Table of Contents
Fairness
Honesty
Accountability
Regard
Firstly, understanding the ethics of sports and competitive events is essential. We must also distinguish between sportsmanship and gamesmanship.
Winning is paramount in gamesmanship. Athletes or coaches are encouraged by their coaches to bend the rule whenever possible in order gain an edge on the opponent. Gamesmanship is characterized by:
The goal is to win. Cheating is only acceptable if caught. It is the job of the referee to catch any wrongdoing. Athletes and coaches are not responsible for following the rules.
These are some examples:
Faking an injury or foul
A race start attempt
Tampering with baseball equipment to make it hit farther, for example by corking the bat.
Undercover personal fouls like grabbing an opponent underwater during water polo
The Saint’s Bounty scandal was an example of inflicting pain to a player with the intent of knocking them out of a game.
The use of performance-enhancing drugs
Taunting and intimidating your opponent
Coaches who lie about grades of athletes to keep them in the league
These examples are all based on the result of the game rather than the way it was played.
Sportsmanship can be a better ethical approach in athletics. Sportsmanship is a model that promotes healthy competition to develop personal virtue, character and honor. This fosters a sense of community and trust among competitors as well as in the society. Sportmanship is more than just winning. It’s about pursuing victory with dignity and honor.
Four virtues are essential to the ethics of sport: fairness and integrity, respect, responsibility, & responsibility.
FairnessAll coaches and athletes must adhere to established rules of the sport they are involved in. Teams who try to gain unfair competitive advantages over their rivals create an unbalanced playing field that violates sport integrity. Athletes are not discriminated based on gender, race, or sexual preference. Referees have to be impartial and not show any bias towards either team.
IntegritySimilar in nature to fairness, any athlete that tries to gain the upper hand over an opponent by using a technique that was not included in the original game violates both the integrity of it and their own integrity. When a soccer player fakes an injury or foul, they are not being sportsmanlike because soccer was not designed to test the athlete’s ability flop. Intentionally deceiving an officiating official into making the wrong call is not a sportsmanlike act.
ResponsibilityTo show sportsmanship, both players and coaches should take responsibility for what they do on the playing field. Included in this is their emotional state. Coaches and athletes will often make excuses about why they lose a game. Most often, the blame is placed on the officials. You should focus on those aspects that you have control over, like your own performance. Question yourself on how you could’ve done better. It is important that coaches and players are up-to-date on the rules governing their sports. It is important that coaches and players conduct themselves with honor both on the field and off.
RespectAll athletes are expected to respect their teammates, their opponents, coaches, officials, and other athletes. All coaches should respect players, officials, and opponents. Respect for all fans, including parents, is expected of everyone.
The sportsmanship philosophy is based around the idea that the sport can be used to demonstrate and develop character, which will then influence the morals of a larger community. Sportsmanship can influence our own moral and ethical behaviors outside of competition.
Some sports people advocate “bracketed values”. According to this approach, sport and competition exist in a separate realm from the real world and are not bound by morals and ethics. Many people believe that sports serve as a release for primal aggressiveness and our selfish need for respect and recognition through defeating an opponent. According to this viewpoint, only aggression and winning are virtues. On the field, a player of football may appear to be cruel, but he can be kind, and gentle off-the-field. It is okay for him to be violent on the football field because he’s part of a reality dictated by winning, which is amoral.
A sports ethic rejects such a moral splinter and respects both the game and its opponent by playing fair but tough. Understanding the rules is key to respecting your opponent and pushing you to your best.
