NASCAR...

So today I was just sitting around watching TV and started thinking about NASCAR being a sport. This came up in discussion a little bit in the last few weeks of class. I was watching clips of it, and trying to think about why I thought it wasn't a sport, or while other people thought that it was a sport. The main arguments from others supporting it as a sport were that it was physical and required skill. Now I understand that driving in a car for hours at a time, especially at those speeds, requires a lot of strength. Strength to deal with the G-forces, strength to control the car and just pure endurance to sit in a hot car while going around in circles. But just because it requires skill and strength does not make it a sport, especially since the car is doing all the work and the driver is just trying to control it. With this argument, came the opposition asking if horse racing is a sport and I said that it was. I believe that horse racing is a sport because although the horses do do most of the work, and the jockeys are just controlling the horses, they require much more skill and physicality to succeed. Firstly, the jockeys stay in a semi-crouched position the whole time and try to control the horse with their legs, while drivers simply turn the wheel. They also have to make the horse go faster by applying a physical stimulant, whereas a NASCAR racer just has to step on the gas. NASCAR is indeed physically challenging, but anything physical could then be made a sport as long as there were competition, and i just don't think that physical requirements and competition makes something a sport.

Living Vicariously

Its strange. This is my first year in four years without having track or cross country. I never thought that I would miss it as much as I do. Especially thinking way back to my first practice. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. It was a long and hot run, and all I could think about throughout the entire practice was how I was going to tell my dad and my coach that I was going to quit. I knew that I wouldn't be able to stick with it. But here I am, 4 years later, and appreciating it more now than I ever did back in high school. I find myself watching our cross country video very often, trying to relive the glory days of my running career. Its not just the running that I miss. I mean, if I really missed running that much I could just go on my own...but I don't go as often as I should. What I really miss is the people and the competition. The ability to push my self in order to get a personal best. Its a tough sport, but in being so tough it helps to draw all the competitors together over the common task of conquering it. I often talk to other people who are still running to see how they are progressing but more often than not, it makes me feel worse about not running. I really miss the team aspect of running and being able to see everyone progress. One way in which I am trying to regain this is by doing something called River2Sea. River2Sea is a 92 mile 7 person relay race across the state of New Jersey which myself and 6 of my friends participated in last summer. It was one of the most challenging, and yet satisfying experiences of my life, and we are planning to do it again this summer. For those short months of practice before hand, week of preparation, and one day of the race I am able to relive my experiences as a runner in high school; the satisfaction of accomplishment, as well as the pain of physical endurance. But still, this does not completely replace the large team and season of track and cross country. Don't get me wrong, its a lot of fun to go to practices and be welcomed as if I was a hero simply because I was a graduate. But I would much rather be those kids in awe of an old runner, than the old runner himself. I tell myself that the teams accomplishments now are partially based on my peers and myself struggling for 4 years to bring the team to a higher level, though that may not be the case. Those 4 years of being on the track and cross country teams went by way too fast, though the running itself seemed to last for an eternity.

A Metaphysical Excursus

Thesis: An athlete is greater than any single person for he combines the attributes of various types of people.
Anti-thesis: There may be many qualities of athletes that make them like common, everyday people, but there is still something about them that puts them on another level.
Summary of key arguments in order they appear in the selection:
--According to Paul Weiss, most men go throughout life without any “vision or wisdom.” Even though people have goals and dreams, it is uncommon for someone to actually achieve something beyond what they achieve in their everyday lives. However, athletes are different. An athlete is able to escape from the mundane world of everyday life by creating his own world of sport. A world in which he must master his body in order to achieve success against other, opposing bodies. In these ways he gains some sense of vision and wisdom from being able to control his body and escaping from the confusions of the daily world. What makes the athlete different than other people is not that he has to do his best, but that he also has to try his hardest and continue to try and accomplish a set goal. He must learn to control his body in order to be the best putting him on an artistic level. Intellectuals, artists and religious people along with athletes all try to escape from “the world of common sense” in order to examine their immediate fates. For the athlete, this means that he must only focus on his sport and what is happening in his game by losing focus on the world around him.
--Weiss describes a form of finality that he calls Actuality. He describes how it is only through being cut off from the world that one can truly see what is, and will always be, real. The athlete, by controlling his body, is able to make what he does “more clearly that which is in fact and forever the case.” I took this to mean that what the athlete is able to physically accomplish is viewed as fact since it is something that is well defined.
--The athlete can be viewed similar to other men in that everything he does is finite. Nothing the athlete does is going to make him last forever, which is the same for every human as well as everything else in the universe.
--Athletes do not try to look nice or make a game appealing to the public, even though their actions are public. Instead, the athlete simply focuses solely on his game, all other aspects such as beauty are byproducts of the game. By creating their own reality of the game that they know is not the reality of everyday life, athletes are better capable of understanding what reality truly is.
--People of action focus on a goal for the future and try to accomplish it in the present, with little concern of the past. However, athletes play a game with rules and strategies that have existed for long periods of time, thereby allowing them to link to their past as well as preserve it.
--Athletes are like other people because they have private lives. Unlike other men, athletes lives are more distinctive because of the uniqueness of their lives; they constantly push themselves to physical and mental limits.
--Athletes are like religious men because both are judged by beings they do not really know. Whereas the religious man is judged by God, the athlete is judged by other people so he can learn how they judge and how he compares to his fellow athletes. Through competition and team effort, athletes are able to come together in ways that would otherwise not be possible. This bonding would be described by the religious man as being the work of God.
--While an athlete may cease to exist in the physical sense, their excellence in the sport can always be remembered.
--Weiss states that being immortal in any sense is a touchy subject.
--An athlete’s greatness is not based on their private lives.
--Everyone is representative of the human race. A fact or truth, be it in sport or otherwise, is fact no matter what. --“The athlete is sport incarnated, sport instantiated, sport located for the moment, and by that fact is man himself, incarnated, instantiated, and located.” Athletes strive for their own excellence while still realizing the excellence of others, and in doing so, they become representative of sport itself.

