It’s not fair to say that NASCAR isn’t a sport. It’s a game, it’s a competition. It takes more than just physical strength to win a race. It takes strategy, planning, engineering and stamina. It’s not just the one guy in the car turning the wheel that makes someone a winner either, it’s an entire team.
A writer from Michigan wrote a column about NASCAR and how he thought that it wasn’t a sport, after only watching ONE race. There are a million ridiculous points to his argument but I thought I’d point out this little nugget of insanity:
According to Webster’s Dictionary, the definition of “athlete” is: a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.
If that definition still doesn’t clear things up for you, I offer you this rule of thumb – if taking performance enhancing drugs (i.e. steroids) won’t make you better at your sport, exercise or game, than you are NOT an athlete!
Seriously? If that’s the case then I’m glad that my favorite drivers don’t need to take drugs to compete. And really, performance enhancing drugs don’t help everybody (if you don’t know how to hit, catch or run with a ball a drug isn’t going to teach you).
The problem is that people tend to put sports like basketball, football and baseball up on pedestals they don’t deserve. I hate to break this to you but professional athletes aren’t curing Cancer. They run around with balls trying to put them in baskets or in end zones. They’re playing the same game that my 5-year-old nephew plays with his friends. It’s not rocket science. Making it seem like athletes are some amazing super human beings is stupid. They’re just people, like you and me, who get to spend everyday practicing their craft.
Let’s all take a step back and stop taking sports, and ourselves, so seriously.