Friday's Sports Feature: "Sports" That Don't Deserve Airtime

Lately ESPN and other major networks are filling time slots with events that cannot be classified as sports. By definition sport is; an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment. More after the break

You would think the "World Wide Leader in Sports" would stick closely to this definition, but they stray. Oh, how they stray. Tune in at any given time and a viewer could find one of many games: bowling, spelling bee's, poker, golf, etc. These are NOT sports. Sports do not have a perfection cap, athletes can always strive for more. Sports also have definitive outcomes and cannot be decided by a judge. When a judge doesn't like the way you twirled to left in your "sport," and you lost by 1 point; I'm sorry, but you are not participating in a sport. This also includes most of the games involved in the X-Games. An EXTREEEMEEE panel of judges decides the outcome there too. Sports should not have a standard guideline to judge who is the winner. 

In bowling and golf there is a perfection cap for your individual performance. There is little physical exertion displayed in golf, and really none in bowling. After a while your arm may start to hurt from swinging and bowling but thats about it. These are not sports, they should be defined as turned based games. 

Even worse, networks show games like poker, spelling bees and bull riding. Do I even have to start with spelling bees? It puzzles me why it keeps getting aired year after year on ESPN. Fox and CBS often play bullring when a NFL game is blacked out. Come on! Yes this takes a ton of physical strength, but rednecks rasselin' a bull and getting gored or using clowns as bait is far from a sport. Poker became hugely popular after ESPN started airing Texas Hold 'Em. Playing cards, once again, is a fun game but no where near a sport. I shouldn't have to explain that either. 

We are on a downslope people! Soon enough ESPN 8: The Ocho will be real. Though who wouldn't want to see professional dodgeball on TV...