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I don't feel like answering all those questions individually, but I'll give my take on it. Are they a SPORT? No. That's silly. Are they a legitimate competition? Yeah, sure. They're skill based challenges against (roughly) equally skilled opponents. They're no more a sport than Chess is a sport, but as a competition games have merits.

The word "sport" is too vague to come to a consensus. But here is the definition from what seems to be a respected organization. Mind and coordination allow video games to fall under this category. Keep in mind, Chess is considered a sport. This is where things get less clear. 1, 3, and 4 are okay. However, 2 would mean that video games could qualify and not qualify on a case by case basis. Competitive Pokemon would be immediately disqualified under this, for example. Five could also present problems for certain games, particularly ones that are console exclusives. Under the furthermore, 2 and 3 would cover all video games, so even ones that met those five would generally be met with skepticism. Not a hard and fast definition, but something to consider.

     

Juggalonies is now a thing. http://theblaze.com.co/icp-announces-alliance-with-brony-community-large-brony-presence-expected-at-2015-gathering-of-the-juggalos/

No. they're not, and no, it doesn't matter. The audiences are completely different. My dad loves watching sports, he played a lot of rugby in his younger days, but that's never something that carried through to me. He can sit and watch rugby, tennis, golf, whatever you can think of, all day. But god knows you're not gonna convince a 60 year old scottish man to sit down and watch a game of Dota for an hour, and have him think it's an actual sport. You can argue that it just requires a different type of skill to traditional sports, but guess what, when someone says sport you think of football or whatever, and that's because that's what a sport is in our society, something that requires a pretty high level of intense physical skill. There's a reason that they're called 'e-sports' and not just 'sports', and that's because like it or not they're NOT regular sports.

Eh, comparing comp gaming with Football is really an unfair comparison. Nothing has the sort of name recognition Football (and Futbol) do. It's more fair if you compare it with golf. Name me a professional golfer who isn't Tiger Woods. Unless you actually watch golf, you can't. Comp League, or CS:Go, or whatever is the same thing. Just because you can't name a famous guy from it doesn't mean it's so niche as to be irrelevant. Comp gaming still has a bigger scene than something like, say, Curling does.

Lets be honest, thats more or less what competitive gaming is: people sitting on their asses clicking and pushing buttons. The reason why you could get away with saying "I played football" and not with "I played professional League" is mainly because its just not as an impressive. Everyone knows what football is, and how physically taxing it is. Electronic entertainment does not have that luxury to it. As much as people may try to deny it, in the end, playing a video game really just involves you sitting down and pressing buttons(or clicking a mouse or whatever). As to why ESPN had blacklash for streaming DOTA 2? I don't think its because its a "social stigma." It simply doesn't belong on ESPN. Most people who go on ESPN aren't going there to watch people play video games, they're going there to watch people play football/soccer/baseball/golf or whatever physical activity grabs their fancy. I'm shit at anologies, so forgive me, but its like if I turned to Cartoon Network, and got treated to a Japanese Slice-of-Life anime. You can argue that its technically a cartoon, but its not the sort of thing I'm going to Cartoon Network for. (But lets be fair, who really watches Cartoon Network anymore?) I've never heard of Froggen by the way, but I think that proves a point that competitive gaming is in a really niche position. I like to play games seriously, but if you asked to name 3 professional Street Fighter players, I couldn't even give you one. Everyone (American) knows who Tom Brady is, because Football is big. Competitive gaming only really matters to very few in comparison. I'm no good at ending essays, so let me end with a TL;DR TL;DR: competitive gaming is too different and too niche to really be compared to with athletic sports.

Two shows in and Avenue Q is shaping up well! I'm pretty thrilled! My boss came and sat in the front row, and I got to rib him a lot during a part with audience participation. The audience lost their shit. I'm not sure if I went too far, though. Here's hoping I don't get fired.