The End of Idealism in Professional Sports
One of the main arguments in favor of participation in team sports has long focused on the values that they foster. It is argued that athletes are more honorable, team oriented, and simply better members of society. Simply, more sportsmanlike.
This may remain the case in principle, and in the context of child focused, participatory sports. However, in the context of the most visible examples of team sports, professional sports, this has long ceased to be the case.
This article should not be taken as an indictment of team sports as such, but more as an argument that team sports are nothing more than a crass consumer entertainment product, and should no longer be viewed with awe. Athletes are not heroes; they are merely rich entertainers.
The concept of sportsmanship, that competitors view each other with respect and act honorably, has no place in modern professional sports. Routinely, athletes will go to any extreme to insure that they achieve whatever advantage they require.
This can include anything from innocuous techniques such as “talking trash” in attempts to throw their opponents to more blatant dishonorable behavior such as the use of steroids. Some of these behaviors have reached the point of widespread acceptance while others remain entirely taboo.
The traditionalists among sports fans, who view high-level spectator sports as struggles of the human spirit tend to decry anything attempted to gain unfair advantage. The result should, in their view, be based entirely on the performance on the field of play.
At the other end of the spectrum, those who view sports entirely as a business tend to consider anything done to gain an advantage as acceptable and reasonable. Athletes have overwhelming incentives in place to do whatever is necessary to succeed, so are taking the only justified course of action when they manipulate the probability of a positive result however possible.
There is likely some intermediate position between these two extremes that would be ideal from the perspective of spectators. Naturally, competitors should do whatever possible to ensure victory. But there is also some intuition that if one competitor has an advantage not relating to their innate talents and not enjoyed by the other athletes, it is somehow unfair.
Is it the case than that if all competitors enjoy the same advantage, or access to the advantage, it would be entirely acceptable that they manipulated results? There is likely more to the equation than simply this. Consider steroid use in baseball. It is generally accepted that for a period of almost twenty years, a significant number of the best baseball players used steroids in order to gain competitive advantage. When this information became general knowledge, there was a public outcry and the most prominent players who were implicated were vilified. But perhaps it was not justified to vilify these players. After all, though they were manipulating the result of the competition; they were not enjoying any advantage that their competitors did not have access to. The reason that these players were vilified seems to relate to the fact that the advantage that they were enjoying seemed somehow foreign to the sport, an unnatural advantage, contrary to the central ethos of sports, and contradict the ideals of sportsmanship.
The natural reaction was to vilify these “cheaters” then because what they were doing was unnatural; yet, they were gaining no unfair advantage as against one another. I argue that they did not deserve the reaction at they received.
Another example of an athlete recently vilified as a “cheater” is Tom Brady. He was accused of being involved in a plot to manipulate the inflation of footballs to be used in the 2014 conference championship game in order to gain competitive advantage. The competitive advantage that he gained is likely marginal, but still, I suggest his crime may have been worse than that of baseball’s “juicers.” Unlike the previous example, in which all athletes enjoyed the same advantage, in this example, Brady, and his team, were the only ones able to enjoy the marginal advantage. Brady seems to have been significantly less vilified, yet this seems to be a function of the marginal advantage gained by the manipulation. In proportion to the advantage gained, the negative reaction is significant.
A final example of true objectionable behavior in sports, though not certain to have actually happened is an accusation levied on several occasions over the last decade against the Toronto Blue Jays. It is claimed that during games played in Toronto, the Jays employ a complex system to relay which pitch is going to be thrown to their batters. Knowing what pitch will be thrown is a significant advantage, and makes hitting the pitch far easier. There has been some negative reaction directed against the Toronto team as a result of these accusations. Based on the framework suggested, this would be a truly objectionable form of cheating as it provides an advantage only to the Blue Jays and is not available to the other teams. The negative reaction is likely muted because of the relative absurdity of the accusation.
Controversy and the vilification of athletes is a common element of sports fandom. But perhaps it is time that expectations of fans be recalibrated. This is especially so when the situation dictates that all competitors will pursue a certain advantage—even an unnatural, somewhat objectionable advantage—in which case athletes are perfectly justified in pursuing the advantage. Even in contexts where only one side of the competition will have access to the particular advantage, it is likely not as objectionable as suggested for a team to pursue it. Given the stakes of professional sports, one can be assured that even if opponents do not have access to the particular advantage, they will be actively seeking any other advantage available.