be given respect to. It is obviously more physically challenging than strategy sports such as chess, which obviously engages the brain more.

So, my personal opinion is that anything that comes under the categories mentioned in the dictionary's sport entry, (and, on a more basic level, anything that has tournaments and trophies) can rightly be called a sport.

From the less physical, thinking-based sports like Battleships and Chess, to the almost completely physically testing games like Soccer, American Football and Athletics, they all qualify as amusements, pass-times and competitions—and all are sports.