Vicious Circles
Jul. 10th, 2008 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are basically three kinds of sports: the kind where it's you against some rule of measurement (such as time, distance, height, etc.), the kind where it's you against another person, and the kind where it's a team against a team.*
*There is room for debate here about whether adjudicated contests, such as gymnastics, ice skating and (yes) cheerleading, are "sports." I have always argued that they are indeed sports because they involve physical preparation, athletic exertion, fierce competition and potential injury. But since it is subjective, it doesn't have the legitimacy of the others, so we'll consider them lesser sports, like Pluto.
The differences between these categories are clear, but that does not mean that they are exclusive to each other; overlap can and often does occur.
I've always far preferred playing (and watching) the team sports, though I never gave much thought to why. I knew I was easily bored and discouraged by the perpetually unsatisfiable timing apparatus, I was ill-suited and ill-tempered for the intense kleig lights of hand-to-hand combat, and I suppose I grew to appreciate both the camaraderie and mutual support provided by teammates and the more copious and frequent rest periods built into the team games' architecture.
But while I was playing tennis this past weekend -- one of the few one-on-one sports I can abide -- I realized the real reason I prefer team sports is that it mitigates the potential for humiliation.
If we envision the Venn diagram above as a continuum, rather than a cloud, where the X-axis is the Potential Humiliation Quotient (PHQ, which represents the likelihood of feeling like a total chump), it would be depicted thus:
On far right of this scale with the maximum PHQ are the "Mano-a-Mano" sports, in which the defeated individual absorbs all the punishment and blame and is definitively proven to be an inferior human being than his or her opponent. (Adjudicated contests lie at the far right within this group, because they are blatantly being judged.) So that rules out those sports.
But this is not the whole of the equation, because I have never been enjoyed "Beat the Clock" sports, despite the relative anonymity of defeat. The problem with these sports is that these victories are ultimately short-lived, with truly lasting gratification only at the highest (i.e. Olympic) levels. Meanwhile, for team sports -- with their halls of fame and hallowed lore -- victories are resonant and championships are eternal. Likewise, the one-on-one sports offer enduring rivalries as well as some truly appreciable championship hardware.
The continuum above does not capture this "Relative Persistence of Memory" (RPM), and in fact is incompatible with it:
How do we reconcile this dissonance? Clearly, a single-vector conceptualization will not work. Instead, let us return to the cloud-style diagram, but add three axes: long-term gratification (as measured by RPM), personal exposure (as measured by PHQ), and a third axis that reflects the superiority of team sports, in my mind: the Individual Perspiration Index (IPI), which reflects the percentage of personal effort that must be put forth toward the cause.
In team sports, singular players can "coast" from time to time, relying on his or her teammates to carry the weight and pick up the slack. Team sports frequently involve a lot of bench time, where colleagues can feel free to chat comfortably among themselves about the preeminent topics of the day, such as the weather, what assholes the other team's players are and personal preferences for potential sexual partners. And really, isn't that's what sports are all about?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are basically three kinds of sports: the kind where it's you against some rule of measurement (such as time, distance, height, etc.), the kind where it's you against another person, and the kind where it's a team against a team.*
*There is room for debate here about whether adjudicated contests, such as gymnastics, ice skating and (yes) cheerleading, are "sports." I have always argued that they are indeed sports because they involve physical preparation, athletic exertion, fierce competition and potential injury. But since it is subjective, it doesn't have the legitimacy of the others, so we'll consider them lesser sports, like Pluto.
The differences between these categories are clear, but that does not mean that they are exclusive to each other; overlap can and often does occur.
I've always far preferred playing (and watching) the team sports, though I never gave much thought to why. I knew I was easily bored and discouraged by the perpetually unsatisfiable timing apparatus, I was ill-suited and ill-tempered for the intense kleig lights of hand-to-hand combat, and I suppose I grew to appreciate both the camaraderie and mutual support provided by teammates and the more copious and frequent rest periods built into the team games' architecture.
But while I was playing tennis this past weekend -- one of the few one-on-one sports I can abide -- I realized the real reason I prefer team sports is that it mitigates the potential for humiliation.
If we envision the Venn diagram above as a continuum, rather than a cloud, where the X-axis is the Potential Humiliation Quotient (PHQ, which represents the likelihood of feeling like a total chump), it would be depicted thus:
On far right of this scale with the maximum PHQ are the "Mano-a-Mano" sports, in which the defeated individual absorbs all the punishment and blame and is definitively proven to be an inferior human being than his or her opponent. (Adjudicated contests lie at the far right within this group, because they are blatantly being judged.) So that rules out those sports.
But this is not the whole of the equation, because I have never been enjoyed "Beat the Clock" sports, despite the relative anonymity of defeat. The problem with these sports is that these victories are ultimately short-lived, with truly lasting gratification only at the highest (i.e. Olympic) levels. Meanwhile, for team sports -- with their halls of fame and hallowed lore -- victories are resonant and championships are eternal. Likewise, the one-on-one sports offer enduring rivalries as well as some truly appreciable championship hardware.
The continuum above does not capture this "Relative Persistence of Memory" (RPM), and in fact is incompatible with it:
How do we reconcile this dissonance? Clearly, a single-vector conceptualization will not work. Instead, let us return to the cloud-style diagram, but add three axes: long-term gratification (as measured by RPM), personal exposure (as measured by PHQ), and a third axis that reflects the superiority of team sports, in my mind: the Individual Perspiration Index (IPI), which reflects the percentage of personal effort that must be put forth toward the cause.
In team sports, singular players can "coast" from time to time, relying on his or her teammates to carry the weight and pick up the slack. Team sports frequently involve a lot of bench time, where colleagues can feel free to chat comfortably among themselves about the preeminent topics of the day, such as the weather, what assholes the other team's players are and personal preferences for potential sexual partners. And really, isn't that's what sports are all about?
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Adjudicated sports
Date: 2008-07-11 03:54 pm (UTC)Top Chef? America's Top Model? Dancing at a nightclub?
Re: Adjudicated sports
Date: 2008-07-11 04:22 pm (UTC)To me, a sport must meet the following criteria:
In my definition, activities that are determined by judges are performances, not sports.
Re: Adjudicated sports
Date: 2008-07-11 04:58 pm (UTC)For whatever it's worth, my dictionary has nine different definitions for the noun "sport." The operative definitions in this case would be:
1. any activity or experience that gives enjoyment or recreation; pastime, diversion. 2. such an activity, esp. when competitive, requiring more or less vigorous bodily exertion and carried on, sometimes as a profession, according to some traditional form or set of rules, whether outdoors or indoors.
Re: Adjudicated sports
Date: 2008-07-11 07:10 pm (UTC)Re: Adjudicated sports
Date: 2008-07-11 07:41 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_boxing#Scoring
Re: Adjudicated sports
Date: 2008-07-12 01:04 am (UTC)The more you make me think about this... I think boxing is indeed a performance. That goes to prove, though, that there are things in life more physically demanding than sports.
Re: Adjudicated sports
Date: 2008-07-11 04:52 pm (UTC)Re: Adjudicated sports
Date: 2008-07-11 06:59 pm (UTC)Re: Adjudicated sports
Date: 2008-07-11 07:14 pm (UTC)"Top Chef" does not require physical preparation or athletic exertion.
"Top Model" does not entail athletic exertion or potential injury.
"nightclub dancing" does not involve physical preparation or potential injury. I'll give you fierce competition, but even that is stretching the argument pretty thin.
Care to try again?
Re: Adjudicated sports
Date: 2008-07-12 01:07 am (UTC)