A federal judge in Connecticut has ruled that cheerleading is not a sport. The question came up because of an item called "Title IX", a part of the regulations which requires universities to offer equal athletic opportunities to both genders. According to Title IX, a sport must have coaches, practice, and competitions in a defined season.
The cheerleaders, of course, are outraged. "We're athletes," they complained. They earned letters in high school. They are just as fit as any other athlete. What's up with that?!
The problem, again, is words. If you say, for instance, that "athlete" means "A person possessing the natural or acquired traits, such as strength, agility, and endurance, that are necessary for physical exercise," well, then, of course cheerleaders are athletes. No doubt! But is that the definition? It is a definition. On the other hand, the top definition is "a person trained to compete in sports." So now we're back at the original question. What is a sport?
The dictionary indicates that "sport" carries a couple of essential characteristics. First, there must be a set of rules. Second, there must be competition. You know, kind of like the Title IX definition. Well, of course we've all heard about cheerleading competitions, so that's fine, right? Not if Title IX has its way, because no one has a clue what "cheerleading season" is. But, what about the other component? Turns out that cheerleading does have rules ... but only safety rules. There are no "rules of the game". There are rules that say that cheerleaders need to be properly trained and there are rules that say that they can't use "height increasing apparatus" and there are rules that they must have their stunts approved by coaches ... but there are no "rules of the game". It would appear, just in terms of definitions, that cheerleading is not a sport ... and while cheeleaders are certainly physically fit and highly skilled, they are not athletes.
It turns out that terms like "sport" and "athlete" have specific definitions in context and that the problem that has arisen over this whole cheerleading thing is due to a breakdown in those definitions. The problem has occurred because we've used terms like "sport" and "athlete" to mean much less precise things, and now it's coming back to bite us.
Kind of like terms like "marriage", "fidelity", "morality", and, yes, even "Christian".
2 comments:
Stan,
Didn't you receive the notice that we are now a post-modern relativist culture? "Athlete" and "sport" means whatever a particular person or group of persons want it to mean. If the cheerleaders decide that the definition of athlete applies to them, and if they decide that "sport" applies to cheerleading, then it does.
By the way, "athlete" and "sport" both mean the same thing - potato salad. Becuase that's the way I define them. Glad I could clear that up for you.
Oh, Jeremy, such a shame! You're right about the postmodern status, but you're dead wrong about potato salad. Clearly "athlete" is a reference to gecko lizards and "sport" is all about freeway architecture.
Fortunately for you, when I said you were "wrong", that does mean potato salad, so that's not all bad ... if it's a decent recipe.
(Isn't post-modern relativism fun? While claiming to remove meanings of words, it ends up proving that words had better mean something, or we have nothing.)
(Oh, by the way, that bus bearing down on you from behind? Don't worry. As long as you don't believe it's real, it won't hurt. Ah, the marvelous of relativism!)
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