Neonchameleon
Legend
One can imagine Combat-as-Sport about ambushing the other team and hiring fans to take potshots. This is what refluffing powers and/or using pg 42 in 4e is like. You can describe your move however you like, but it's still Combat-as-Sport because you know what the consequences are going to be. There's no "going with your gut" involved.
Then in my experience one of two things is true
1: Combat as Sport does not exist
2: Combat as War is predicated on people who do not understand the world they live in.
Coming up with crazy schemes (eg @Daztur's example from the original thread with the bees) is definitely fun when it works, but not so much when your plan tumbles like a house of cards because of something you didn't expect. Whether or not you like this depends on whether the fun outweighs the frustration.
And I love 4e because it is far better for me as DM to enable such schemes.
Look, here's the primary difference between Combat as War vs Combat as Sport, at least as Daztur suggested (I make no claim about how edition warriors may have abused it). Do you find lots of short, one-sided curbstomp battles appealing? If so, you like Combat as War. Do you find a succession of one-sided curbstomp battles boring, and prefer battles with a little more granularity, a little give and take? If so, you like Combat as Sport. I mean, it's right there in the post that linked to earlier in the thread. There's nothing there about combat as war being a statistically accurate representation of battles in war. It all comes down to do you want your combat to be like the fencing matching Princess Bride, or like Indy shooting the swordsman in Raiders?
Personally I find one sided curbstomping battles to be two things
1: Roleplaying a systematic bully
2: An utter and pointless waste of resources that could better be put to use elsewhere
I would far, far rather avoid any such battles. Either by intimidating the enemy out of the fight, diplomancing them to work for us, or tricking them into attacking my enemies. Is this combat as sport or combat as war?
Combat as War is a knight riding against an opposing army. He doesn't want a fair fight, he wants to win. He'd rather ride against the peasant militia if he has to, because they can't hurt him up there on his horse. If he's forced to fight an opposing knight, he uses whatever tactics he thinks he can win with.
And this is just amusing. The Knight wants a "fair fight". Quite explicitly so. With a fair fight including trying to ban the crossbow and knowing that they will be ransomed. Medaeval warfare was, for the knights, a bloody and dangerous sport - but a sport nonetheless. For the peasants ... it wasn't.