Low Budget

Sports: Realism or Entertainment? Or both?

Sports, a form of entertainment, is “Real” in the sense that the outcome is not known at the beginning. Usually. It is also “Real” to the participants, who are innovative and aggressive within a well-defined set of rules, shared with the audience. Such rules are, at best, adequate to keep everyone playing until the end of the game, saving the long arguments until later. If you play ball at 17^th and P, you’ll find the rules don’t quite make that happen.

There are interpreters of the rules, and judges who decide what facts actually happened. Over time, sport has evolved the philosophy that if the interpreters and fact-judgers are at least attempting to be objective, the harm of the occasional bad call is just part of the price of doing business. Hopefully, over time, it all equals out. Thus, when the Redskins lost, ignobly, to the Cowboys, there was a lot of talk about the two flagrantly bad calls. But nobody is suing anyone to overturn the result.

Now, Men’s Gymnastics appears to be a different ball of wax-like substance. First, there is no real head to head competition. Everything is judged and scored and compared. You have a series of individual performances rated, then stacked against each other. How much interaction is there between the competitors? Supposedly there is some kind of strategy decision, but still.

Then, you find out the judging is somewhat arbitrary. Scores start higher or lower and judges save their best scores for their favorites. The better known you are, the more you get the benefit of the doubt. This happens in other sports too, of course. There’s traveling, then there’s Michael Jordan taking his apparently legal steps.

Now we find that, though the outcome is supposed to be mathematical, the award itself is given at the end, in spite of any math errors. Only then to be taken outside to a court of law. Sports don’t end up in a court of law. Players may. Owners do, labor negotiations may end up there. But the sport itself, the judging and the outcome, should all be contained within the sport. That’s what makes it a real self-contained universe. If, in retrospect, the math is more important than the described outcome at the event’s completion, you have something else. Not really a sport.

posted by dan @ 10/02/2004 01:37:00 PM