Point/Counterpoint: Is NASCAR a sport?

The recipe is quite simple. Just add a dash of corporate sponsorship. Then find hundreds of thousands of people who want to pay to sit outside and bake all day, or people willing to sit at home all day and endure the pain of watching a repetitive event and the commercials that go with it. Bonus points if the fans drink, smoke or cuss a lot.

I drive in circles every day on the freeway. Playing video games has given me some great hand-eye coordination. But does my need to employ that hand-eye coordination to avoid accidents make me an athlete? I wish, but no.

No competition should be granted "sport" status until its athletes' god-given athletic abilities and talents determine their chances at victory in that particular "sport."

The natural talents of NASCAR participants do not determine their success in an event. They rely on the equipment they operate and other people around them to have a chance at winning. Does a different brand of football or a different company's batting gloves on a baseball player have any bearing on the outcome of those sports? No.

When people talk about participating in a sport, they talk about going to play baseball, or basketball or even hockey. If you're going to race a car, do you say you're going to "play racing?" No.

Then there's the whole athlete thing. NASCAR drivers are not athletes, for the most part. You could take any driver out there today, put them up next to a member of their or any other team's race day pit crew, and 90 percent of the time the pit crew member is going to be the one in better shape. A driver's waist size does not determine his chances at victory. But can you put an extra 45 pounds on Michael Jordan and not see him lose his competitive edge? No.

It all comes down to the fact that NASCAR drivers rely far too heavily on their equipment and the talents of those supporting them to be considered "sport" participants. Reality tells me that I could give Tiger Woods my bag of golf clubs and he'd probably be okay. But I wouldn't put money on Dale Jr.'s chances at Bristol with my Oldsmobile.

NASCAR certainly is a corporate-driven phenomenon. It is a heavily intense competition, but it is no more a sport than a cooking show on the Food Network.

I'm not kidding.

Consider the similarities. Both involve a person operating one or more large pieces of metal in the same fashion time and again.

A driver drives in circles, while Emeril stirs in circles.

You pay to see both things, whether it is through cable television billing or tickets to a NASCAR event.

I suppose in the end we really only have ourselves to blame.

In our constant attempts to include everyone and leave no one behind in every facet of life, we've given the status of "sport" to many things that don't deserve it. NASCAR is only one of them.

But it does bring up one intriguing question: Is there a corporate-sponsored Iron Chef tournament in our future?