What Is a Sport?
In “Any Sport in A Storm” the author, John Walters, is discussing what is considered one of the greatest sports debate of all time: what is a sport? Walters tries to answer this question by trying to defining what exactly he believes is a sport is. Walters concludes that for something to be considered a sport, it must meet these requirements: “a competition of undetermined outcome that has codified rules, and a pronounced element of athleticism” (41). I could not agree any less. If an activity that people love wants to be considered a sport it needs to meet some type of requirements and those requirements would make perfect sense.
People like competitions and sports because of suspense and suspense is fun. Most people who like suspense would watch any game, any sport, anytime, anywhere that is coming down to the last second and the outcome is undecided. People play sports because they crave suspense, which is delivered by one of two means: a
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They feel comfortable pronouncing an activity as a sport or denouncing it as not one, but they must possess the knowledge of what constitutes sport. According to Gary Belsky, the former managing editor of ESPN, says, “You don’t need a definition of sports. It’s more quantum physics, like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. There are simply too many variables” (Walters 37). There is not set requirements for a sport right now besides from people’s opinions. Even one college professor named Angela Gleason teaches a course at Yale University titled History of Sport, and each semester she starts with the same speech stating that “whatever we discuss, you’ll never know if it is my opinion or not” (Walters 36). Some people think that golf is not a sport while others think a spelling bee is a sport. All of this could be stopped if there were some clear and precise requirements for something to be considered a