Michael, Stacy, Graham, and Ian
Crystal Beach, TX - Official rules have been issued that determine what events can be officially called a sport. There are three categories of events: organized sports, unorganized sports, and athletic competitions.
To be classified a sport (organized or unorganized), there must be well understood rules and a clear winner. Judgment should not play the most important part of determining the outcome, but instead something measurable (as in racing the clock or outscoring the opponent) is the main factor. Boxing is a sport because the outcome is preferably determined by a knockout, but figure skating is not because the outcome is completely dependent on individual judication. Events such as baseball and football that have a plethora of judgment calls still meet this criteria because the job of the umpire or referee is to enforce a given set of rules and not to control the result of the game.
The outcome of a true sport must be based on some sort of (potentially minimal) physical event as well; darts is a sport because something must be thrown, but chess is not because it may be played completely verbally.
An organized sport has some sort of an official or recognized governing body (such as the NFL for American football or the NPRA for rodeo), where an unorganized sport has well-understood rules but no professional standing (kick ball or horse).
If these rules are not met, the event in question should be called an athletic competition and not a sport. Ice dancing, gymnastics, roller-blading are not sports. American football, darts, and bowling are organized sports, and kick ball, laser tag, and hopscotch are unorganized sports.
There are different degrees of sports as well, something akin to differing shades of gray or the various degrees of the political right. At one end you have a pure sport: a sport that has virtually no judgement calls. In other words, those who go fastest, highest, farthest, and can be measured by unbiased, inanimate objects (clocks, tape measures, radar guns, etc.). This leaves little up to human interpretation and the athlete determines the outcome. On the other end of the spectrum are impure sports like boxing, mogul skiing, etc. These sports rely heavily (some or all of the time) on a third party to decide the outcome of the contest.
This report was greeted with much skepticism by figure skaters and gymnasts world-wide, but they were more annoyed at being lumped in with synchronized swimming than being classified as an athletic event.
