I have always been a fan of purity. I like to see the bride that wears white. After I once found a stray bone in a scoop of green beans back in high school, I could never eat any of the school’s legumes again. I just like things that are without extra complications and additions, I guess.

Purity in sports is not an easy thing to find, especially these days. Every sport seems to have some sort of element that robs its metaphorical virginity.

Baseball has its designated hitter. Football has artificial turf. Basketball has point-shaving scandals. Snowboarding has weed. Even the Strongest Man Competition that is always on ESPN, which seems to be an unadulterated athletic event, is often plagued by participants who use steroids regularly.

Yes, it seems that the sports world has a definite lack of a poster boy. There is only one sport that relies on nothing but the premise of its existence for its survival.

I am talking, of course, about track and field. Well, mostly track; I really don’t know much about the field.

Those of you who used to run track (or still are), you know what I am talking about. Track is the one sport that can be described as simply pure. This can be proven by comparing the rules of track to the rules of other sports.

Baseball is a sport that many people try to pass off as “pure.”

Here is a quick sketch of the gameplay. Bear with me here.

We start out with a person standing on a two-by-four which sits on top of a dirt hill. This person throws a piece of leather wrapped around a ball of string at another person who stands 60 feet away, holding a stick. The thrower is not trying to hit the person but is penalized if he does. In fact, he’s trying to throw the ball of string close enough that the person with the stick can hit it, but fast enough and with a weird enough spin that stickboy doesn’t.

This whole time, there are two people behind the person holding the stick squatting down. One of them has the job of catching the ball o’ string if stick boy doesn’t hit it. The other one is supposed to say whether or not stick boy could have hit it even when he does not make an attempt.

And we have not even begun to cover the defense, balks, infield flies, grand slams, squeeze plays, arbitration, or hit and runs. As far as the plays of sports go, the only thing less pure than baseball is Calvinball.

The rules of track are pretty complex, too. You line up with a bunch of other runners, wait for somebody to shoot a gun and then run as fast as you can around a big circle until someone tells you to stop. The winner is the first person who is told to stop.

To better the purity argument in favor of track, there are other things besides gameplay to discuss. How about equipment? Want to outfit yourself for a quick game of Division I football? Don’t forget your jockstrap, nut cup, football pants, knee pads, hip pads, butt pads, rib protector, shoulder pads, neck pad, helmet, padded gloves, elbow pads, cleats, ankle braces and that black stuff that goes under your eyes.

Want to suit up for a track race? Try to remember your shoes, shorts and shirt, OK? Do you need to write that down? Go ahead, I’ll give you some time. Wait, wait — are you in a relay? Grab a baton, too. But that’s about it.

Gameplay and equipment have nothing to do with purity, you say? I beg to differ. Because it lacks fancy equipment and complex rule structures, track captures the true essence of competition.

It’s just you out there alone on the track with no one else to turn to and no one else to blame. Even if you’re running in a relay, this applies. Your team’s success or failure was still based solely on its overall performance. You can’t chastise the referee for being biased or claim the net was droopy.

The winner is who can run the fastest on a given day. It’s not based on some point system which was created to attempt to evaluate the sport or on how many times it takes you hit a ball into a cup. There’s no penalty if you cheat — you are simply disqualified on the spot.

And the simple act that the sport is based upon — people lining up and racing to see who is faster — is an appealing age-old concept. I guarantee you, the original Olympics had some form of track. However, I doubt they had two-man sand volleyball or ballroom dancing.

Track truly is the purest of all the sports. It combines the simplicity of running with the powerful experience of testing one person’s abilities against the abilities of others. And it does all of this without any extra distractions or additions.

If you never have had a chance to experience this wonderful sport, don’t be afraid to jump in now. Attend a meet on campus sometime, or better yet, the weekend after Veishea head on down to Des Moines and attend the grand daddy of them all — the Drake Relays. Believe me, after you have a few meets under your belt, you will begin to appreciate the beauty and unrefined simplicity of track.

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David Roepke is a freshman in journalism and mass communication and astronomy from Aurora.