Defining Sport

I first want to say that the Ohio State vs. Mich State basketball game was a wonderful game that went down to the buzzer. I think that a game like that is one of the most exciting things in sports. You are on the edge of your seat till the very end of the game. MSU had been losing the whole game but made a push in the last two minutes of the game. Here is the recap of the second half.

The reading this week was very interesting. I had never really thought very much about what defines sport before reading this excerpt. In Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht's book, In Praise of Athletic Glory, he states that all sports do not share one thing in common, but rather all sports are connected through similarities. "Wrestling and rugby," he says, "certainly have some affinities in common, and rugby and soccer developed from the same group of games. But wrestling and soccer do not visibly share a lot of features." I agree with that part of Gumbrecht's definition very much. I also believe that just as we evolve and advance over time, so does sport. Chariots evolved into cars and sport followed evolving from chariot races to NASCAR races.

Gumbrecht then goes on to talk about the presence and meaning dimensions. I wont try to summarize this because I think he says it better than I ever could. I agree with Gumbrecht in terms of the importance of the presence as opposed to meaning dimension in sport.

The way I envisioned this course was that we would talk extensively about competition as a major factor in why people play and watch sport. Gumbrecht stresses that while many people would rather associate competition, agon, with sport, it is also the striving for excellence, arete, with which sport should be associated. Arete, he argues, implies agon. "For even if we strive for excellence in absolute solitude," he says, "we cannot do so without the competition against the performance of (absent) others." It is possible to win a competition without striving for excellence. If one team is noticeably better than the other, only a little effort from the better team is needed to achieve victory.

Yet agon is certainly a major part of sports as well. Women's college basketball may be the most pure form of basketball that exists. There is no money involved. There are not many people watching so there is nothing to gain by being selfish or trying to show off. It is a very team oriented game. Yet men's sports are still more popular because ultimately, a men's team would beat a women's team. This shows that while arete is vital in explaining sport, agon is equally as important.

Overall, I agree with Gumbrecht. I think that part of sport is both the importance of competition and winning, as well as striving to push the limits. What would sport be without winners and losers? Additionally, what would sport be without records constantly being broken? Sport, by my definition, is a group of activities which share similar traits from one sport to the next. These activities are the synthesis of agon and arete.