2021 Olympics: Your "Not A Sport" reply is old, tired and (in most cases) inaccurate.

It never fails.

ESPN, or some other media outlet, will post a Tweet with the results of some Olympic event, and two or three people, in a moment of what they believe to be wit, will respond with "Not a sport" and wait for the entire world to laugh and like their tweet.

I've seen the reply to Judo, Taekwando, Gymnastics, Volleyball and Softball.

Never mind that, in all of those cases, the characterization is 100% wrong, it's also lazy, insipid, and sad that the responders one brain wave of the day is limited to trying to garner a reaction from a sport's fans.

Much of it is unserious trolling, but there is something concrete that we can take from this. Namely that we've so watered down the definition of "sport" that even contests like beauty pageants and dog shows are throwing it out without a trace of irony in an attempt to legitimize what it is they do.

Of course, no amount of definition (or logic) will ever truly stop Internet trolling and the answer is never to censor such nonsense, but there still does need to be some fixed set of criteria for what is a "sport" and what is not. To facilitate this discussion I propose the following categories for your amusement.

Sport: "An athletic endeavor contested between two or more individuals/teams with the goal of completing assigned tasks within the field of play which is won by either completing the task the quickest or scoring the most amount of points in a set time."

Examples: American Football, European Football, Basketball, Baseball, Track & Field, Swimming, Softball, Volleyball, Tennis etc.

Judged Sport: "An athletic endeavor contested between two or more individuals/teams with the goal of completing assigned tasks within the field of play whose results are judged by an outside panel, who then assign points based on a set of criteria to determine a winner."

Examples: Gymnastics, Skateboarding, Ice Skating, Diving, etc.

Competition: "An event, usually judged, that contains no athletic effort but is competitive in nature."

Examples: Dog shows, beauty pageants, bodybuilding, Poker, etc.

You may not agree with all of the examples that I provided, and the lists above are by no means exhaustive, and there could need to be some debate around certain events (shooting is one that comes to mind) but I think these three categories could serve as a good starting point for the discussion of what is sport and what is, in fact, just a competition. If you would like, another category "athletic competition" could be included for a competition such as bodybuilding which DOES take some athletic activity in order to compete and win but which is, in fact, still just a beauty pageant with steroids.

What say you?