Many have commented to me over the past weeks, something to the tune of, “You must be busy writing about sport ethics issues these days!” While true, it’s not true in the sense they imagine. There certainly are some profoundly important issues to be dealt with in sport right now, most notably the various athletes accused of domestic violence and child abuse, along with the poor decision making on behalf of league commissioners and other similar issues.
But what’s one to say about all of this, from a philosophical position? Here’s what that column would look like: They’re unethical. I’m not even sure they’re “sports ethics” issues, any more than a Wall Street banker stealing from his ailing grandmother is considered “business ethics.” These sorts of incidents are better addressed by those who write on sport through the lens of public policy, psychology, or sociology—and they do currently have a great deal of relevant things to say.
So, on the one hand, it may surprise readers to find these issues left out of the current sport philosophy discourse. If addressing this at all, it will likely be tangential, involving more nuanced subtleties such as the moral complicity of fans who continue to support the teams despite their moral shortcomings, or whether professional sports provides greater good or greater harm to society as a whole. This is not to diminish the importance and severity of such issues, but only to properly frame them.
One of the things I have always loved about sport philosophy is, because of its primary subject—sport and games—a sense of playfulness often underlies the project. We discuss heady, abstract concepts such as consent, complicity, and moral duty from a position removed from heady topics. This often allows us to actually talk about them, with much less on the line than if discussing international policy or the ethics of human rights.
This week, for example, the team I coach discussed the morality of the following issue:
Our next game pits us against a team we’ve never played. In order to get a feel for our opponent, I went to their high school’s “Athletics” page but found nothing. The Google search directed me to their Facebook page, where I learned a few things about them—practice schedules and personnel—but nothing too substantial. After sharing these minor discoveries with my team, one player1 thoughtfully posed the question as to the ethics and sportsmanship of the situation, suggesting that the information on the page was clearly meant only for that team. About two thirds of the team, including myself, considered it okay. But to my own surprise, I’d entered into a potential moral dilemma without even realizing it. It was a situation, albeit very minor, which involved issues like a right to information, cultural ethos, and sportsmanship. Minor topic, big ideas.
A number of thoughtful analogies were offered:
- What if an opponent’s Team Page contained actual plays listed which it clearly intended only for their team?
- What if an opposing coach accidentally left his clipboard containing plays on a bench at the competition site—could we justifiably look through those?
- Can a coach justifiably look over at the opposing coach’s whiteboard while he’s drawing up a play for his team during a timeout?
Whether you find these analogous or relevant to the question at hand, they pose interesting questions in and of themselves. And it seems to me that, along with the intent-based argument offered by my player, much of this discussion relies on moral precedent set by the culture of sport. Teams are permitted to scout other teams—actually, it’s expected. They may film each other’s games or acquire game film from other teams or simply attend games and chart a respective team’s strategies and personnel. This is a given which anyone in sport accepts. Issues like the analogies above stretch those boundaries.
Clearly, we would look down upon a coach hiding in the bushes adjacent to a rival team’s training session or hacking into a website to acquire information. These sorts of actions go beyond what’s accepted and what’s sportsmanlike: a private website and a private workout are considered just that—private. That’s the assumption. Games, on the other hand, are public, for all to see. To act otherwise breaks an assumption of trust amongst competitors.
A student of mine once asked, somewhat rhetorically, why an author we’d just read would bother spending his time writing about whether the “good foul” in sport—basketball, in particular—is actually “good.” My answer to him was twofold. First, I assumed this was something the particular writer, whom I’d come to know in Sport Philosophy circles, genuinely enjoyed writing about. That, to me, is answer enough. Though secondly, there’s real pragmatic value to exploring these topics. On the one hand, we want our sports guided by ethical virtue: we want them to be truly good contests. Additionally, in looking into such issues, even where we don’t agree, we encounter yet another opportunity to examine what we value in the sporting experience and also from ourselves. That’s time well spent.
1Thank you, Daniel Chan.
