With millions of dollars and an internationally prized achievement on the line, and lots of ego involved.. Why be moral? Photo by frankieleon
The recent punishment meted out by the NFL to the New England Patriots[1] has forced us to revisit January’s DeflateGate scandal. Amidst countless articles, blogs, and discussion boards, this has all provided a platform to learn about ourselves and our relationship to sport and all of the real life insights it has to offer. Here are just a few of those lessons the Patriots have taught us:
We cannot agree on ethical matters in sport—imagine when the stakes are even higher.
There’s a reason etiquette expert Emily Post prohibits discussion of weighty ethical issues at dinner parties. It’s partly due to the emotion involved. But clearly there’s something more. As my own students often point out, frustratedly, it seems that most people aren’t interested in developing logically sound arguments in defense of ethical conclusions. Worse, maybe they don’t know how to. This isn’t an elitist position but, on the contrary, comes more from a place of concern for the overall good.
What this does do—that is, if sports fans do handle their discourse in a logical, civilized manner—is provide an opportunity to get at our respective foundations. If two people disagree about the moral evaluation of DeflateGate, it’s likely they have differing paradigms for the function of rules in sport. For example, many celebrate someone like Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry, who illegally doctored the baseball with his infamous spitball. So it may be the case that a proponent of DeflateGate views the bending and breaking of rules as a sort of game-within-a-game. Literally, that part of the game is to see what you can get away with under the watchful eye of the referee. While another may take a more formal view of sports rules, holding that rules must be adhered to by all, completely doing away with the meta-game of rule bending and, in this particular case, rule breaking.
This can be a valuable pursuit in and of itself. Very often, a disagreement in ethics comes down to one’s foundation. Abortion disagreements often hinge on one’s fundamental views of personhood and when a human fetus becomes a fully moral entity. Disagreements on the distribution of goods and taxation often distill down to one’s foundation on human freedom and responsibility. So, following thoughtful discourse, at the least, we can more accurately frame issues and come to a deeper understanding of ethics and our respective frameworks.
Our emotions often get in the way more than they inform.
“Fan” is short for something much more daunting: fanatic. It’s defined by nearly every dictionary as someone who exhibits “intense uncritical devotion,” or “extreme and uncritical zeal.” The key term being, uncritical. That’s just part of being a fanatic.
In just three days, 1,147 Patriots fans have raised $15,963 on a crowd funding website to help with the fines levied on the Patriots by the NFL. In my search on that same site, I had to scroll through people raising money for such serious causes as fighting cancer, a heart transplant, or to help people literally dying of hunger. Only irrational fanaticism could justify trumping human suffering and death with helping an immensely wealthy organization to pay the penalty for cheating in a game of football.
We’d like to reason with those who’ve been overcome by emotion but, alas, this is not how the brain works. As recent neuroscience shows, our emotion often comes first in our ethical reasoning and we then back into that response with whatever logic and data we can find. It’s like shooting the arrow first and then painting a bull’s-eye around it. Once we recognize this, we can at least become a bit more empathetic towards those suffering from such an affliction and, if we’re up to the task, can point that same lens at our own reasoning.
Tied in with all of this is something deeper, and something no human can avoid: our identity. Some of the beauty of sport fanaticism is that it becomes a part of each fan’s respective identity. That’s where a lot of the fun happens. The San Francisco Giants organization recognizes this and capitalizes on it as they display the slogan, “Together, We Are GIANT,” on buses and billboards throughout the Bay Area.
Though identity has a dark side as well, as it often blinds us to the negative aspects of the particular ideal with which we identify. And the comfort we get from our identity’s being intact can often outweigh any facts which diminish what we identify with. It’s almost as if, by the Patriots becoming a moral failure, the fan becomes one too. And we can’t have that: It’s much easier and more comforting for a fan to maintain their core identity and absolve the Patriots then to change their identity all for the sake of the Truth.
Rules in sport—and life—are muddier than most realize.
The speed limit is clearly stated and yet you drive immediately adjacent to a police officer on the highway while exceeding the stated limit by 10 mph and you’re in the clear. The rule seems clear, yet “everyone does it,” and the proverbial highway referees allow it. That’s confusing.
