I'm not a judge, but I'll try. Might have some errors.
Ask yourself a question: Does the sport game(or movie) have a goal other than ending a timer or having a perfect score? If not, it can't be published to vault.
If yes,ask yourself a second question: Is the goal an arbitrary one? If not, it could be published.
Sport games, generally, doesn't have the flexibility of other games since they are linked to a timer: the game end when the timer ends. As such, they can't be vaulted. One could argue that to be the fatest possible require skills since you need to minimizing cutscenes(scorings, etc.), but it's deemed as unvaultable. This include Basket-ball, European Football and all other games relied to timers. To workaround that, these sports game will require a huge entertainment factor such as playarounds(R.B.I. for example), glitch demonstration, etc.(Example:
[1438] SNES International Superstar Soccer Deluxe "playaround" by Marcokarty in 15:24.38
Some has it like golf, mini putt and even billiard... Surely others such as Tennis. You need to put the ball from A to B in the fastest way possible and is not dependent on a timer. As such, these could be vaulted.
[1565] NES Lunar Pool by Bisqwit in 23:47.52 Good luck redoing those shots without tools.(One could argue that it's like having a perfect score, but you can alter a lot of stuff so you get the fastest outcome, so it's more than having a perfect score)
However, some sports game include a kind of "story mode" such as Punch out or dodgeball which there is opponents to face in a order. You can beat those in a timely fashion.(Unless it's a set of game with all a fixed timer like 5 games of basketball, I doubt it would be publishable). Example:
[742] NES Super Dodge Ball by Dasrik in 05:47.16
I see Bowling TASes as a matter of perfecting timing in order to have a perfect score, like a puzzle. One just need to find the right angle and power. I think it was deemed "too simple". Think of it like run right for justice games where all you could do is hold "A"... Or board games.
