Test 5 Flashcards
Central values of sport take a back seat to commercialization.
Mass marketing of sport leads to idol worship instead of participation.
Rule changes are made for TV or mass appeal.
Competition itself harmed.
Season/Play-offs get longer and longer.
Many fans can’t afford tickets anymore.
Players seen as meat, animosity between players and fans increase.
Sport Corrupted by Marketplace
‘the commercialization of sport, the transformation of sport into a product that can be bought and sold, corrupts sport.”
Sport becomes a means to securing external goods.
What sells is what matters.
Corruption Thesis
Basic benefits of sport
Better Health
Joy of Competition
Fun
Scarce benefits of sport
Fame
Wealth
Power
Goods that cannot be achieved apart from their sport/sporting communities.
Home run not achievable outside of baseball, not checkmate apart from chess.
These goods are shared by performer and spectator alike.
Internal Goods
Players more about contract than the good of the team/game.
Sport is warped by need for popularity and mass appeal.
Still not the whole story; has made sport more accessible, and some rule changes have been improvements.
Yet players do seem to have been commodified.
So some harm appears to be real, but it may be overstated.
Commercialization Undermines Internal Goods
Rather than do a purely utilitarian calculus of the goods/harms produced by commercialization, perhaps there are some virtues upon which professional sport should rest.
Assessing the Corruption Thesis
Is a threat but it also produces goods.
Commercialization
An externalist position.
The value/morals of sport are merely reflections of the values of the larger society.
Reductionism
Play by the rules: Despite some cheating occurring, respect for the rules is the standard, and cheaters do not openly endorse their behavior.
Excellence: Even when corrupted by “win-at-all-cost,” the implicit reason to win is that it suggests superior performance.
Can be congruent/conflict with the larger social norms.
Internal Morality of Sport
The problems sport runs into when used as a tool for character education in schools
Partisanship
Indoctrination
Whose morality is taught?
If you’re “conservative” and schools teach “liberal” morality you’ll be upset.
However, we don’t have a choice, there are very few if any value neutral positions.
A commitment to fairness, and tolerance of dissent is a committed rather neutral position.
Problem of Partisanship
Sport building Character in Education
Kids should make decisions for themselves. Therefore we should wait till the age of consent and let them think for themselves.
Problem of Indoctrination
Sport Building Character in Education
Sport at its best is a deep, meaningful, dramatic experience.
One might even say “spiritual” or “religious”
Is sport’s integrity destroyed by its own phenomenal popularity?
Money, power, prestige all driven by the popularity of the activities.
The Sporting Paradox
Conflicting demands? Win or teach?
Recruit, succeed, keep eligible; demands that may conflict with internal morality of sport and mission of a university.
Winning within ethical constraints of a mutual quest for excellence seems an ethical position.
Moral Coaching
Learning about ourselves and others (both teammates and opponents).
Clarification of strategy and games principles.
Guidelines of commitment and responsibility (this can include the classroom).
What Coaches Should Facilitate
Skill development, understanding, and love of the game.
Will require significant participation by all players.
All of which is more important than winning.
What Youth Coaches Should Emphasize
“the use of physical force designed to harm others… [force with] the intent to harm.”
Intent is the key term for Simon
Definition of Violence
Violates a respect for persons implicit in the ‘mutual quest’
Person just a ‘toy’ for perpetrators gratification.
Violence
Strategic, no intent to harm.
Brushback pitch, hard post up, etc.
Injury a risk but not an intent.
Force
“For the use of force against an opponent in an athletic contest to be ethically defensible, the opponent must be in a position and condition such that a strategic response is possible and it is unlikely that injury will ensue.”
Blocking a shot is ok.
Undercutting him while in the air is not.
Vulnerability Principle
“there are two arts which I would say god gave to mankind, music and gymnastics for…the love of knowledge in them-not for the soul or body incidentally, but for their harmonious adjustment.”
Plato
“Most of us feel as if we lived habitually with a sort of cloud weighing on us, below our highest notch of clearness of discernment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake.”
James
More concerned about being proper than about exploration or finding what is right.
We could be more than we are.
Respectability
