Abstract

To mark the 18th Annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science, Balagué and Torrents (2013) advocated the unification of sports science (with which I fully agree) based on the terminology of nonlinear systems theory. This does not seem inappropriate at first but it stresses a biological ontology and epistemology to which I do not subscribe. Given the importance of this debate for our academic work, and with the main purpose of keeping it alive and open, I would like to make a contribution in a different direction by emphasising three aspects: transdisciplinarity would appear to suggest the existence of a discipline towards which we can advance; imposing terminology is to impose a way of doing science; and education in physical exercise and sports science in Spain is mainly assigned to the area of social and legal sciences. The proposal championed by Balagué and Torrents is an exciting challenge, although the solution may involve answering another type of question: what are sports games made of?