Allow Me To Retort…Yes Indeed, NASCAR’s A Sport
Written by Rocky Kitts · June 18, 2008
I’m a poet, didn’t you know it?
My colleague (if bloggers can truly have colleagues, we’re a strange bunch who don’t shower often enough to have colleagues) here at FastMachines, Ray Champagne recently asked the question of whether or not motor racing is a sport. Ray came to the conclusion that he had changed his mind after a discussion with some friends and that he didn’t see how it could be judged as a sport.
Ray is a very good writer, and in the interests of good debate, and with no malice intended, I’d like to offer a counter-point to Ray’s view. And hopefully in the process, I’ll get Ray back over to the right side of the force (put that dark helmet down Ray, you can still be saved, the force is strong is you).
First off, let me say that this is an argument that I hate having over any sport, and I’ve had it over several. I had a good friend who made a very convincing argument that baseball wasn’t a sport. His view as a former football player was that you spent so little time in action in a baseball game, that when you figured in the lack of physical contact, there was no way that he could recognize it as a sport.
My answer to that is why? What does it really matter? It almost turns into an automatic insult, “well that’s not really a sport”, when someone is discussing a sport that they just don’t like or get. It’s the equivalent of pulling out a “your momma” joke to try to win an argument.
The book definition (I read one once, it made my head hurt) for a sport is as follows:
An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.
That’s one definition (there were several others, but since they didn’t help me any, I ignored them) of the word. There’s no doubt in my mind that racing fits that definition. But, that’s not really what the discussion ends up being about. When discussing what is a sport and what is not a sport, it never fails that one person ends up giving lots of reasons why something is not a sport, usually so many that the person trying to make the argument for their sport becomes frustrated or may even doubt their own resolve.
That’s because it’s easier to argue what something is not, than it is to argue what something is. I heard someone recently make the argument that MMA was not a sport, and when I heard that I just shook my head, because MMA is directly related to wrestling which may have been the original sport, or maybe the third sport after hunting and dragging cave-women back to the cave. Why mention MMA? Because MMA, like NASCAR is a sport that has gained a great deal of momentum in the last few years, but it comes from a background that has not always been the purest in the world. Also, like NASCAR, the mainstream has been very slow to embrace it as a new sport, and often chooses to focus on the past of the sport, rather than its present or its future.
When you look at the sports world, if you wanted to really break it down, you would probably be able to break the sports world down to the point to where the only “real” sports are wrestling, track and field, and soccer. What? I didn’t put football in there? I could make an argument that the fact that they wear so much protective gear makes it less of a sport. That’s not an argument that I would make, because it would be an idiotic one, but it just goes to illustrate that what is a sport and what is not, is really in the eye of the beholder. That’s why the Olympics let so many different events be included, because it is just too hard to determine what is truly athletic and what is not. Well, that and politics, but that’s a different post for a different site.
I didn’t make an argument for why you should consider motor racing a sport, because I don’t think I have to make that argument. I can tell you why I believe that motor racing is a sport, and that is because it has everything that a sport should have; competitiveness, danger, physical exertion, acts of mental toughness, and remarkable displays of intelligence and cunning, being just a few of the traits that I would expect a sport to have and qualities that I believe motor racing has in abundance.
People shouldn’t have to defend their sport. When someone plays the “that’s not a sport” card, that’s usually just their way of showing the ignorance and close-mindedness of someone that is just looking for an excuse not to like something, or worse, someone who is just looking for an excuse to make fun of someone else’s interests.
So are motor sports really sports? Yes. Why? Well, since I’ve established that I think that is a childish question, let me retort in my best parent voice and be done with the discussion.
Because I said so, that’s why.
Rocky Kitts can be reached at wwwthreestrikesandout(@)yahoo.com. Unless you’re from the IRS, FBI, CIA, or DEA. In that case, I didn’t do it, it was Kyle Busch. I saw him do it.
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You said it Rock. What makes any sport a sport is competition, even if it’s long distance running against a clock. It’s always about the competition. Lawn tractor racing? Bassmaster fishing? Demolition derbies? As ludicrous as some of these activities may sound to us, they are still sport, as they all require some degree of skill, preparation, and the hunger to compete and win.