To answer the question before it's asked: there are rules to all this, but they do not exist anywhere that we can refer to them. When something is sports, you understand it as such, and when it embodies those values, it matters less whether it also strictly models those aesthetics. There are moments when you may find yourself watching something that is outwardly sports—say, one of the NFL games that they have in London with like 22 neutral zone infractions and a final score of 9-7—but cannot find any actual sports in it. In those moments, you are just watching television that happens to be shaped like sports. Turn your television off. Go away from that, because there will never be enough sports in it to make it worth your time.The other side of this is that you can watch a video of an English Bulldog named Diesel waddle and thud into every possible obstacle for three minutes—because he is a dope, and more to the point because he is holding a box top in his mouth such that it makes it impossible for him to see—and know, simply because of what it feels like to watch, that you are watching sports.Does this make Diesel an athlete? I would not say so, really, although his meaty tubular body does build up a pretty solid head of steam at points. He is not an athlete any more than the woman filming and laughing as he does these things is a sportscaster. Better just to call them participants, I'd say. A moment of sports—the glorious and unself-conscious headlong pursuit of some obscure and mostly incidental goal, a moment of purpose and flight that exists mostly for itself, both generously and goofily—is happening. They are in it, and a part of it. There is no reason to put a name on it, or to call either of them—the dog with the box top that keeps plowing into parked Hyundais and the woman chasing him—anything but what they are, which is blessed.