Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged

Informer - Snow (mp3)
By-Tor and the Snow Dog - Rush (mp3)
[NOTE: Songs removed under threat of blog death by the DMCA.]

Here are some questions about the Winter Olympics about which I could give less than a dingleberry:

• Are the Winter Olympics one of the last desperate gasps for white supremacy and segregation?
• Do the male ice skating fashion statements make Kyle from Glee seem humble?
• Is Lindsay Vonn attractive? Is she as attractive as she thinks she is?
• Is that a hairpiece, Mr. Costas? And what did you do with Melissa Stark?

But after watching at least half of what's been on so far in these games, I've decided to agree that a lot of that stuff isn't really a sport.

There are sports, and then there are athletes. Sometimes athletes play sports. Other times, athletes participate in competitive activities that aren't sport but require talent. Sometimes sports require almost no athletic ability and merely a ton of talent or technical skill. Many of these are lovingly called "leisure sports."

The Winter Olympics is full of athletes. Even Shaun White, that lanky, well-maned snowboarding lad, is a serious and amazing athlete. But anytime a "sport" relies on the judgment of others to determine how well or poorly you did, it's not a sport. It's just a competition.

The half-pipe. Moguls. Ice skating. Ski jumping. These aren't sports. They're competitions, much like the Oscars or Miss America. The only difference is that I'd watch Miss America if they all had to do the half-pipe or ski jumping, especially if they had to wear bikinis or evening gowns.

NASCAR, unfortunately, is a sport; it's just not a very good one. Golf, darts, pool, table tennis are all leisure sports. (Well, table tennis is a full-on balls to the wall sport, dammit.)

A sport requires a winner and a loser, or sometimes many losers. At its best, the winner is clearly determined the instant the action stops, or the buzzer goes off, or the bell rings, or whatever. When someone does their "sport" but then must sit and wait to find out whether they were better or worse than everyone else, it can't be a real sport.

Polo? Yes. Cliff diving? No. Boxing? Ooh. Tough one. Because a winner can potentially be determined without judges, I'll give it a pass. Same goes with mixed martial arts.

At the core of this is my intense dislike for the naming of three particular things as a sport: ice skating, gymnastics, and cheerleading.

Almost all participants in these competitions are amazing athletes, very talented, and could undoubtedly kick my ass from here to Timbuktu with one hand tied behind their back. But all of these sports can be gigged and gamed so powerfully by people who have absolutely no direct involvement in the action -- the Supreme Court of Deciders, if you will -- and that potential for corruption necessitates, for me, calling them something other than a sport. (Not to mention that gymnastics begat "rhythmic gymnastics" and ice skating begat "ice dancing" and cheerleading begat "synchronized swimming," which are all even shittier competitions that are even less sport-like.)

Sure, refs can be bought, and umps can be manipulated, and many an outcome has been screwed up thanks to the imperfect nature of a missed call or an official's error. Still, it is much more difficult for a ref to get away with so strongly controlling the outcome of a game -- especially on the big stages of the World Cup or the Olympics or the Super Bowl -- than it is for judges in these other competitions. You need only listen to the commentators during a gymnastics or ice skating or diving event to know that even people who spent their lives in a sport tend to think the judges can be blind idiots. Some of the scores from the couples' ice skating last week left the commentators wondering if they had watched the same routines. Yet no talk of instant replay or booth review is possible, because the fate of these competitors rests completely in the fallibility of a group's judgment.

That's why short track speed skating and those four-person ski/snowboard races are, for me, the coolest and most entertaining sports at this year's games.

(This isn't my idea at all. I've heard many people make a similar deliniation over the years. This is just my way of completely caving and agreeing with them.)