An adult realizes with a laugh that he has uttered an unintended pun. A child sees a flat stone, picks it up, and sends it skipping across the waters of a pond. The first is spontaneous and unconstrained. Unambiguous definition is nonetheless a prerequisite to practical determinations about what is and is not an example of play. In the real world, as a practical matter, motives are frequently mixed and often quite impossible to determine. Neither are professional athletes if their only motivation is their paycheck. Recalcitrant children compelled by their parents or teachers to compete in a game of football (soccer) are not really engaged in a sport. Play is autotelic-that is, it has its own goals. “Play,” wrote the German theorist Carl Diem, “is purposeless activity, for its own sake, the opposite of work.” Humans work because they have to they play because they want to. The most useful definitions are those that clarify the relationship of sports to play, games, and contests. Sports are part of every culture past and present, but each culture has its own definition of sports. Sports, physical contests pursued for the goals and challenges they entail.
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