While watching an especially captivating ping-pong match on ESPN, replete with cheerleaders and all, I started pondering over what exactly makes a sport. Perhaps a sport does not have to be something that makes participants sweat, or something that requires a stadium and thousands of adoring, drunk devotees.A sport doesn't even need to be recognized by the International Olympic Committee, although that helps (certainly in the case of ping-pong).

There is a much broader definition. A sport seems to be a physical activity that requires practiced skills, is governed by a set of rules and is played competitively by teams.

With that in mind, let's test a few "sports" against this scheme. Football, for example, is a physical activity, complete with guys tackling each other at high speeds, with collisions explosive enough to give the quarterback a concussion.

The game has rules and penalties, as the Patriots discovered after receiving seven penalties of their own in the Super Bowl. And it is certainly played competitively, with clear-cut winners and losers, as the Philadelphia Eagles know. Football fits snugly into our model of a sport.

But then there are other games, such as golf, which force us to reconsider our definition. It's a physical competition; players need power to drive the ball 200 yards, while finesse is necessary to gently putt the ball into the cup.

Those who doubt the physical rigors of golf would do well to remember that PGA tour icon Tiger Woods can bench-press more than 300 pounds. Golf has rules, of course; whoever takes the fewest strokes wins. But teams rarely compete as a whole. It is a game of individual competition, a detail that prevents golf from being a true "sport."

The same can be said for swimming, boxing, track and field and countless other sports. These must count as sports, though, or all those high school varsity letters would be void. It is clear, then, that the definition of "sport" should be changed.

Ignoring teams, the definition stands as: a physical activity governed by a set of rules that requires practiced skills and is performed competitively.

But upon further review, something is wrong. This model would exclude darts and bowling because they are not exactly physical sports in the same way that soccer and sumo wrestling are. And curling, that game adored by our neighbors to the north, would have to be cut too.

However, things like billiards and race car driving, which require nearly no athletic exertion, are readily considered sports. So the new standard is any activity governed by a set of rules that requires practiced skill and is played competitively.

This final definition is deceptively broad, however. Poker players around the world could easily insist that poker is technically a sport, as it is often broadcast on television and has all the above criteria. And if poker is allowed, then the door must be open to chess and checkers. These new-found sports take skill-just ask chess master Gary Kasparov. Poker, chess and checkers are competitively played activities, so they must be sports.

One more activity slips into our definition, right beneath our noses: video games. Before getting indignant, bear in mind the current definition of "sports" is an activity governed by a set of rules that requires practiced skills and is played competitively.

Video games are surely an activity, just as chess or poker are. There are governing rules. Video games need practiced skills, too. Playing Halo II or Counter-Strike, which require intense concentration, steady arms and gargantuan amounts of skill and practice, take as much time and determination as archery, rifle shooting or a game of paintball, three activities widely regarded as sports. Some professional "gamers" can make nearly $60,000 a year by playing video games competitively.

What can be learned, then, from this discourse on the definition of sport? For starters, be more accepting of unorthodox sports. Respect someone who can bluff so well you throw away your pocket queens. Be afraid of people who can throw, with great accuracy, a small, sharp and pointy dart toward a target the size of your eye. Appreciate the ability of someone to withstand the bull-rush of the 400-pound Yokozuna without having his chest collapse.

And when you see a chronic video game player don't ostracize him, but congratulate him on being so successful at such a hard, and often ridiculed, sport.

But feel free to give him a wedgie, because the nerd surely deserves it.