Countless sweat stains and painful bruises covering your whole body, representing how you have put your heart and soul on the line in order to succeed. Perfection becomes an important reason for your sacrifice time out of your day to go to workouts and practices. No matter how much pain you endure or how tired you are the next day, you keep pushing on. On the other hand, you stare at your TV, eating junk food, twiddling your thumbs on the controller, hoping to sooner or later get a victory, where in seconds you will repeat the same process. 

Both situations accurately describe different activities that are recognized as sports. Traditionally, the sports category consists of soccer, football, gymnastics, baseball, etc., but, with online games becoming increasingly popular, as a society we have disappointingly placed playing video games into this category, formally known as e-sports.  

I love technology as much as the next millennial or generation Z individual; I’m not here preaching against it or bashing teenagers’ technology use (we already have the older generations for that).  In fact, the gaming community wouldn’t bother me at all if they would stop labeling their, frankly, lazy hobby a sport as an excuse for their inability to do something that requires energy. 

Yes, you can look up the definition of sport on webster.com and try to outwit me with facts, but I will never come to the conclusion of how someone is even able to think of comparing a physical sport to playing Call of Duty.  

Let’s take gymnastics for an example; this sport not only requires athleticism, but also requires you to push your body to the limits, which can result in serious injuries. Not to mention, it clearly forces you to exercise. This simple description of the sport, without even going into detail, has sport-like characteristics that e-sports clearly do not have (unless you consider a thumb cramp an injury).  

With video games becoming increasingly well-known as the years go on, there will always be an issue with it in someone’s eyes. So, keep on being you and pursuing your dream of becoming the next big gamer on Twitch (or whatever reason you might be caught sitting on your couch for hours on end). But, until you start gaining muscle or losing calories from pushing different buttons over and over, let’s keep this hobby separate from sports.