Nicely done!

My response:

First, physical movement about an area is essential to golf, since you have to move from where you hit the ball to where it stops (at which point you have to hit it again). The whole point of the game is to get a ball from “point A” to “point B.” And that requires physical movement (except in the “limit case” of a hole in 1).

Second, swimming and playing golf by yourself are only called “sports” because they are related to the competitive sport of swimming or playing against other people (or, as you point out, because you can imitate the competition with others by competing with yourself). It’s an example of what Aristotle calls “pros hen” predication. If A is a “main thing” and B, C, D, etc. are somehow related to A, you often call B, C, and D by A’s name. (For example, “healthy” is most properly a description of a human body, but since certain foods and activities are related to having a healthy body, you call them “healthy” too.)

Finally, competition and rules aren’t enough to define sports, because games like chess, poker, etc. also are competitions governed by rules. And they aren’t sports.

Sport can ONLY be defined as the following: a competitive endeavor governed by rules or customs. The only two mandatory requirements for an activity to be accurately identified as sport, then, is that said activity is competitive and that it has rules. That’s it. There need not be more than one competitor, or even physical movement. The best examples I can immediately think of are golf and swimming. One can excel at golf and/or swimming without ever competing against anyone…one competes against a set number of strokes for the course–”par,” and a time as determined by a stopwatch, respectively. In this regard, one is competing against either himself (if he is trying to beat his best score in the past), someone else who may not be present (the score of a famous golfer seen on television), or against time . The only movement required in golf is the swing (and ball-striking) itself, for which the golfer remains planted in a stationary position, moving his upper body only. The walking and/ or cart-riding between holes is in NO WAY essential to the game–only the striking of the ball is. Your point about chess is therefore invalid (“the pieces are immaterial”); in golf, all that matters is how far the ball (an immaterial object) moves, yet golf is universally acknowledged as a sport. Competition and rules are the only necessary ingredients of the delicious gumbo we call sports.

I just thought of poker, by the way, which some people consider a sport. I should clarify my own position. I’m not convinced that sports must have an intrinsically physical component, which is why I consider chess a sport, but I don’t actually object to that definition. If you want to define sports so chess is out, I’m okay with that. The word “sports,” unlike many other concept words, clearly refers to an entirely artificial category, which is why the definition is so flexible and the word can’t actually be defined precisely without disagreement. We should be cautious about taking this too far, though. Abraham Lincoln once asked a visiting Doctor of Divinity, “Counting a tail as a leg, how many legs does a sheep have?” “Five,” replied the clergyman. Lincoln responded, “No. Pretending a tail is a leg doesn’t make it one.” Lincoln was a very wise man and I think he was right on about this.

I’m not sure I can forgive someone for being Calvin and Hobbes illiterate, however.

Is there some hidden value judgement in the term “sport”? Do we have a tendency to want our personal favorite games or contests to count as sports because there is something inherently good about being counted as a sport… Does calling a game a sport imply it’s somehow legitimate?
Curling seems silly to me. It’s easy to imagine that I might argue with a curler (is that what you call somebody who practices curling?) as to whether her game is a sport. As a non-fan of curling, I’d most likely take the ‘it’s-not-a-sport’ position.

So here’s one. Is Calvinball a sport?

When most people talk about what is a sport anymore, they are talking about what they should see on ESPN or their local sports page. Micah is one of the few people I’ve seen give the “what is a sport?” question serious treatment without really just proceeding to outline the parameters of an athletic competition.

He’s wrong, but at least he was somewhat original :-) (You rock, Micah!)