Wednesday, August 25, 2004

All Sports Are Judged

It was only a matter of time, in the wake of the Olympic gymnastic judging farce, before some sportswriter called for the elimination of all "subjective sports" from the Olympics. The argument is that because there is no "objective" measure to determine a winner (like time, distance, etc.), those sports (which, to the guy's credit, includes boxing) lack credibility. While that's a nice argument, it overlooks a key weakness: every sport is judged. How many times do teams and fans bitch about being cheated out of a win because of an inept ref? The impact of the officials in most sports is smaller than the judges in something like gymnastics, but there's still plenty of room for human error. Anything conceived, run, or done by humans is inherently flawed. The sooner everyone realizes that, the sooner everyone can let go of the perceived "injustices" of subjective sports.

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