But it gets worse—or, for some, more exciting. Here’s an example that happens, to some extent, nearly every basketball and soccer game, and which nearly everyone agrees is just “part of the game.” The ball goes out of bounds having most recently touched a player from Team A but the referee wrongly awards the ball to Team A. The player knows, clearly, that it touched him but accepts the ball anyway—he accepts a reward he doesn’t deserve which clearly goes against the rules.
If you agree that this is “just a part of the game,” then this drastically calls into question a great majority of all other rules. If we don’t follow this particular rule—or, worse, if we shouldn’t follow it—then why follow any others?
When “Everyone does it” becomes a moral defense, chaos ensues.
As discussed elsewhere, defending an otherwise immoral action with “Everyone else does it,” doesn’t fly in nearly every sector of life. I’m currently working with my four year old regarding the vacuousness of this same sort of morally relative position in regards to “potty talk” and punching given that other four year olds are doing it. Even he seems to understand that “Everyone does it” doesn’t fly. He still falters occasionally, but he’s four. He’s not an adult.
Yet, if instead, under the banner of sport, “everyone does it” does hold moral weight, then it’s understandable we’d be in a bit of a no-man’s-land, morally speaking.
Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein may help us to alleviate this tension. Wittgenstein argues that words acquire their meaning by virtue of an agreed upon “language game” played by those who know the so-called game. For example, when you greet someone by asking, “How’s it going?” you’re playing the “Greeting Game,” and not the, “Inquire About Someone’s Current Plight” game, which you may play with a close friend over a cup of coffee. In short, context matters. And so, in our sports, when the ball goes out of bounds off our teammate, we may just be playing the “Get The Ball In The Goal” game and not the, “Truth Seeking” game. Frankly, I’m not sure this clears things up—but, at the least, we can come to an understanding of how convoluted this pursuit of rule-following really is.
Be aware of what it is you’re supporting.
Regarding DeflateGate, a friend asked, “At what point does one remove their allegiance to a team?” Many Patriots fans continue their support and allegiance to the Patriots despite this team’s repeated instances of unethical, unsportsmanlike behavior. Surely, for most, support of a sports team relies on numerous, irrational factors (see “emotions” above). Thus, rational conversation about such allegiance might be more akin to trying to reason with an addict or a member of a cult as to the deleterious situation in which they’ve found themselves.
But, given that we are here discussing rationally, it’s worth considering: Not just what could happen to make you change your allegiance but, what would happen for you to agree you should do so? Earlier this week, the Golden State Warriors tweeted “Welcome to #WarriorsGround, @FloydMayweather!” In case you need a recap of Mayweather: he’s a tremendously well-decorated boxer who has also been convicted on numerous counts of domestic violence for severely beating his then-girlfriend and mother of his children. Responses from Warriors fans poured in, many expressing great dissonance that their coveted team would in any way support someone who has behaved so poorly.
While it’s unlikely anyone curbed their support of the Warriors over this, it might help to look at an individual athlete versus a team. If one were initially a fan of Mayweather as a boxer, once his character came to light, could they possibly maintain their support of him qua boxer while removing their support of him qua citizen? This spills out into non-sporting life as well. If you enjoy the work of a particular artist or musical group yet they exhibit behavior “off stage” which you find morally reprehensible, do you relinquish your support of them? Is it possible to enjoy the aesthetics of boxing, football, and music, while condemning those same agents morally?
A question worth addressing: Why be moral?
I realize I have finished here by posing questions, and, hopefully, questions worthy of consideration. And this final question I will leave in question form as well, in part because it’s a big-picture one worth addressing for yourself and, in part, because I’ve left the realm of sports ethics and crossed into the realm of sport psychology.
In our DeflateGate situation, it’s likely that Tom Brady and The Patriots organization would agree that secretly deflating footballs to give a team an illegal advantage is unethical. But with so much on the line, maybe that trumps any moral motivation. If you were homeless and hadn’t eaten for days, it’s likely you’d gladly steal food from an unmanned shopping cart even though you knew stealing to be immoral. And so, with millions of dollars and an internationally prized achievement on the line, and lots of ego involved…why be moral?
Thank you, Patriots. Lessons learned.
[1] The Patriots were fined $1 million and will also forfeit their first-round draft pick in 2016 and fourth-round pick in 2017. Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady is suspended for the first four games of the 2015 season.
