Elite Cheating?
Floyd Landis has a problem - excessive testosterone. For any other man that would be cause for celebration (I think), but not for the most recent champion of the Tour de France - exessive testosterone signals doping - doping is obviously illegal in elite cycling. Should further investigation determine that Landis did engage in some type of performance-enhancing doping he'll be stripped of the Yellow Jersey. See full story here.
Consider the Landis story in context with the National Football League and Major League Baseball's "Steroid Scandals," congressional hearings on performance enhancing drugs used in U.S. professional sports, and the President himself, in his 2004 State of the Union address, demanding that the owners and coaches in professional sports get tough on steriod use as it sends the message to our children that performance enhancing drugs are the only way to ascend to elite levels in athletics.
I think these episodes are loaded (pardon the pun) opportunities to ask some interesting questions about what precisely is going on, and by extension gain some interesting insight to our relationship with elite athletics. I write "our relationship" to identify us mere mortals as separate from the environment of elite athletes.
Why do we even care about Professional Sports?
That's a big question which evades an easy one-sentence answer, as the answer may differ from person to person. A strong answer may be to say that professional sports represents the aesthetic of excellence - a reach toward the Platonic ideal as it were. Embodied in professional sports are the concepts (ideals) of justice, equality, commitment, loyalty, physical mastery, heroism, and winning. We've constructed "sports" as a controlled, relatively risk-free, background against which we can observe these ideals in action. As an element of American culture, we've also attached an egalitarian perspective to them - that could be ordinary me on the mound pitching in the bottom of the ninth in the 7th game of the World Series with a one-run lead (if not me, then my kid). There is just something magnetic about seeing a top athlete lay it all on the line for team and country against the "enemy." Certainly, as well, there is also an element of regional or international "nationalism," or pride, associated with elite athletics.
There are deeper philosophical and psychological points to be made about why we are attracted to professional sports - but I'll leave it at that.
Rules.
It's pretty obvious that for professional sports to even exist a comprehensive book of rules is necessary for each specific sport. We shouldn't throw the soccer ball into the goal, use baseball bats on the line of scrimmage in the NFL, or line up the infielders to block a base runner from advancing to 2nd base. All of these things are, of course, logically possible - but we are no longer playing soccer, football or baseball if we engage in those behaviors. Even the game "Rollerball", depicted in the 1970's movie of the same name, had rules - as much as it just seemed to be anarchy on a roller rink.
Objective.
Unless I've missed something in the past forty years - the objective in all sports is to win. But for winning to have meaning, for the sport to have meaning, the athlete or team must win within the rules.
Observations.
I want to make a few observations here - then draw a couple of conclusions - then wrap this post up.
1) Winning in professional sports "drives the bus" if you will. Athletes and teams that don't win get new coaches, change players, change owners, and ultimately start blaming 50-year old curses or whatever. Winning teams and athletes don't do those things. Winning, frankly, is where the money and prestige is - and that's where elite athletes want to be.
2) American culture demands winners. You don't have to look beyond the local T-ball league to observe this phenomenom. There was a movement not so long ago that did away with keeping score in the youth sport leagues - such that the junior athletes could concentrate on the principles of sportsmanship and athleticism without the pressure of possibly losing. Nobody, absolutely nobody - including the grandparents - thought this was a good policy. "What are we teaching these children about real life, where people do actually win and lose?" That was the standard refrain. In a sense, in sports, the barometer of competence is winning - take away that barometer and all we have left is to ask the kids, "Did you have fun?" Well - take it however you want to - but American culture is not about "having fun," it's about winning. The grandparents want to ask little Jimmy or Suzy, "Did you win your game?" They understand that the "fun" is a byproduct of winning - and that character building comes from losing - but don't build too much character - get out there and win.
3) 2nd place is just 1st loser.
4) There is no visible public outcry that within this country billions of dollars are spent on professional teams and athletes. As consumers, we have developed these enterprises into economic conglomerates that compete with international corporations in terms of annual profits. If you doubt that we, as consumers, are complicit in creating these monsters just conduct the following thought experiment: imagine that not one seat is sold in any NFL stadium during the upcoming NFL season - a boycott on ticket prices. The NFL would collapse within the year. Its the basic supply and demand equation - extending to the amount of money elite athletes are paid within those sports.
Conclusion.
While the four points above are not a syllogism by any means - nothing specifically follows logically from the four - I certainly see a recipe for disaster contained within them. The disaster being the all too attractive, and available, temptation to skirt the rules in pursuit of the win.
That people cheat should come as no particular surprise to any one that isn't pathologically naïve. But there is something oddly attractive to elite cheating - similar to the "can't look away from the car crash" response.
I suppose what I've discovered for myself is that when we set the value of winning as the sole objective, attach disproportionate levels of acclaim and money to it, and have cultural identity ties to the sport itself - I shouldn't be surprised when an elite athlete cheats, nor should I be surprised by the resultant public disgust, the minute-by-minute press coverage of the scandal, and congressional calls for heads on platters.
It just seems odd to me that during a period of time witnessing our military engaged in war with a casualty rate not seen since Vietnam, an all-out war brewing between two other Middle East groups, and name any other current tragedy taking place - that we would be concerned about whether a guy on a bicycle doped up or not.
Perhaps - and this would be the deeper insight - these issues are not disparate at all - perhaps our foundational thoughts on justice and "right" really do usurp all of our talk about "2nd is just 1st loser." One could easily become a cynic about this type of thing - but the outrage stemming from a broken rule may very well be the most hopeful response we have - even if we can predict that cheating will occur at the elite level just as the nature of the thing.
