What makes FRC a sport?

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

I mean this as an honest question: have you ever been a student driver?

I thought that being a driver was physically demanding. It certainly got my heart rate up and exercised my circulatory system. Picking up and moving the robot over and over is quite an exercise, although arguably a side-effect of FRC and not directly part of the competition.

Yes, I have driven and coached.

Calling picking up ~1/2 of a 140lb robot and moving it <50ft maybe 50 times over the course of a couple of days is really pushing the definition of "quite an exercise" I think that you are really stretching here.

Originally Posted by EricH

But what it DOES mean is that someone thinks that it qualifies as a sport. Someone who makes the programming decisions for that network/channel. You're right, I fail to understand how poker is a sport... but someone higher-up on both the named networks thinks it counts as one for whatever reason. Poker's physical exertion? Well, how much work does it take to put cards on the table?

No, it means that some one thought that they could sell advertising by playing it on their network. There are no FCC guidelies stating that something on a sports network must be a sport. If the network's target demographic will watch it then the network will put it on.

Originally Posted by mathking

This really depends on the definition you use for sport. In looking at a total of 16 definitions from the 4 dictionaries in my office, 14 mention physical activity but only 3 mention exertion.

How many of these refer to what we are actually talking about? The english language is inherently complicated but I think we could knock out a bunch of those definitions pretty quickly.