Not a Sport

Well, it's time for the Olympics or, as they like to be called, the Games of the Modern Olympiad (or some fluffed up BS) which means it's time to see medals awarded for Basketball, Rugby, Swimming, Track & Field and a host of other, actual, sports.

It also means that diving, gymnastics and other non-sports get lumped into this mess and get medals.

Wait, what????

But OF COURSE gymnastics is a sport you say.

"No, it's most certainly not." is my reply.

While the athleticism and sheer incredible that we see on TV each night during the diving, gymnastics and other judged events is impressive. (I could not walk down a balance beam without wobbling much less do what those ladies do, and if I tried to perform a vault I would turn my spine to sawdust) that doesn't mean that we're talking about "sports" here.

The fact is, if your primary form of scoring is subjective judging, and not an objective target (a basket, a run, a touchdown, a try, etc.) then you're not a sport. I'm sorry, but it's true. Judged-scoring events are not true sport, because there is no objective form of winning. 

All that being said, we HAVE to call them something right?  With that in mind here is my humble suggestion for categorizing these events in order to lead to a more peaceful, perfect sports universe.

Sport (n). An athletic contest whose primary form of points scoring is an objective target. Examples: American Football, Football, Basketball, Archery, Table Tennis, Badminton, golf, track & field, swimming. etc.

Athletic Competition (n) An athletic contest whose primary form of points scoring is subjective. Examples: Gymnastics, Diving, Ice Skating, Figure Skating, Competitive Dancing. etc.

Competition (n) A non-athletic contest whose primary form of scoring is objective. Examples: Poker, Chess, etc.

Pageant (n) A non-athletic contest whose primary form of scoring is subjective. Examples: Miss America, Dog Shows, etc.

I had to include dog shows and Miss America style pageants because I have actually heard their announcers say "in our sport" without a hint of irony.  There is no "sport" of beauty pageants. I'm sorry folks, there is just not.

All of the above said, I do realize that these categories are imperfect and likely to cause some debate. Look at tennis this morning. Certainly a sport, but it is still judged. And quite often, as was the case with Coco Gauff, those judges frequently get it wrong. Whether out of bias or incompetence or just simple human error, they can eff it up with the best of us. However, their input is usually not enough to turn the tide. The goal in Tennis is to make more shots and win more points, sets etc. than your opponent. if you do this, you win.  Period, end of story. Even in football there is the occasional bad call, and while instant replay has gone a long way to fixing this issue, it's still not perfect.  But in any sport you need rules, and those rules have to be officiated.

In all the main difference between "Sport" and "Athletic Competition" is how points are awarded. Objective is sport, subjective is not.

Last night I was watching the Olympics and I heard in both gymnastics and diving "well, the general public is not going to understand how these scores were awarded". I'm sorry, if you have to say that you're not a sport. EVERYONE knows when a basket is made, when a home run is hit, or when a touchdown, try etc. is scored.

It's no wonder then that subjective judging is among the worst judging in the world. If no one knows how it's calculated, then how can you argue if the judges are right or wrong? In objective sports you pretty much can know what the rules are that the officials are judging on. That's why bad NFL/College football calls are so glaring, it's why people think Gauff got the shaft today. In subjective judging, there's really no way to tell. Much of the judging is based on reputation, what the judges think the athletes can do, not what they actually accomplish.

So, for our sports sanity we need to break these things down into categories. Otherwise we're living in the sports equivalent of anarchy, and no-one, except for the Chinese athletes, wants that.

Throwing The Acolyte into the bin.

In the final scene of The Acolyte the camera focuses on Osha and Qimir/The Stranger standing on a rocky out-cropping looking at a setting Sun. Then, inexplicably, the camera goes close-up on their hands and we witness Qimir gently grab Osha's lightsaber wielding hand in a gentle embrace. Earlier in the series Qimir states that he is "What the Jedi would call a Sith" and that he "Just wants to be free to practice the Force in his manner."

Both scenes are not only wrong, they fly in the face of  almost 50 years of established Sith lore.

This is why I cannot stand The Acolyte, while I think it should be relegated to the dust-bin of Star Wars history never to be mentioned again.

There are other reasons I think the series was bad, the casting of the Jedi as an evil, selfish organization. (Instead of a flawed entity), Ham-fisted cameos that seemed only as vehicles to try and appease fans after shitting on them for eight episodes, clunky dialogue, a horribly paced story, and the creation of no characters that we have any reason to give the smallest of shits about.

In short, the Acolyte was story-telling of the worst kind. Not only was it heavy-handed and flew in the face of the source material, but it really gave you no reason to care. The stakes were non-existent, and it did a disservice to the Star Wars universe as a whole.

Show runner Leslye Headland should not ba allowed to be anywhere near a Star Wars project ever again. She's in the same realm as Rian Johnson.

Heck, even Johnson was somewhat better, at least he was willing to explore the Jedi as a flawed entity, instead of just a force of evil, which is how Headland chose to view them. This incessant desire to blur the line between heroes and villains is a weakness, and it's destroying the Star Wars universe.

That's not to say that heroes have to be flawless, in fact, I think heroes with issues are much better. And I think there is fertile ground to be plowed regarding the mistakes that the Jedi made leading to the rise of the Sith in the Lucas Prequals. I don't, however, think that this means you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Writing heroes in this style takes a maturity and nuance that I don't think Headland and team had. I think this type of story was beyond them.

In the end they gave us a nebulous slog of a story that left us with no players to truly care about, they turned the Star Wars world around where, suddenly, the Sith didn't want to rule the Galaxy, lacked the cruelty that they have had in almost every other Star Wars story, ever, and they reduced the Jedi to a blatant political entity where all of them were jerks, idiots, evil, or just unlikable people. There was not one Jedi in the entire series that was a decent soul.

In the end, I walked away from the series not caring what happened to any of the characters going forward. If they come out with a second series I won't watch.  I simply do not care.

I've never said that about Star Wars before.

And that might be their greatest sin of all.