My dad sent me this article this morning, and it completely captures my recent view points as a result of recent events taking place in the National Football League; as well as the debates occurring in my living room between Peter and Me.
While the replacement refs were not only thrown under the bus, but completely massacred across every media outlet in the universe, where was the responsibility of the players and coaches? Where is the sportsmanship and old fashioned values of respect and fair play?
"The refs are letting the game get out of hand...". Yes, the refs play a significant role in the game of football, but why shouldn't responsibility lie with the "adult" men wearing the jerseys? Why is violence, fighting, and dishonesty all of a sudden okay when there are replacement refs on the field. I think some personal integrity was lost in the last few weeks of football, and its not surprising to me that we often hear of athletes of all levels, engaging in illegal acts. If its okay to act violently and in a manner of moral masking and unethical behavior on the field, why wouldn't they conduct themselves any different off the field. And these athletes are supposed to be role models? Pfffsh.
I have always had values of sportsmanship and honesty instilled in me and my life, whether its on a field or court, or off. Athletics taught me many many many lessons, and sportsmanship was definitely one of them. I always felt strongly that your game speaks for itself. Those who resort to unethical behaviors in their sport, likely have gaps in their abilities, as well as their focus. Channel that energy to what you are supposed to be doing, and you wont find yourself in any questionable situations; and you will also be able to look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and uphold the highest integrity and self respect in knowing you have taken the higher road.
I could go on and on about this topic, but Ruben Rosario lays it all out superbly in the following article. Enjoy.
Ruben Rosario: All's fair in love and war -- and professional sports?
Posted: 09/27/2012 12:01:00 AM CDT
September 28, 2012 4:52 AM GMTUpdated: 09/27/2012 11:52:22 PM CDT
Oh, the irony. Throngs of football fans who oppose unions and collective bargaining rights are celebrating the return of unionized National Football League referees after a three-month lockout. A settlement was reached this week, after the hoopla over a blown call by replacement refs that cost the Green Bay Packers a win over the Seattle Seahawks.
Some of these folks -- particularly east of the St. Croix River -- are the same ones lambasting the greedy teachers in Chicago, or the American Airlines pilots who have been working without a contract for nearly nine years, or the 1,300 union workers locked out for more than a year now at the American Crystal company's sugar beet plants in Minnesota and North Dakota.
As one magazine writer put it, "Football trumps ideology."
But something else about the well-viewed play caught my eye and underlines the win-at-all-costs mentality that many of us now accept in sports and other fields. It has to do with morals and ethics that we try to teach our children, but sometimes abandon or bend when it involves our kids or our team.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Seahawks wide receiver Gordon Tate and his coach, Pete Carroll, insisted the referee made the right call.
Tate knows full well he did not have possession of what was judged a touchdown catch that won the game for his team. And as a newsroom sports colleague wrote, people know Carroll was lying "because his lips were moving."
It would have been
quite a spectacle had Tate jumped up and denied he caught the ball, or if Carroll had stepped forward and acknowledged that the Packers were robbed of a win. His teammates would have reamed Tate, and Carroll would have heard it from management. Lying and cheating and getting over on someone have become more the norm in competitive athletics.
I'm not talking about major ethical violations like doping or paying a college athlete under the table. It's more the little things that happen daily on the playing field. Things like a player insisting he caught a ball when we all saw he did not, or denying he tipped a ball out of bounds, or visibly protesting when caught in a clear infraction.
Sharon Stoll has a description for this type of behavior: moral masking. Stoll is a professor and director of the Center for Ethical Theory and Honor In Competition and Sport -- its acronym spells "ethics" -- at the University of Idaho. You know this issue is a major one when there's a center established to study it.
The center is conducting years-long research on the moral reasoning of more than 90,000 athletes at the high school and college levels. So far, it has found conclusively that the moral reasoning of athletes is impaired by competition where lying and cheating are tolerated in the quest for victory.
Moral masking "is where you know it's wrong, but you've become calloused to it because in that environment, that's what's encouraged and so you follow along, you quit thinking," says Stoll, adding that such behavior is also found in other highly competitive and stressful endeavors.
Despite code-of-conduct policies and stated ideals by the institutions of athletic competition, "team sports has morphed in our country to a point where the only thing that counts is the win," Stoll said. "We do not teach sportsmanship, honor, honesty, respect or fair play. Rather, we teach how to get around the rules and how to gain an advantage."
Stoll notes that the athlete's moral sense of fair play, of right and wrong, mostly re-emerges after the person leaves that environment.
Scott Howell, head football coach of the St. Paul Central High School Minutemen, also saw last Monday night's controversial play and the dust-up over it.
"Unfortunately, we all never agree with every call and also benefit from some bad calls at times, but what we preach in our program is that we 'always want to win with class and lose with class,' " he said in an e-mail. "That was a totally bad situation where they (Tate and Carroll) looked at winning more than the integrity of the game. Their responses afterward showed that their only concern was winning the game by any means necessary."
Stoll was gracious enough to send me three of the 16 questions that form the Idaho ethics center's survey. Take a crack at them. And no cheating.
These are three questions from an ongoing research survey conducted by the Center for Ethical Theory and Honor In Competition and Sport at the University of Idaho. The responses range from strongly agree to strongly disagree:
-- Two rival basketball teams in a well-known conference played a basketball game on team A's court. During the game, team B's star player was consistently heckled whenever she missed a basket, pass, or rebound. In the return game on team B's home court, the home crowd took revenge by heckling team A's players. Such action is fair because both crowds have equal opportunity to heckle players.
-- During the double play in baseball, players must tag second base before throwing to first. However, some players deliberately fake the tag, thus delivering a quicker throw to first base. Pretending to tag second base is justified because it is a good strategy. Besides, the umpire's job is to call an illegal play.
-- Swimmers are taught to stand completely still just before the gun shot that starts the race. Some coaches teach their swimmers to move their head and upper body slightly which possibly forces an opponent to false start. If swimmer B false starts he will probably stay in the blocks a fraction longer when the race starts. Consequently, swimmer A may have an advantage during the race. Because all competitors have equal opportunity for this strategy, this is an acceptable means for swimmers to increase their advantage.
Source: Hahm-Beller Values Choice Inventory, Copyrighted S. Stoll, J. Beller and C. Hahm, 2012. Center for ETHICS, University of Idaho. All rights reserved.
