Sports are a cultural phenomenon.  They're truly the pinnacle of teamwork, good conduct, and most importantly...MANLINESS!  Sports equate with machismo and everyone knows it.  They're men's games, made by men, for men.  Remember, if you don't like sports you're a PANSY!  In an effort to educate our readers who may not be that "hip" to manly macho sports, I've prepared a quick and easy guide to the major sporting events out there.

First, let's start off with a brief overview of what a sport is.  The term gets thrown around an awful lot, and in many cases, it's dead wrong.

Simply because something is a competitive event, doesn't make it a sport.  Track and field, for instance.  Any game in which one person goes, and then another person goes, and then they compare their scores is not a sport, it's a game.  This would also apply to gymnastics, skiing, bobsledding, and figure skating as well.  In fact, pretty much all of your Olympic games aren't sports, come to think of it.  Even events like swimming or racing are the same thing.  Even though everyone all goes at once, they all compete without regard for the other people, so it's the same as going separately.  These are not sports, they're games.  The board game Candyland is also a race, but I don't think anyone would try to classify that as a sport.  Granted, bowling, darts, and pool and all fun, but they're not sports, they're games.

And then there's golf.  Not only is it not a sport, but it sucks.  It's boring, long, and totally uneventful.  Furthermore, the players all dress up like rich, white-bred fairies and prance around while singing showtunes (NOTE: this information may not be accurate).  As a wise man named Cliff Yablonski once said, real men don't play golf, real men kick the shit out of men who play golf.

Let's move on to tennis.  Tennis is not a sport.  It's a game, and not a particularly fun one either.  One thing you can say for tennis is that it's very equal opportunity.  All of the men and women are homosexual.  Now that's progress!  Anyway, all of your "net" games (tennis, volleyball, badminton, etc...) are not sports, but games.  And that reminds me--nothing played by women will ever be considered a sport by anyone anywhere.  Remember, sports are a MAN'S realm, for manly men with surging testosterone and strong hunting and killing instincts and hair covering every square inch of their bodies.

So then, what makes a sport?  One word:  beer.  No really, it's "defense."  There needs to be direct competition to qualify as a sport.  In other words, there needs to be one (or more) person trying to accomplish something, and one (or more) person directly standing in their way to stop them from achieving their goal.  That said, let's go over how great, manly, and important the various major sports are right now.

Football is the true definition of manliness, as evidenced by the picture above of big burly men doing what big burly men do best.  Football is a true thrill to watch, because it's so fast-paced and exciting.  Typically, we are treated to a team in a huddle for a minute.  Then they break, line up, and play for roughly 3 seconds.  Then they take three time outs, and go into a huddle where they all decide that it would probably be best if they take another time out.  Then they begin to grope each other and touch each other in places men usually don't touch each other.  What excitement!

Baseball, the game that rivals "International Championship Paint Drying" in terms of pace and adrenaline.  The major problem I have with baseball (aside from it taking 4 hours per inning, lacking any sort of strategy, consisting of a completely unreasonable amount of games in both the regular and post season, and laughably over paying its players for doing the same thing most 6 year olds do on a daily basis with the same skill) is that the defense is totally weak.  What that game needs to do is allow the base runner to carry the bat with him around the bases, slugging the opponents with it in order to clear a path.  Of course, to compensate, the basemen also get to hold pointed maces and aerosol cans filled with tear gas.  I'm almost positive this would spice up the game.  Perhaps they could also randomly release a rabid, starving tasmanian devil onto the field once per game to keep everyone on their toes.  Still, it's a man's sport, as we can see above where the one guy plays "airplane coming in for a landing" while the other guy "polishes his bat," if you catch my drift.

Now here's some real men.  Soccer is often regarded as one of the hardest, roughest sports to play.  Whether people say this because soccer is a rough sport when compared to, say, "World League Accounting" or if it's because scenes like the one above are commonplace is for you to decide.  Nothing happens in soccer...nothing.  The players stroll around the field like an old man in the park.  Occasionally the ball comes to one of these legendary athletes and their reaction is to immediately boot the ball with full force as far down the field and away from him as possible.  At this point he then resumes thumbing through his latest issue of Better Homes and Garden magazine and drinking his mint julep.  Every once in a while, someone accidentally kicks the ball in the direction of the goal, and it immediately goes in because the goal is 400 feet wide and is tended by an albino midget.  If a soccer score is 2-1, it's a sure thing that the shots on goal were 2-1.  At this point, a wild and frenzied orgy breaks out on the field, and the people in the stands start kicking the crap out of one another.  Other flaws with soccer include the fact that the field is 4.6 hectares long (or 6.8 knots for our nautical friends), the clock runs UP instead of down, and it's played in something like two 3 hour halves, making it totally unwatchable, and it's the only sport in history in which the women are more manly than the men.  Other than that, it's a white-knuckle thrill ride of high octane adventure.

