Up for Debate
>> Tuesday
This afternoon I was driving down Ceaser Chavez/16th street when I saw a pretty ripped guy half jogging, half dancing down the sidewalk with boxing gloves, throwing punches into the air. Cue the montage...
This sight also reminded me of a conversation my brother and I had a couple weeks ago about the purest of sport. Of course, this brings about the much broader and controversial question of defining sport. I came to the conclusion that boxing is the purest of sports with the trenches of a football game coming in a close second. My reasoning: Boxing requires the highest amounts of every attribute that we associate with athletes and sport - endurance, strength, quickness, agility, awareness, and toughness. The best offensive and defensive linemen also have all of these attributes, although many average linemen get away with less than the whole package.
So here is the topic to be debated, hopefully in an uncivil manner: what is the purest sport?
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5 comments:
I don't know if "purest sport" is the right way to put the question because so many sports are position-specialized (a defensive tackle in football cannot play quarterback, and has attributes very different from say a wide receiver.) The end result is one set of desired attributes for one position that are drastically different from another player, who may even be on the same side of the ball.
Vinnie and I had a similar discussion a few weeks back on what sport has the most "wasted athleticism." By that I phrased the question as, if you are what any ESPN analyst would describe as a "great athlete," or "raw," in what sports does it not matter? Sure it may help to be agile, fast, and strong, but people who have less of or even none of those qualities can still succeed in the same sport.
Baseball ranked pretty high on that scale because off how much offseason and off-the-field work gets put in for just 4 or 5 at-bats a game (where you're more or less average if you record a hit in 1 of them), then to trot out to the outfield 8 or 9 times, where maybe a lazy fly ball comes your way every 2 innings or so. You may have to bust your ass in the field and flat out run maybe two-three times a game. Pitchers and catchers are exceptions.
I'm not saying that baseball isn't a sport. Far from it, just that if you don't have to be fast, agile, strong, etc. to succeed as an MLB player. Look at John Kruk and David Wells for Chrissakes. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who'd call them "athletic."
But if the (un)civil debate is going to be over purest sport based on the listed qualities, then I'm going to nominate boxing, racing (foot, bike, or swimming), and my favorite sport that nobody else cares about.
In all of these sports, you have to score high marks in "endurance, strength, quickness, agility, awareness, and toughness," and that goes for every participant on the field of play.
I think I still remember the definition of "sport" that we basically all agreed upon when we were all loaded and watching the Olympics that one night. Maybe I should post that and archive it or whatever.
One major factor is how highly you rate the importance of a team dynamic. If you make that a central criterion, then basketball, rugby, hockey, and soccer (I would say) would probably jump boxing.
As for racing-type stuff, we (Nate and I) categorized those as "athletic skills competetions" during our drunken pontifications due to the lack of direct exchange between self and human opponent. Those are way at the bottom for me.
If you bring the team aspect into it, then I defer to the other "athletes" that I mentioned in the original post: offensive linemen.
Before anyone calls me on the fact that many of them are medically obese and therefore not athletes, I will concede that the athleticism of most linemen does not compare to that of, say, a point guard. But athleticism is not everything; in fact, it takes away from the competition and sport of a game when one party is simply more physically gifted than the others. Sport is more pure when the natural-born abilities of all participants are relatively equal.
I see sport, in its purest sense, as a direct match of one or more persons' physical abilities and desire up against the physical abilities and desire of another person or group of persons. Your moves against their moves, your strength against their strength, your game against their game.
An offensive line is a place where teamwork and one-on-one competition come together in a beautiful display of brute strength and fury.
Obviously, my idea of sport emphasises strength over speed. Personally, I would rather see a running back run over a defender than juke him out. Also, as my brother Seth put it, football is great because it's one of the few sports where anger can actually help you play better.
Therefore, sports with minimal physical contact like soccer and basketball (compared to sports like football and hockey) will rank lower on my scale of pure sport, even though I would rather watch basketball or tennis than hockey.
Hmm, well I'm sure I'll have more on this later.
By the way, I'm writing a long post detailing what we came up with that night (but more in-depth and less slurred). So no one jump the gun on this or I'll delete it.
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