Sport is another human universal, though individuals respond to it in different ways and with different degrees of passion and interest. It is universal in that it is important to all known human societies, throughout history and throughout the world, though some would argue that the term be restricted to the highly organised forms of physical competition which is such a feature of the modern world.
Games have a lot in common with sports. In particular both activities involve arbitrary rules which are designed to make an ordinary human activity (such as getting from A to B) more challenging, by introducing hurdles or placing restrictions on the sort of moves than can be made. It may be argued that many games lack the physicality needed to be a true sport, while other, more playful, physical activities lack the seriousness of intent, or even sufficiently clear rules, to even count as games. No doubt these distinctions are valid, and very important to people and organisations dedicated to particular activities, but from other points of view they can seem arbitrary, which is not surprising since arbitrariness, in the form of arbitrary rules, is at the heart of all the play activities, games and sports known in all human societies. This perhaps explains why every game and sport is seen as puzzlingly pointless to those outside or unmoved by the activity.
It’s possible to give some evolutionary or developmental point or purpose to play, for example, relating it to developing the practical and social skills necessary for participating in society. Similarly, it is easy to make a connection between the celebrated athletics of the Ancient Greeks and the demands of constant inter-city warfare. You could extend this to explain the universal attraction of hunting (incidentally, the activity which gave us the words ‘game’ and ‘sport’). No putative explanation along these lines is ever very convincing, however, except at the most general level, and none explains the excitement of watching or following a game or a sport.
Sport seems practically always to have taken place in the context of competition between individuals or groups, or man and animal, or man and nature. At the level of the individual participant, it obviously involves the need to develop and refine control over all aspects of the body’s functioning. This can be extended to your precise physical and moral contribution to a group effort. It is clear that pleasure in physical activity relates to complex, precise and global internal and external sense mechanisms and reactions. Whatever it is, it gives immense pleasure even at the cost of enormous pain. Excited onlookers and honour and glory for the winners are part of the cultural life of every society, as are constantly retold tales of struggle, defeat and victory, at the national, local and family levels. It is a curious activity.
Today many of these traditional activities have been refined and institutionalised (most notably in the Olympic Games, the World Cup, Wimbledon and the like, but extending to all levels below down to casual games in a park or on village green. They involve immense riches, often obscure powerbrokers and dubious politics, and the active or passive participation of billions throughout the world. For many millions it is the most important of all human activities. Millions of others are indifferent to what seems a pointless activity and are bemused by the hype or outraged at the squandered resources, the corruption and cheating and the endless scandals at the top. Millions of sports fans are similarly outraged, but never lose sight of the joy and the hope, the excitement and despair, not to mention the routine pleasure that physical activity seems mysteriously to bring with it.
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