Favorite Sport vs. Most Entertaining Sport

One question that I find quite challenging to answer is "what is your favorite sport?" Some people can say that their favorite sport is the one they enjoy watching the most, while others may say the one they enjoy playing the most and still others may say the one that they enjoy the most overall. For instance, I have the most fun playing soccer. However, I do not consider soccer my favorite sport. My favorite sport is running. Now I'm not saying that whenever my friends and I are bored I suggest we go running. In fact, most of the time we would play frisbee or soccer or football. For me, soccer is extremely fun to play with friends and on a team. You get to run around and chase and kick a ball. In this way, the actions associated with soccer make it the most enjoyable sport to play. Yet the whole entity of running is what makes it my favorite sport. Out of the 150+ people on my cross country team, both boys and girls, only a select few actually enjoy the act of running, and I am not one of them. Very few people like to go outside and just run. But there is more to running then the physical activity itself. What makes running my favorite sport is that it is individualistic at the same time as being a team sport. When I run, I try to get a personal best as well as trying to help the team. Yet, in the end, a personal best is often valued more above a team's failure. For instance, if someone runs the best race of their lives and the team still loses that person will of course be sad for their loss, but will also have the knowledge that they did their best. Also, what makes running very interesting is that there is only one winner. In other team sports, the whole team can win or lose. In running, there is only one 1st place. Sure there are team champions, but there is only one single runner who can say he or she was better than everyone else. It is interesting to see everyone in a race, most of whom know that they have no chance of winning a race, but run their best to achieve a personal record. In these ways, running is much more than a sport, it is a personal challenge through which the common suffering of everyone brings the whole team together.

Analyzing a Sport

I enjoyed the class topics of this past week. It was interesting to try and describe sports and analyze their different characteristics. In fact, this task often becomes difficult since a sport that you love often becomes a part of who you are. All the aspects of the sports become so natural and intuitive to you that you forget how important they are to the game. For a soccer or basketball player this could mean controlling the ball, for a baseball player it could mean how you swing the bat, for a runner it could mean the baton hand off. But for any of these athletes, the most important parts of the game become second nature to them. Because of this, it becomes hard for them to analyze their sport since its hard for them to realize all the parts that make it up which have become so natural to them. It is similar to how it would be hard to describe the easiest task, such as walking, because each component of walking is so imbedded in our minds that we really have to analyze it to see all the actions that make it up. What was also interesting about describing various sports was how complicated and strange each sport seemed when it is described, but when it is played it feels so natural. I guess thats how most things go. You practice all the small details of something a lot until you get really good at it. And when you are good at it, the details become second nature and you begin to forget how or why you do them and instead let your muscle memory do the work.

Super Bowl Midterms

For me, it always seems that the super bowl comes right before midterms. This started in the beginning of highschool and has continued through to this year. I found myself wanting to watch the game not so much because I supported one team or another, but instead because I wanted to just relax and escape from my schoolwork. However, it just so happened that I had a chem midterm scheduled for the day after the midterm. Needless to say, I was upset. I went to a superbowl party but could only stay for like 20 minutes due to the fact that I had to study. I was astonished when i got to the party. There were over 60 people in a room in which it was rare for there to be more than 20. Everyone was piling on top of eachother to be able to get a good view of the game. It was very crowded but everyone was having a good time. Some people were there for the game, others for the commericals and still others for the company. I enjoyed watching everyone get so into the game. It was a way for them to get their agressions out since they could yell and jump and still fit right in with everyone else. Come to think of it, when I think of my past superbowl experiences I don't remember the games or the teams really. Instead, I remember the people I was with and the emotions of the game. In this way, sports is able to act as a release from the troubles of every day life...unless of course you have a midterm the next day.

Art and Sports

I realized that I have not posted in a week so here is a post about a major discussion we've been having in class lately. During class the past couple of weeks we've been talking about whether sport is a type of art and the beauty that is in sport. I think that there is definitely a beauty in any sport. If you look at the intensity that sports require as well as the skill and technique, it is almost impossible to ignore the aesthetically pleasing aspects of sports. Especially when you slow down sport and examine all the complexities that go into every instant, it is extremely awe-inspiring. When you look at art, you too see that it is beautiful. However this is a different kind of beauty. In art you see what the artist is trying to represent; the point of art is to portray to the observer the meaning that the artist desires. This however is not the way sports work. Sports are a form of entertainment. They act as a way for us to both enjoy being physically active as well as allowing us to enjoy watching them. While art can also be enjoyable, it is different than sport in that sport doesn't have a set meaning to portray. Sure, athletes and teams often prove inspirational, or courageous, or dejected but that is a meaning that the observer gets which was not necessarily intended by the athlete. The athletes go out to win a game, they do not go out to be inspirational or amazing, though those are often biproducts of their athleticism. Sports and art can both be beautiful and in that way they are similar. However, art is used as a way to portray meaning whereas sports can portray meanings, but it is unintentional. That, I guess, is part of my philosophy of sport which will continue to grow throughout the course.