Is It A Sport

I think it must be the end of civilization. I mean, what I saw advertised on ESPN's program guide. Apparently, the sports channel ESPN is showing the 'World Championship of Dominoes" tournament. Is playing a domino game a sport? My God! I nearly heaved when I first saw that ESPN was broadcasting poker games and labeling them as sporting events. I think dominoes may be even more of a reach in filling the sports programming log.
I am curious as to the justification for such programming, and wonder if ESPN even has one. From a practical standpoint it probably broadcasts non sporting events as sports because it doesn't have enough legitimate sports events to show. By creating a sport from a non sport, ESPN may be expanding the "sports" available to show. Too, the enormous success in ratings of those poker shows may have motivated ESPN to reach for Dominoes.
According to my dictionary sport is defined as, "An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others." Hmmmmmmmmm No matter how much I try I can't place either poker or dominoes within that definition. And if poker or dominoes ever works itself into the Olympic Games as sport I will cancel my cable TV subscription, toss the set out the door and choke myself on a box of dominoes!!
Ever wonder about the sanity some of your former teachers? No, no. I am not talking about me this time. But rather about another English teacher from West High School in Denver, Colorado. Mark Asimus, 45, must have more on his mind than Shakespearean sonnets, for he was arrested the other day after authorities say he attempted to pay and to watch two teenage girls fight. He tried to do it all, not at school (where fights between ladies are not unknown, even without provocation) but by soliciting an investigator posing as a teenage girl into the plan through the Internet.
A Denver Sheriff's Investigator, posing as a 14-year-old girl, started chatting on-line with Mark , who told her that he wanted to pay the girl to aggressively beat up another teenage girl. "He did tell investigators that he didn't want to videotape it, but wanted to actually physically see the assault take place," said Lieutenant Alan Stanton with the Douglas County Sheriff's Office. "He wanted to observe this for pleasure".
Police said Mark was very specific, asking for the fight to result in bloody mouths, noses, and even broken bones. "He had a fetish or a fascination with watching women fighting," said Stanton. After one day of chatting on-line, Mark agreed to meet the decoy teenager at a park. That's where investigators arrested him, and now Mark faces criminal attempt second degree assault, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and criminal solicitation.
I doubt Mark will have much time to grade papers while in the slammer.