Sports

 

 Sport seems to involve several things. When a person says that they are doing sport, it tends to imply that they have done an intense physical activity. Sport involves some type of moving the body through the environment and burning calories doing so. Sport brings up the picture of sweat and physical exhaustion. Sport exercises the body during the physical activity, improving the body part that is used in sport. The definition of Sport than would seem to need to include the idea that a physical activity is occurring.

Sport also involves some type of competition. Sport deals with the struggle between individuals or teams. Sport has conflict in it that usually tends to end with winner(s) and loser(s). Sport is defined by conflict and by fostering competitive nature in individuals that results in the division of winner and loser after the game is played. Game is also a central idea to sport. While not all sports can be considered to be game (and not all games can be considered to be sport), game revels much about sport.

Sport is bound by certain rules and regulations, such that there are activities that are encouraged and there are activities that are penalized if done during the activity. These rules are previously agreed to and usually have not been altered extensively in several years. Sport, as in games, also discourages cheating (viewing such behavior as cheating to run completely contrary to the reason for play the activity).

Sport also runs under a system of comparable measures. Sport is about being able to correctly show the victor of the event and the loser of the event. These categories achieved at the end of a sport activity (winner or loser) are determined by comparing one person or team to another person or team. This comparison follows the rules of the sport and through these rules, the victor is decided. Sport also has the idea built into it of improvement. Sport done correctly, even if it results in a loss of a particular activity, improves a person’s ability to play and/or understand the activity. Sport betters a person to play future activities that are related to the activity that they do. Without improvement, sport seems to losses a lot of its credibility because improvement of the individuals to do things better, faster, and stronger is what sport fosters in the individuals.

 

So looking at chess as an example and we find that it meets all the criteria (in one way or another) that defines sport. While chess may not fulfill the requirement of intense physical activity to many people, this is an extreme bias on their part. Physical activity involves burning calories by exercising a part of the body (see above), why should we not consider the brain to be such an part of the body. The brain burns quite a bit of calories by being involved in a mental exercise (and chess is an intense mental exercise). Because of this, the definition of physical activity should include any and all things that improve and exercises not only the body but also the brain. From all of this, we should gather that chess should not really be denied the definition of sport based on the criteria of physical activity, because there is not only some physical movement (moving the chess pieces) but there is exercise of a part of the body. As to the other things that are part of the idea of sport (competition, winning, losing, score, and improvement). Chess then is sport.