Posted on 02/16/2006 7:25:32 AM PST by Airborne1986
There were some eye-opening remarks from Bryant Gumbel on the most recent episode of HBO's Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel. According to a transcript posted by a television columnist named Seth Frelich, Gumbel said the following in his closing monologue last week (emphasis mine):
"Finally, tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don’t care about them and won’t watch them ... Because they’re so trying ... Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something’s not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what’s called a kiss-and-cry area, while some panel of subjective judges decides who won ... So if only to hasten the arrival of the day they’re done, when we can move on to March Madness — for God’s sake, let the games begin."
Let's not forget Marge Schott.
good point.
facts are tricky things for some
Just because it's hard doesn't make it a sport, sitting through an Andy Warhol movie is hard doesn't mean it's a sport. Judged events aren't sports, sports are about absolutes, judged events have no absolutes.
And if there was ever a question that figure skating might be a sport that ended Monday in the pairs competition when the female of one pair botched a landing and got hurt and had to leave, only to be allowed to come back later and eventually win the silver. Let's start with being able to come back and pretend they never left, that's just silly. Then winning a silver inspite of that horrid landing, simply pathetic.
Requiring athletic people doesn't make it a sport either, stunt men are athletic, should we have a falling off buildings sport?
It's okay Bryant, don't get angry that your party was against abolition, integration, 1964 Civil Rights Act and Katie spurned your advances while you secretly hoped for a white woman cause you didn't think your black wife was good enough for you. Filthy little COWARD RACIST.
He's a major racist. Makes Byrd look like a Democrat.
He should be censored and fired for that dispicable, racist comment!
To be technical, hunting and fishing are sports. Running and jumping are athletic events. And figure-skating at a high level requires as much athleticism as being a NFL corner back.
Hunting and fishing can be sports because if you make a competition there are absolutes, nobody gets judged for style, it's all about how many things you got and how big they are. That makes it a sport. Running and jumping are sports too, again dealing in absolutes of speed, height and distance. Figure skating is not a sport because there are no absolutes, the level of "athleticism" (which is nothing more than a combination of physicial fitness and agility) has nothing to do with it, the question is does the event's structure allow for you to point to an absolute and inarguable way of saying "yes these people were better at this today than those people", and when you've got judges including artistic presentation in the scoring system you don't have that, therefore it's not a sport and can never be a sport until they have an absolute scoring system that doesn't include the whim of the judges.
Sorry, my Bad --- shouldn't have thrown out a number so quickly without cheking. I had remembered the 15 % Number, which apparently was closer to the % increase in Blacks over previous years. Here is what I found along with the reference.
2004 GOP Convention:
"There are 167 African American delegates here, compared with 85 four years ago, according to “Blacks and the 2004 Republican National Convention,” a report just released by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Black delegates are 6.7 percent of the total, compared to 4.1 percent in 2000 and only 2.6 percent in 1996."
http://www.jointcenter.org/election-2004/083004.html
What are the "absolute standards" that measure a corner back's performance? You look at game film. If the guy can't cover, you bench him. Coach's call.
I recollect he also lived in a very upscale, mostly white neighborhood in So Calif, in Ventura County.
For A cornerback there's nothing, but a cornerback is part of a team, that team scores points, those points provide the absolute measurement of which team was better and therefore which team won.
No, not really. Not at all, actually.
Doesn't matter. You don't have to be able to judge individual members of a TEAM by absolutes so long as the sprot in question has a way to judge the TEAM by absolutes. Football has a scoring system based on crossing various lines in various ways, the TEAM that puts up the most point through this absolute scoring system wins. How well one particular member of the team contributed to that does not need to be judged by any absolutes (except by the people paying him) since the team wins or looses as a whole.
My post wasn't a model in clarity. I meant that Rush got fired and trashed for a comment that merely touched on race, while Gumbel will get a free pass for an obviously racist comment. I should have included a sarcasm reference.
Ahh. Very good. Be well.
Again it doesn't matter. You're hung up on this idea of scoring individual effort in team events, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about having absolute scoring of the whole, teams in team events individuals in individual events. Like I said already, the goal is an absolute way to say "yes these people were better at this today than those people". These people would be an entire team when aplicable, so you don't need an absolute way to score a member of a team when the team as a whole can be scored in absolutes.
Bottom line is training doesn't make it a sport, I went through a lot of training to be a QA engineer, it's not a sport. Difficulty doesn't make it a sport, there are many difficult things that aren't sports. Athletic ability doesn't make it a sport, there are many things that require athletic ability to do that no one is trying to make sports.
Absolute in arguable scoring systems make sports. Judged events are in their own continuum, competitions left to the whim of a faceless judging panel, they can never be sports because there's no absolute. As soon as your scoring system allows one non-participant to change the score because they didn't like how it looked you stop having a sport. Figure skating, gymanstics, ballroom dancing, all that X-Game crap, they aren't sports; they're judged competitions.
they're specialists, not overall world's greatest athletes.If Einstein was a lousy at writing sonnets, does that mean he's stupid?
Put Kobe Bryant on skates and tell me how great a hockey player he is.
Put Jordan in baseball cleats, oh wait, already did that.
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