Luka's Arts In NYC

Since i did this with basketball i decided to eventually throughout this course do it with all the main team sports as well as some other sports such as snowboarding and swimming. So my next sport is football.now do i consider football a sport. In my opinion in a way it is a sport because there is this constant give an go between defense and offense. There are these complicated formations, which are similar to formations in dance, where each person is supposed to start off. There are certain positions and roles you have to fill out and work differently, which reminds me almost of an orchestra. For example, the conductor of the orchestra in the case would be the quarterback. He is calling the shots and saying, based on the defensive patterns of the opposing team, what they should do and is ultimately deciding where the ball goes. Like all sports this sport reminds me of improv dancing, because you’re going in with a basic idea of what you’re supposed to do. You don’t go in their not knowing what you’re role is. But whether you get to achieve that role and how you achieve it varies with each possession.

With football there’s a very solid argument on why it would be considered a form of art. One part is fluidity. There are so many breaks in football that it doesn’t really seem like a fluid piece of motion but rather stagnant pieces broken together. But in my opinion each play is like a song in an opera. The songs often connect to each other if they are in the same act and without one often the other would seem out of context. This is the same in football., Without the play before you wouldn’t be making the current play because you wouldn’t be in the same position that you are in. Football almost follows a story. Where you start off in the beginning and constantly fighting to reach the end.

Another argument is again that it is to regulated. There are so many rules on what you can and can’t do in football that it seems hardly the same as art where you’re really allowed to run free with no rules to hold you down. But these rules work as form to help define a specific genre that is “football”. Just as Blues in music follows the same outline throughout every song, so does football. But you would hardly say that all blues is the same, just as you would argue that no football game is ever the same as the last.

The last is that it lacks content. There is no deeper meaning to football supposedly. But in my opinion there is. It shows the pure primal nature of human beings and how brain(plays) has to work wiht brawn(the players) in order to truly succeed. In football the great teams win because of both their players and the coach that is calling the plays. So i do think football is an art form.

I was sitting watching a game of basketball the other week and started thinking, is basketball an art form? In my opinion it is. When i watch it some of the plays are so beautiful. The dribble moves, the cross overs, in between the legs, spin moves, post moves, all seem as much art as a dance move is to me. The dunks and the shots is almost like watching people doing back flips in dancing. I think basketball is almost a form of interpretive dance. And when someone performs some of the moves the players in this game perform they are not described in any other way other than aesthetically beautiful. There is constant conversation between two players and between two teams. And the audience almost becomes the score of the piece.

Now some would argue that this is wrong for several reasons. One of these reasons is that it has rules. Basketball has strict guidelines that you have to follow or else you get punished for them. But to me these rules are the same thing in art as following a style. When you draw cartoons,for example, you follow a certain style. Obviously a lot of cartooning differs from one another, but they do follow basic similarities. Same with singers. When you are a singer in an opera you follow your certain pitch, whether it be tenor, soprano, bass, etc. In basketball each players style also differs even with the rules. For example, Lebron James has a very pass oriented game. he doesn’t want his own shot unless he has to. he is also an extremely fast and athletic player so he drives into the lane a lot more, whereas Ray Allen is more of a shooter, working off of screens to make the three point shot as much as possible. he doesn’t have the ball in his hand a lot.

Another argument might be that it doesn’t look to convey a message. Often art looks to convey a message or deeper meaning behind it that is up for interpretation. I think basketball does do this as well. As a sport in general it tries to convey the message of teamwork and competition. it tries to convey the idea that one cannot succeed without teamwork, and the idea that you are always competing against someone in the end. I also think it conveys the idea of unpredictability. That you never know what life will throw at you. And this is shown in basketball through injuries, upsets and who ends up being in the finals.

In conclusion, i think basketball is a form of art because it is a form of entertainment that engages an audience and is aesthetically pleasing and stimulating to a certain sense.