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Good news, everyone! That thing that you obsess about from January through Memorial Day? It's a sport! It's true! The Internet confirmed it and everything! You should, at this point, go to your local Sporting Administration Council building and have your membership card stamped that you follow a real, actual sport. If you don't, you run the risk of getting into a protracted argument with someone that -- erroneously -- believes that lacrosse isn't actually a sport.
IS ______ A SPORT? The definitive guide; http://t.co/4gsTc4PDfC pic.twitter.com/SwyJIkiprN
— SB Nation (@SBNation) August 20, 2014
Reddit -- that thing that turns a productive day into a furious search for .gifs to express your "FEELINGS!" -- apparently conducted the study:
The results come from Reddit user "e8odie," who had self-selected members of three different subreddits (/r/SampleSize, /r/sports, and /r/CFBofftopic) answer yes/no to whether they considered 53 different "fringe" games as sports. He got 460 total respondents, and their results are above.
So what can we learn from this? Easy:
- Lacrosse is a sport. So if Parker Brothers tries to trademark it or patent it or something, they're totally screwed because it's not a game.
- While lacrosse and fencing both involve things that can be used in pretend swordfighting (based on this study, I'm a little disappointed that pretend swordfighting isn't even listed as a potential sport), lacrosse is more of a sport than fencing.
- Some percentage of respondents don't think that lacrosse is a sport. Those people also enjoy Two and a Half Men and likely eat their own underpants.
- The flip that Mike Powell did against Massachusetts while he was with Syracuse -- essentially freerunning/parkour -- was not a sport but he did it while playing a sport. This is where we turn to Kafka for answers.
Congratulations?