Grit, Guts, & Glorious Winners

Value Adjusted here. We’re debuting what we hope to be a weekly feature, our Friday Conversation. We intend for this to be a fairly free-form, back and forth, discussion of some concept or happening within the sporting world that had some significance during the week. The DJ and I will alternate choosing the topic of discussion. The DJ will choose the topic on the second and fourth Friday of each month, and I will choose the topic every first and third. If there’s an odd number of Fridays in the month, the topic will be determined by a poll of the readers! We’re hoping to do other things in the future to get readers involved with this feature, but we’ll talk more about that when we get…uh…readers. We might also try to get some guests on this, but Bill Simmons didn’t respond to our emails, voicemails, letters, telegrams, singing telegrams, or notes we left scrawled on his front door in rats’ blood. So, maybe next week.

Before The DJ starts us off, you should watch this shiny video! (Credit goes to: Awful Announcing)

DJ Fabulous Fred: For the first installment, we’re discussing brawls in sports.  As we all know, Brawls are so vital to the concept of sport, that their existence is required for an activity to become a sport.  Tennis, golf, swimming, cycling, running: no brawls therefore clearly not sports.  Football, baseball, basketball, and legislating: all clearly sports.  In fact, I think we all remember a few days ago when the WNBA finally became a sport. How could we enjoy sports without the threat of some hulking moron whipping a 90 mph fastball at our heads, sending us to the hospital?

I shudder to think of that world.

Value Adjusted Phineas: I think I’m going to have to mostly agree with the DJ. There’s nothing I enjoy more than seeing Kyle Farnsworth charging at, well, just about anyone looking at him askance. It really reaffirms the notion that I’m watching an athletic competition.

However, I think you may be a bit narrow in his brawl-based criteria for status as a sport. I think the three activities you highlighted are no-brainers; football, basketball, and baseball provide ample opportunities for brawling, thus satisfying this criteria for sport status.

However, I question where you draw the line in your selection of sports. Are only certain brawls applicable when considering whether or not something is a sport? Do we include athletic competitions that have had only a certain number of brawls as sports? Do the brawls have to have happened during a certain period of history? Must they have occurred at the professional level of the athletic activity being considered for sport status? And on and on. Perhaps additional criteria need to be set before this is a viable mechanism for determining status as a sport.

After all, I’m pretty sure these cyclists engaged in brawling while attempting to engage in a athletic event. Perhaps you can confirm, DJ.

DJ Fabulous Fred: Well clearly the brawls need to take place at the professional level for it to be considered a sport. Who gives a fuck about amateurs? Brawls don’t need to frequently occur, but you need that feeling that, at any given moment these fucksmiths could beat the hell out of each other.  As for those cyclists that was clearly a performance enhancing drug induced hallucination and not a brawl.  You know how those cyclists are. Have you every tripped balls on EPO? It’s Fucking Awesome!

Value Adjusted Phineas: Ah, do you then feel all brawls occurring in the proximity of the usage of performance enhancing drugs are hallucinations? Because, I think I’d have trouble including baseball (and football) as a sport, in that case…

DJ Fabulous Fred: Well first off, we know that no one in the NFL takes steroids. Except Shawn Merriman, but he’s sorry.

Secondly, we need to know what kind of drugs people are on. Steroids make you mad, not hallucinate. They just add to the aggression already present. Tripping just makes you look like you are fighting while you think that you are bouncing off lily pads on your way the cheesemoon. In conclusion, Steroids=Crazy Brawls EPO=Awesome Saturday night.

Value Adjusted Phineas: Well, I will have to concede that point to you. I clearly do not have the experience with the effects of performance enhancing drugs you have…

However, beyond what I still consider as a murkiness within this criteria, I wonder what impact utilizing this criteria will have. How do we, as viewers, understand these brawls (other than staring at awe of their display of unbridled human potential for rage and slapstick styling)? How are we impacted? What do they do to the people participating in the sport? For that matter, what do they do to the sport itself?

DJ Fabulous Fred: MAKE IT AWESOME!

Value Adjusted Phineas: Sigh.

See you next Friday!