Sport is a wider term than recreation that has a very specific meaning within a certain society. Sport refers to an array of social, psychological and physical activities which include sports activities as well as other games like chess and billiards. In general most societies consider sport to be competitive and a form of war between two teams.

However, not all people think the same way. Some would define a sport as any physical activity that a person participates in that doesn’t involve participation of the mind or body of the participant. The common characteristics of all types of sports seem to be agility, speed, balance, strength, and endurance. In the past, it was believed that a game was only a sport if it involved physical contact or had some element of strategy involved. However, over the years, the definition of sport has become more vague because of the increase of interconnectivity between the physiological and psychological aspects of sport.

There are three major definitions of sport: competitive athletics, non-sports competition, and exercises or physical fitness training. Competitive athletics refers to athletic competition for competitive status or awards. The Olympic Games is the most famous and well-known of these competitions. Non-sport competitors are those that choose to participate in exercises or physical fitness training for non-farming purposes. Some examples of athletes who engage in this type of exercise are jockeys, cyclists, long-distance runners, and sprinters.

Sport is usually separated into two different groups, namely the physical activity sport and the mental activity sport. Physical activities may include playing sports like football, basketball, baseball, tennis, and cycling. Mental activities, on the other hand, may include exercising to master a specific sport or technique, or learning a whole new method of doing something such as Taekwondo or karate. These activities are the ultimate combination of both physical and mental strength.

The competitive sporting activity can be divided further into two different categories: organized and amateur. Among the various athletic activities that fall under the first category are weightlifting, bodybuilding, wrestling, gymnastics, swimming, fencing, track and field, hockey, cricket, motor-bike racing, golf, tennis, motor-car racing, surfing, sailing, cycling, and archery. In the amateur category, the most popular sports are billiards, table tennis, badminton, canoeing, swimming, fencing, basketball, field hockey, ice skating, hockey, polo, rugby, baseball, softball, sailing, snorkeling, and surfing.

One of the more popular sports is American football, which is played between two teams. The sport itself evolved from the simpler version of croquet, or lawn bowling, to the more refined contact sport we know today. The earliest form of football was formed in the late Middle Ages by the game of croquet, which involved a set of pins or spindles on a field with a rectangular pit at one end for ball games. In its early days, football used to be played with a ball made from a hollowed-out leaf of an oak tree, but with the evolution of the sport, eventually the ball was made out of a metal alligator ball.