[naraht]

The sports listed on the NCAA website are
Baseball, Basketball, Bowling, Cross Country, Fencing, Field Hockey, Football, Golf, Gymnastics, Ice Hockey, Lacrosse, Rifle, Rowing, Skiing, Soccer, Softball
Swimming/Diving, Tennis, Track & Field, Volleyball, Water Polo, Wrestling.

I see these falling into a couple of different groups:
Group 1: Team sports, where multiple members of a team are in the playing area against another team as a unit with physical contact between the teams. In these sports, referees (to use a general term) call infractions, but the final result is based on points scored.

Baseball, Basketball, Field Hockey, Football, Ice Hockey, Lacrosse, Soccer, Softball, Volley Ball and Water Polo.

Group 2: Individual members compete one on one (points based), with results of individual matches either being added to a team score or advancing to the next round. Referees call infractions, which may adjust scoring, but do not give a subjective scoring value to a match.

Bowling, Fencing, Golf, Rifle, Tennis, Wrestling (?)

Group 3: Races. Whoever gets to a point first wins. Judges for starting early and who finishes first and interference.

Cross Country, Rowing, Swimming, Track

Group 4: Competing to Physical amount (better name??). Judges here mostly infractions.

Field events of Track & Field like High Jump or Javelin

Group 5: Judged events. Judges here award scores, possibly multiplied by a degree of difficulty or requiring certain elements to be performed to qualify.

Gymastics, Diving.


Competiting Cheer as a sport is in Group 5 and IMO has even more issues with subjectivity than either Gymastics or Diving...