As I was wrapping up my bi-weekly trip to the gym here in Edinburgh, I decided to see if I could get into a game of pickup basketball. You will not believe what I found.
Rather than the game I expected to play, where people dribble a leather ball and shoot into ten-foot baskets on either end of a court, I witnessed a game that was offensive to my senses. It wasn't that bad, but it appeared to be the stupidest game ever played.
I didn't catch all the rules, but it appeared that some players stood on one side of a court being guarded by their opponents. Their teammates were on the other side of the court, again being guarded. The point of the game, as I quickly figured out, was to shoot a soccer ball into a peach basket that was hanging around twelve feet off the ground on a metal pole with no backboard.
Of course, you couldn't dribble this soccer ball, so all the players did was pass around until someone shot, missed (I was never fortunate enough to witness a made basket), and passed it to the other end of the court where the opposing offense would go to work. What made the game even more frustrating to watch was that the defense was not allowed to touch the player they were guarding, which meant that players had relatively free shots at the basket, which of course they missed.
I know, I shouldn't be too taken aback; korfball (the name is quite suiting) is probably a lot like the first few games of basketball with the good Dr. James Naismith. The problem is that in America, we've advanced from that stage, while here, it appeared those twenty or so helpless soles were stuck in the era of peach baskets.
It got me thinking that we have a lot of sports in the world that are played by a very small percentage of the population, and could probably drift off into oblivion without people raising too much of a fuss.
Take, for instance, curling. This sport, and again, I'm not well versed on the rules, involves a person pushing a fairly heavy stone down a patch of ice with the intention of getting the rock to land in a certain area that will garner his team the most points. To aid in his success, his teammate sweeps the ice in front of the disc to either slow it down, speed it up, or change its directions. It sounds fairly complicated to play at a high level (it's an Olympic sport) but it's even more boring to watch, as the disc sometimes hits top speeds of two mph.
I guess that all sports, when looked at in a rudimentary manner, are, for lack of a better word, stupid. Who would want to take a stick, hit a ball, find it, then repeat the activity for four hours? Who would want to stand on a court with a stick, hit a ball over and over again, only to find that it keeps coming back at them? Sounds pointless, but millions of people around the world play golf and tennis.
So it's easy to make fun of the more commonly accepted sports, but it's even easier to make fun of some of the sports they are wild about in Great Britain. I saw badminton on television the other day, but this was not your family barbeque, backyard badminton. These women were very good. The only problem is, the court is so small that the shuttlecock (the object they mash at each other) stays in the air so long, and the players are so quick, that I got up, went to the bathroom, made a sandwich, and sat back down only to find they were still on the same point.
So I change the channel, only to find the second day of a cricket match. That's right, cricket matches don't end in one day. I think, and I may be wrong again here, that one team plays offense for a day, then gets to mind the field for the second. How would you like it if your team's Sunday football game didn't reach the fourth quarter until Monday?
Before getting too deep into the subject of which sports are pointless and which are not, I think it's worth our time to talk about some activities that are not sports. The problem we run into is that the definitions of sport do not really help us, as Merriam-Webster has "to amuse oneself" as the primary definition, and a "physical activity engaged in for pleasure" for backup. Does that mean that Wilt Chamberlin's record of 20,000 off the court "scores" makes him more of a sporting man than A.C. Green, a virgin? Surely not.
Therefore, we have to go with instincts, which can be difficult. But, I think it's manageable. I offer that any activity you play in or right next to a bar is not a sport, but a leisure activity. I know pool, bowling, and darts have extremely intense competitions, and the talent level is world class, but all three of them fall into this leisure category.
Secondly, and most important, a sport cannot be an offshoot of another sport. This takes out cheerleading. I know some people have problems with this - certainly no one I hang out with, but I've heard things - but when your primary job is to incite others to cheer on another sport while standing with your back to the game, you just aren't playing a sport.
But don't worry, cheerleaders. On Yahoo!'s list of 102 sports categories, I have trouble with a number of others that for one reason or another, shouldn't be considered sports. There is Yukigassen, the Japanese sport of formal snowball fights, cockfighting, orienteering, and walking, just to name a few.
The best sport I found, though, was Kabaddi, and I leave you with a brief description. In Kabaddi, two teams compete by touching or capturing the players of the other team. On a court as large as a dodge ball court divided in half, one side sends a 'raider' to the opponent's half chanting 'kabaddi-kabaddi.' The 'raider's' job is to touch as many players from the opposing side as possible and return to his side in one breath. It goes back and forth until all the players are out.
If only the NCAA would adopt Kabaddi, we would really see some March Madness.
