Futuristic: ESPN, more than just a sports channel

ESPN claims to be the world leader in sports and rightfully so. The one thing I don’t understand about ESPN though is what exactly do they classify as “sports” these days. Sure you see all the major sports such as basketball, football, baseball, soccer, and hockey on ESPN. You even see other sports like tennis, golf, track & field, and motorsports. Now the definition of sport (an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others) is pretty vague and can be left open for interpretation. In our society we look at a sport as an activity that requires athleticism. Athleticism also has a vague definition but we think of an athletic person as someone who has some sort of speed, strength, jumping ability, agility, and coordination. Athletes don’t need to have all of those attributes but usually to be considered athletic you need to have a couple of those especially speed, agility and coordination. I could go on forever about what we could and could not consider a sport.

Anyways, back to ESPN. These days the type of programs we see on ESPN really makes us wonder “why the hell is this on ESPN?” For example, let’s look at the World Series of Poker. Somebody explain to me how this can possibly be considered a sport. Sure it requires mental skill but there is no real physical activity involved in it whatsoever. If a card game can be considered a sport then let’s just go ahead and call monopoly, checkers, chess, and uno sports too. Things can really get out of hand at that point and where do we possibly stop at that point? Another example, the spelling bee. This is worse than poker. Please don’t tell me we’re going to start calling people athletes because of their ability to spell. I can spell really well too but I also have real athleticism. The one that really blows my mind is the hot dog eating contest. They even have the MLE (Major League Eating) now. I absolutely refuse to consider this a sport. I don’t care how much you can eat, I’m not going to call you an athlete because you can stuff your face full of food and look absolutely disgusting in the process. Some people like to argue over whether to call cheerleading a sport or not but I’ll you what…it’s a million times more of a sport than what ESPN broadcasts. Sad how poker gets more airtime than cheerleading competitions.

The question now is where do we draw the line? Where do we stop calling very unathletic people athletes? I mean do we want to encourage the younger generations to practice eating as many hot dogs as they can in 10 minutes so they can go to coney island in July and stuff their faces on national TV? This is a huge problem with American society because while we’re “trying” to fight childhood obesity and laziness we’re still encourage these so called “sports” that don’t require kids to go outside and be active. Being the worldwide leader in sports ESPN has the ability to influence many and help this country make progress in achieving some of its social goals. They can start by getting some of this nonsense off their channel. Thanks for reading.