Consider the Landis story in context with the National Football League and Major League Baseball's "Steroid Scandals," congressional hearings on performance enhancing drugs used in U.S. professional sports, and the President himself, in his 2004 State of the Union address, demanding that the owners and coaches in professional sports get tough on steriod use as it sends the message to our children that performance enhancing drugs are the only way to ascend to elite levels in athletics.
I think these episodes are loaded (pardon the pun) opportunities to ask some interesting questions about what precisely is going on, and by extension gain some interesting insight to our relationship with elite athletics. I write "our relationship" to identify us mere mortals as separate from the environment of elite athletes.
Why do we even care about Professional Sports?
That's a big question which evades an easy one-sentence answer, as the answer may differ from person to person. A strong answer may be to say that professional sports represents the aesthetic of excellence - a reach toward the Platonic ideal as it were. Embodied in professional sports are the concepts (ideals) of justice, equality, commitment, loyalty, physical mastery, heroism, and winning. We've constructed "sports" as a controlled, relatively risk-free, background against which we can observe these ideals in action. As an element of American culture, we've also attached an egalitarian perspective to them - that could be ordinary me on the mound pitching in the bottom of the ninth in the 7th game of the World Series with a one-run lead (if not me, then my kid). There is just something magnetic about seeing a top athlete lay it all on the line for team and country against the "enemy." Certainly, as well, there is also an element of regional or international "nationalism," or pride, associated with elite athletics.
There are deeper philosophical and psychological points to be made about why we are attracted to professional sports - but I'll leave it at that.
Rules.
It's pretty obvious that for professional sports to even exist a comprehensive book of rules is necessary for each specific sport. We shouldn't throw the soccer ball into the goal, use baseball bats on the line of scrimmage in the NFL, or line up the infielders to block a base runner from advancing to 2nd base. All of these things are, of course, logically possible - but we are no longer playing soccer, football or baseball if we engage in those behaviors. Even the game "Rollerball", depicted in the 1970's movie of the same name, had rules - as much as it just seemed to be anarchy on a roller rink.
Objective.
Unless I've missed something in the past forty years - the objective in all sports is to win. But for winning to have meaning, for the sport to have meaning, the athlete or team must win within the rules.
Observations.
I want to make a few observations here - then draw a couple of conclusions - then wrap this post up.
1) Winning in professional sports "drives the bus" if you will. Athletes and teams that don't win get new coaches, change players, change owners, and ultimately start blaming 50-year old curses or whatever. Winning teams and athletes don't do those things. Winning, frankly, is where the money and prestige is - and that's where elite athletes want to be.
2) American culture demands winners. You don't have to look beyond the local T-ball league to observe this phenomenom. There was a movement not so long ago that did away with keeping score in the youth sport leagues - such that the junior athletes could concentrate on the principles of sportsmanship and athleticism without the pressure of possibly losing. Nobody, absolutely nobody - including the grandparents - thought this was a good policy. "What are we teaching these children about real life, where people do actually win and lose?" That was the standard refrain. In a sense, in sports, the barometer of competence is winning - take away that barometer and all we have left is to ask the kids, "Did you have fun?" Well - take it however you want to - but American culture is not about "having fun," it's about winning. The grandparents want to ask little Jimmy or Suzy, "Did you win your game?" They understand that the "fun" is a byproduct of winning - and that character building comes from losing - but don't build too much character - get out there and win.
3) 2nd place is just 1st loser.
4) There is no visible public outcry that within this country billions of dollars are spent on professional teams and athletes. As consumers, we have developed these enterprises into economic conglomerates that compete with international corporations in terms of annual profits. If you doubt that we, as consumers, are complicit in creating these monsters just conduct the following thought experiment: imagine that not one seat is sold in any NFL stadium during the upcoming NFL season - a boycott on ticket prices. The NFL would collapse within the year. Its the basic supply and demand equation - extending to the amount of money elite athletes are paid within those sports.
Conclusion.
While the four points above are not a syllogism by any means - nothing specifically follows logically from the four - I certainly see a recipe for disaster contained within them. The disaster being the all too attractive, and available, temptation to skirt the rules in pursuit of the win.
That people cheat should come as no particular surprise to any one that isn't pathologically naïve. But there is something oddly attractive to elite cheating - similar to the "can't look away from the car crash" response.
I suppose what I've discovered for myself is that when we set the value of winning as the sole objective, attach disproportionate levels of acclaim and money to it, and have cultural identity ties to the sport itself - I shouldn't be surprised when an elite athlete cheats, nor should I be surprised by the resultant public disgust, the minute-by-minute press coverage of the scandal, and congressional calls for heads on platters.
It just seems odd to me that during a period of time witnessing our military engaged in war with a casualty rate not seen since Vietnam, an all-out war brewing between two other Middle East groups, and name any other current tragedy taking place - that we would be concerned about whether a guy on a bicycle doped up or not.
Perhaps - and this would be the deeper insight - these issues are not disparate at all - perhaps our foundational thoughts on justice and "right" really do usurp all of our talk about "2nd is just 1st loser." One could easily become a cynic about this type of thing - but the outrage stemming from a broken rule may very well be the most hopeful response we have - even if we can predict that cheating will occur at the elite level just as the nature of the thing.
posted by Scott Scofield | 8:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home