Go Sports!

With the World Cup engaging the world at the present moment, I hear lots of the boorish and idiotic argument that attempt discrimination between worthwhile and non-worthwhile sports. Baseball is not worthy because .... Soccer is .... I won't attempt to repeat these are they are mind-bogglingly ethnocentric and close-minded.

Here's a word from Alistair McIntyre on what constitutes a worthwhile activity or practice ...

By a 'practice' I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended (AV, 187).

Possible Equation

complex behavior + cooperative human activity multiplied by internal goods and levels of excellence + achievable levels of human excellence = worthwhile human activity

So, all sports contain this internal logic. Counting blades of grass does not. In counting grass, you usually perform the task alone (because your crazy), there's no recognized levels of excellence (you can't get much better at it) and its none the too complex. You could theoretically add these things to grass counting and it would become a sport. Throw in body checking and it would become a contact sport.

So basically, the sport you grew up with and were embedded in the practice and culture thereof and internalized the standards of excellence therein becomes ipso facto the best sport there is. Of course, you could be an American and like cricket for example, but chances are that you are a difficult and contrarian personality who has a thirst for ragging on the home grown stuff.

In following MacIntyre, this is not relatavism. People can clearly discriminate between grass cutting and baseball. Likewise, people can clearly disriminate between fine dining and microwaveable food. Fine dining is embedded in a rich culinary practice, microwaveable cooking lacks this context.