Wrestling is quite a phenomenon lately, and with scenes like the one above, I can certainly see why it's been experiencing such a boom lately.  Without checking any statistics, I can readily see that it must be popular with the ladies and the gay community.  I'd be willing to wager that women and gays comprise at least 98% of wrestling fans.  Big, muscular, sweaty men rolling around and fondling each others privates, how could the audience be anything BUT gays and women?  Well, anyway, pro wrestling is fake, so it hardly even counts as entertainment, much less a sport.  Yep, that's right, the entire act is choreographed, making wrestlers big, muscular, sweaty, genital fondling, dancers.  Oh yes, it all makes sense now.

Real wrestling (like high school wrestling, for instance) is another story, on the other hand.  It's not pre-conceived, and it most definitely has the necessary defensive elements to make it a sport.  And let's just take a look at some of these true men in action:

Woah, that doesn't look right!

Ummm, can we show pictures like this on here?

Oh, good sweet PizzleWig, what the hell is that?!?  That picture wouldn't be half as disturbing if it weren't for the looks on their faces.  That and the leg of someone who's actually up close and watching--possibly videotaping--this violation.  YIKES!  Let's move on and never mention this again.

Awww, don't they make a cute couple?  Wait a second, those are both men!  Anyway, basketball gives everything it's got to rival baseball as "The World's Most Boring Sport."  A typical basketball game goes like so:  some guy making a ridiculous amount of money to throw a ball around inbounds the ball, a foul is committed, the guy gets the pass and turns around and commits a foul, the team takes a time out, during the time out a foul is committed, time resumes and four more fouls are committed, and finally a shot is taken, resulting in a foul.  There is so much stoppage of play it's impossible to EVER enjoy a game, plus there's virtually no defense involved because everytime a player tries something defensive a foul is called.  Of course, when they don't try anything defensive, two fouls are called.

OK, finally we come to the epitome of what a sport should be.  Hockey is a game which focuses almost entirely on defense.  If a player tries to score, not only is there a goalie (the single greatest athlete on planet Earth) there to try and rob him, but it's perfectly legal to bash the guy's head in.  Yep, it's completely within a defenseman's bounds to check, hit, smash, or flatten a guy with the puck.  I'm pretty sure they allow low-level air strafing in the game even.  In the photo above, just moments after Mellanby attempting to deflect the puck, Forsberg, Lemieux, and Gusarov reduced him to a puddle with a jersey.  Sweet stuff.  The scoring is low, the pace is fast, and there are very few interruptions.  Guy loses a head, you scoop it up and into the crowd and keep playing.  It is the best sport ever invented.  The best part about hockey is that there is absolutely nothing homoerotic about it.

Uh-oh.  It's probably best if you pretend you didn't see that.

What discussion of sports would be complete without mentioning the testament to birth control that is the "sports fan?"  Sports fans embody what it means to be a man--chiefly, sitting on your fat, bloated ass drinking beer and eating Captain One-Eye's Ocean Time Barbecued Ranch Salsa Cajun Style Pork Rinds while hurling obscenities at the television screen.  As we all know, whether or not a team wins or loses depends heavily on how many times you yell "CATCH THE FUCKING BALL YOU ASSHOLE" at the screen, and how many decibels you produce while yelling.  Sports fans often feel that a team's victory is in some way a victory for themselves, rubbing it in to those around them without realizing that in fact they have the athletic ability of a jar of Marshmallow Fluff.  Sports fans can carry out complete conversations about absolutely nothing but statistics, such as...

SPORTS FAN 1:  Hey did you see the way the Cubs played yesterday?  They were three points under their usual RBI-to-error percentage while at the same time up from last early-mid-season's batting average!
SPORTS FAN 2:  Yes, I loved the way they upped their overall hits and managed to convert more on infield singles.  Plus, HOUSTON FUCKING SUCKS!
SPORTS FAN 1:  Yeah, CHICAGO RULES!!!  WOOOOO!

Sports fans realize that saying that your team is going to "win it all" this year 400 times per second will actually make it happen, no matter how crappy the team or season.  Also, your typical sports fan is an adamant fan of the "home team," and no matter what he sticks with them until the end.  And by "the end" I mean "the start of the playoffs" at which point his allegiances immediately switch to whatever team is going to win so that he can pretend he knew it all along, because, as we all know, correctly picking the winning team means that you'll get a raise at work, a new car, and several hot women.  No wait, it actually just means that you can randomly guess with remote accuracy.  Well, either way, it makes you A MAN!

- Danimal