The comparative / competitive dichotomy:
When comparing performances across different sports (comparing a tennis player to a golfer, a football player to a runner), I keep coming back to a dichotomy that I came up with a few years ago. I'd like to toss it out there and get some thoughts on it. It's not really about one sport being better than another, but it does explain why some trends in certain sports.
- A competitive sport is one in which two or more athletes or teams compete in direct opposition to one another, which would include football, hockey, just about every other team sport, tennis, any martial art, etc.
- A comparative sport is one in which two two or more athletes compete essentially parellel to one another, with their results compared. Examples include many some forms of races, field events, figure skating, etc.
- Many sports fall somewhere between the two.
Another way to think of it: can you play the sport on your own, with no competition? You can run a marathon competing against yourself, you can perform a gymnastics routine aiming for a higher level of perfection, but you can't box without an opponent. You can practice skills, you can strength-train, but that's about it.
Here's the reason it's important: in a competitive sport, you have two options to win: maximize your own performance, minimize your opponent's. You can adjust your strategy accordingly to account for what makes your opponent successful, and attempt to neutralize him. In a purely comparative sport, your options are much more limited: maximize your own performance. You simply must be stronger, faster, whatever is required by the sport.
This is a dichotomy that has existed pretty much since the beginning of sport, dating back to the greek olympics, with wrestling representing the pure competitive, javelin and discus being pure comparative, and marathon behing somewhere in between.
Imagine this dichotomy put on a scale where 0 = competitive, 7 = comparative. (It's probably possible to break it down further and find levels between these).
- = pure competitive. Everything is dictated in response to or in anticipation of your opponent. (boxing, wrestling, martial arts, fencing). The entire sport is about the engagement of the opponent. Instantaneous adaptations in strategy are for more important than having specific skills or strengths.
- = competitive, with somewhat comparative elements. There's an element of comparative in terms of certain tasks, but every element of the game is 'blockable'. In football, for example, kicking a fieldgoal is essentially a comparative skill where the kicker with greater range gives his team an advantage, but someone can still block it.
- = competitive, with pure comparative elements. The flow of the sport is essentially competitive, but elements of the game are essentially comparative tasks that you're opponent cannot influence. (basketball) In basketball, the task of foul-shooting is a completely comparative task. There's nothing that the opponent can do except not commit fouls in the first place.
- = simultaneous comparative, with competitive strategy (distance running, cycling) You might have some strategy going into this event, but your strategy is based on what your opponent does. In the end though, you can`t really influence your opponent, you can only adjust your strategy to take advantage of mistakes they might make. A cyclist can hang back and draft, conserve energy, and then overtake a rider in a final sprint. A rower can look at his lead and decide to focus on efficient clean and direct strokes, rather than focusing on powerful strokes that would make him go faster but take him off course.
- = non-simultaneous comparative, with strong cerebral component (golf) This is a category really specifically for golf. It really is a non-simultaneous comparative sport, with one important difference. Because it`s based so much around concentration, it gives competitors a powerful tool to influence opponents: intimidation. You may be running against the fastest runner in the world, but that intimidation isn`t going to cause you to run slower. In golf, it can really affect performance.
- = non-simultaneous comparative. (Figure skating, weight lifting) You might make decisions about an element of the sport before beginning, based on an opponent's actions. A figure skater deciding whether to risk a difficult jump based on what a prior opponent did, or a weight-lifter chosing not to risk his maximum weight because his closest opponent already failed at a lower weight.
- = pure comparative. (100 m sprint). There's no strategy beyond your training. If you're faster, stronger, and better-prepared, you'll win every time. Really, the reason there`s no strategy is because there`s no time for anything except for 100% physical exertion.
One thing that this affects is how easy or difficult it is to dominate a given sport. For the most part, it`s easier to dominate comparative sports, since your opponents can`t really adjust their strategies to counter what you do successfully. On the other hand, the margin between athletes is usually very small, since very specific tasks are targetted. However, when someone does emerge who it quite simply better, it`s easy for him to dominate for years.
With competitive sports, it`s more difficult to dominate a sport in the same way: if you're good, probably everyone is playing their best games against you. Even the best dynasties in basketball, hockey, never came close to going undefeated. It's happened in football, but then football has a much smaller sampling size in a season.
Tennis is a sport that sort of defies categorization. At it's best, it is almost purely competitive, but increasingly with men's tennis, it has become more of a power game, and it's theoretically possible for a perfect tennis player to ace his way through a game in such a way that his opponent has literally zero chance of winning. But it still remains strongly competitive, which is what makes Federer's dominations one of the most remarkable in sports.
I have a special category for golf, as mentioned above. I think it's largely comparative. There's not much you can do to affect your opponent, all you can do is perform to the best of your own abilities. Yet because it is such a cerebral game, it's definitely possible for someone to be thrown off their game in a way that few other comparative sports can be. But generally, the advantage to this side of the game lies with the better player. It's possible, but not easy, to intimidate a better player.
Boxing is somewhat problematic, because athletes do often aquire amazing records like 40-0, which are otherwise unheard of in the competitive side of things. But I think these records are largely inflated, since so many of these matchups are against obviously inferior opponents early in a career. If boxing was more of a league format, I think you would not see many athletes who aquire such dominant records. You'd probably see something more like mixed martial arts, where a record like 16-8 is pretty good, because few if any of those matches are against underwhelming opponents.
Anyway, this is a model that I keep coming back too, usually when my wife asks me 'With so many other golfers, why can none of them beat Tiger?', or 'If that team is so good, how come they're losing tonight?' It's also useful in more serious discussions, such as comparing the success of athletes who compete in different sports.
I can imagine at some point doing a two-axis (four quadrant) graph of sports, with competitive / comparative on one axis, and strength / skill on another, but that will wait for another post.
The comparative / competitive dichotomy in sports
