GRcade

Lotus wrote:Discussion on 5 Live at the moment about Tyson Fury and whether he should be 'disqualified' from this. I don't really care either way, but it's opened up another question; is this actually about sporting achievement, or about the personality of the nominee?

I always viewed it as who made the biggest achievements in sport for the year. The team awards aren't based on 'personality', it's about what they've achieved, and so the same would logically apply to the individual award as well.

Yet there's always some people who say "Yes but it's sport personality", and then say, for example, that's why Andy Murray shouldn't win, because he's boring or whatever. This just doesn't make sense to me, it's clearly meant to be about sporting achievement.

Is it about achievement or the character of the individual?

Moggy wrote:

Lotus wrote:Discussion on 5 Live at the moment about Tyson Fury and whether he should be 'disqualified' from this. I don't really care either way, but it's opened up another question; is this actually about sporting achievement, or about the personality of the nominee?

I always viewed it as who made the biggest achievements in sport for the year. The team awards aren't based on 'personality', it's about what they've achieved, and so the same would logically apply to the individual award as well.

Yet there's always some people who say "Yes but it's sport personality", and then say, for example, that's why Andy Murray shouldn't win, because he's boring or whatever. This just doesn't make sense to me, it's clearly meant to be about sporting achievement.

Is it about achievement or the character of the individual?

It is badly named. By calling it "Sports Personality" they will always be open to controversy if a racist/homophobe/whatever wins a world title or has a good year.

I think the award is for the best sporting achievement and luckily for the BBC I don't think Tyson Fury had the best year out of those on the shortlist.

Poser wrote:I agree, but by the same token, I hate all the 'but they haven't got a personality herp-de-derp-de-doo' lines you hear.

Personality can also just mean 'a well-known person', so this award really doesn't have anything to do with their actual personality traits. In fairness, they'd get round all the bother and confusion (of morons) by just dropping the '-ality' from the end of it.

Poser wrote:I think the viewer losses would be negligible if they switched to Person.

Coreopsis wrote:I think the social media wailing over Fury being on the list could backfire a bit. A lot of people might now vote for him just to piss them off, pushing him further up the pecking order than he would have been otherwise.

The meltdown if he won would be brilliant.

captain red dog wrote:If they ban him from SPOTY then they have to ban Songs of Praise in my opinion since its based on the same shite that Fury gets his views from.

17 Dan.s until Christmas! wrote:If he'd been racist the BBC would have dropped him like a stone.

But because it's homophobic it's seen as "not as bad".

Lotus wrote:

17 Dan.s until Christmas! wrote:If he'd been racist the BBC would have dropped him like a stone.

But because it's homophobic it's seen as "not as bad".

They awarded Muhammad Ali the Sportsman of the Century award a few years back, and he was a both racist and homophobic.

17 Dan.s until Christmas! wrote:And that's a relevant comparison because they're both boxers? OK.

17 Dan.s until Christmas! wrote:How did you miss my point?

It's not a relevant comparison. At all. The only thing they have in common is that they're boxers. But to use that as a reason to compare the two situations completely disregards nearly half a century's worth of context.