Today, my friend and I were sitting together after we had just done our usual routine of a couple of games of ping-pong when he pondered a seemingly simple question, “What was the first sport ever invented?” Now, while this answer can be very simple, I began to think about the invention of sports on a different level. While the beginnings of most organized sports began in the 19^th century, I wondered when was the authentic creation of the act of the sport? The act of the sport being, for example, in basketball, the objective is to put the ball in the hoop. I want to give thought to the inauguration of the act that would become a sport later in history.

So, the first sports I will investigate will be generalized together due to the general act of what the participants are trying to accomplish. These two sports are rugby, technically invented in 1823, and American football, technically invented in 1869, and have very similar objectives and actions. The main goal is essentially to play keep-away with the ball while swiftly moving it through the field of play to make it into the opposing team’s goal or end zone. The opposition of course gets to attempt to knock you back at any chance they get. I believe that these are the sports that are the most similar to actual war. The simple mentality of “I’m going to try and knock you back, and you’re going to try and knock me back, let’s see who’s stronger” is as war-like as it gets.

Clearly football and rugby are the most violent sports in which players must act ruthlessly and with malintent in order to achieve their goals. Many players retire from football or rugby with lifelong injuries and/or a debilitating mental state due to the violence of the sports. In my opinion, these are the closest sports we have to actual war. Therefore, the very fabric of football and rugby are sewn from the art of war. So, while the sports were officially created in the 19^th century, the pure actions of the sport can be traced back to the start of war. Good luck finding out exactly when that was.

Along other lines, soccer can also be traced back through a possible dark history. Obviously, the objective of the sport is to put the ball in the opposing team’s net without using any portion of the arm. The invention of the organized sport is accredited to England sometime in the 19^th century, however it is generally recognized that a form of soccer was played in Ancient China, Egypt, and Rome well before that time.

The darkest period of the sport no doubt can be traced back to Mesoamerica during the times of the ancient civilizations. Depictions on Mayan walls show people kicking around what looks to be a human head, perhaps the head of an enemy, and was thought to have been associated with rituals. Mayan civilization dates back to about 2000 BC, and if they kicked around human heads that early in history, we can give them some credit for sadistically contributing to the idea of modern-day soccer, the most popular sport in the world today.

However, a brighter side to the creation of soccer isn’t hard to find. Ask yourself, how many times have you been walking down the street or sidewalk and decided to kick a coin? How about a can? Maybe a rock? I know personally, I tend to kick any inanimate object in my path if my journey seems far or boring. Like when I have a 30-minute walk to class and kick a rock to the beat that is blaring through my headphones. Now, imagine living 200 years ago, no cars or advanced transportation, it might be a 3-day journey just to walk into town. How many rocks do you think you would be kicking then?

The point is humans kick random things to seemingly escape the boredom of the current situational journey somehow. Therefore, the foundation of soccer in its purest form can be attributed to when the first human decided to kick something for their own pleasure while traveling towards some destination, far or near.

I believe basketball has a softer and potentially more amusing beginning than the previously mentioned activities. As I said earlier, the essential objective of basketball is to put the ball in the hoop. The actual root of the action is something that every person has done in their life. How many times have you been sitting somewhere, with a gum wrapper in your hand or a trash piece of paper and not want to get up to throw it away, so you attempt to throw it from where you lie and miss embarrassingly?

I would bet that most people throughout the history of the world have done this in some type of form or fashion based on their time-period. Therefore, the pure action of the sport of basketball is the attempt of throwing something into a hole, which could go back extremely far in history. In my theory, I like to envision a scenario in which Jesus Christ himself invented the game.

Perhaps on a warm spring morning, while Jesus is sitting in his favorite rocking-chair, warm underneath his blanket, drinking coffee just the way he likes it, decides to pick up an apple from his plentiful fruit basket. He takes one bite of the apple and looks at it in disgust, as the apple is rotten to its core. Now, as Jesus was so comfortable covered up in his chair with his warm beverage, he refused to get up to throw the apple in the waste basket. Instead, he bends his elbow reaching backwards, then proceeds to flick his wrist to fling the apple at the proper trajectory towards the waste basket. As Jesus views the apple entering the waste basket without touching the outer rim of the basket, he says quietly to himself, “Kobe”.

Okay, Jesus probably wouldn’t say “Kobe” to himself after shooting a fruit into his trashcan, but you get the point. Go back as far as you’d like for your fantasy, but the roots of basketball trace back to the first time a person threw something into a hole from a slightly significant distance away.

So, that question of, “Which sport was invented first?”, doesn’t seem as simple as it once was anymore. To recap: football and rugby traced to war; soccer to kicking a rock; basketball to throwing something in a hole. I’d like to think that war was the last of these inventions of action, which would take football and rugby out of contention for the sport which was invented first.

Therefore, I believe we are left with two options: basketball or soccer. Which came first? In the history of the world what happened first, did somebody kick a rock or did somebody throw something in a hole? This seems like one of those eternal questions like, “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?”, that’s an answer for you to decide.