Points For Style

It should be a simple rule: If it's judged, it's not a real sport. Ice skating? Not a real sport. Ice dancing? Puh-leeze. Definitely not a real sport.

I'm not saying that ice skaters and dancers aren't athletic. They're great athletes. They're more athletic than the the people who compete in curling, which is a sport. Ice skaters and dancers can do stuff I couldn't even dream of doing, but that doesn't make what they do a sport. There are people who can do amazing things with a yo-yo, but yo-yoing is not a sport. An amusing pastime, yes, but not a sport. Not even if you can do the "walk the dog" yo-yo trick.

The key difference is that sport is measured, not judged. Sport is a pitting yourself against nature or against your fellow man who is trying to do the same thing better than you, or somebody who is trying to hurt you. Sure, you are tempted to say that ice dancers compete against other ice dancers, but that's not really true. Ice dancers are competing against the judge's idea of perfection, which may or may not include how nice their smile is. To illustrate what I mean, consider an ice dancing competition in which only one couple was skating. They win, no matter what the score, but if they didn't get a perfect score then what the judge is really telling them is that they still sucked.

In a real sport, there's no place for people who judge your form. Ski jumping is a good example of a real sport that has been ruined by subjectivity. Ski jumpers are not only scored on their distance, but their "style." What is up with that? Screw the style points. How far can you fly, man? That should be the only measure. Who cares if they fly through the air backwards or upside down. Just measure where their feet (or head) hits the ground and give the gold medal to whoever goes farthest, even if it's posthumous because their head-first landing was fatally bad. Dick Fosbury, the inventor of the Fosbury Flop, found a new way to jump higher. If there were style points, he wouldn't have won and he would not have revolutionized the high jump.

I'm not saying that judging form isn't important. It's not important in sports, but it's important to my buddies and I when we go out looking to meet some nice babes. All of us guys have our strategies, tactics and our never-fail pickup lines. But sometimes my pickup lines fizzle like a wet fuse--even my best ones like "Darling, heaven must be missing an angel," and "Call the cops, baby, cuz it's gotta be illegal to look that good." When that happens I have to sulk back to home base where my friends will tell me "Jimbo, that was a mighty flameout, but i'll give you points for style."