"Sport" versus "Game"

It only took me one day of having cable television in the house again to find one thing I didn't miss skimming past when I didn't have it: the over-proliferation of Poker on TV airwaves.

I am not knocking the game; I know it has a popular following, and I guess it's my fault I'm not a fan. But like other card games, I thought poker was exactly that: a game. Why is it classified as a sport, as it fills critical time slots on networks like ESPN and FOX Sports Net?

I wrote about this in my computer blog about two years ago. Enjoy it for what it's worth, even though it may not fully "stack the deck":

... Never mind the fact that I don't understand the game. It is gathering almost as much airwave coverage these days as professional wrestling.

I tie many things to the term "slow news day." For example, when the CNN ticker says "Today is ___day; there are 'x' days left in the year," you can tell that was a space filler. All informercials today are space filler because the stations cannot find any programming suitable to run (their poor excuse). Poker gets a "filler" grade in my opinion, and it wouldn't bother me so much, but WHY is it getting airtime on ESPN, ESPN2 and FOX Sports Net? When was poker ever considered a sport? Would you even think of considering it a spectator sport as compared to baseball, football, basketball or hockey? Absolutely not! How can you think of possible scenarios in televised poker when you don't get much advance notice by seeing the person's hand?

In baseball, you think of when the hit & run could be employed. Do you go for an on-side kick in football? The pick-and-roll play in hoops? Those games let you become an at-home manager as you decide what should be done and then yell at your TV set when it goes wrong. In Poker... what's the viewer to do, other than repeat the same line over and over: "What's he got next? What's she got next?" Piddling, isn't it?