Sports Ethics: Create a Level Playing Field

The joy of playing and watching sports depends heavily upon real competition. Competition invokes risk of failure or success. True competition requires uncertainty. Uncertainty connects sports to real life that has no guarantees, no certainty. Competitive outcomes then depend upon effort, talent, focus, adversary's skill and luck. Leaders of sports have an obligation to keep real competition alive in sports—a level playing field

Stewards of sports such as governing bodies and commissioners must work hard to create a level playing field over time. A level playing field keeps the integrity of sports intact. Without it sports reduces to the pretend of wrestling, the corrupted outcomes of gambling or boredom. Like in life lack of a level playing field makes a sham of fairness and long term hope.

When players step onto the field, they should believe that they have a chance to compete and win. When fans commit to a team as a representative of their community and aspect of identity, they desire a chance for their team to compete and win.

A level playing field occurs over time. Each season several teams may be demonstrably better than others. When the better teams compete they will have a much higher probability to win. Players and fans want the chance to compete over time and for the best teams to change over time. Competition should breed diversity and surprise. Over time teams can organize talent, smarts, focus and intensity and become better.

Unless you are a Yankee fan, watching games where you know one team will always win is boring. Worse it takes the guts out of sport because players become tempted to go through the motions and the quality of play declines because teams stagnate when competitive pressures do not push invention.

All sports face the danger of the migration of talent and skill to money. The richest teams buy the best talent and dominate the sports year after year. This cycle of winning reinforces itself when the best players want to play for a winner rather than being stuck on perpetual losing teams.

Thinking of sports as a competitive market means that one team or group of teams morph into a monopoly or oligopoly. These competitive markets mean that certain teams are guaranteed to lose the majority of the games over time and have little chance of ever winning a championship. Freezing the competitive hierarchy ruins real competition, ruins interest in the sport and can sap the motivation of players who are doomed to play on teams that not only cannot win championships but seldom can even “make a game of it.”

Monopoly and oligopoly in sports sap quality because real competition pushes players to grow. Real competition pushes teams to innovate in training, tactics or strategy to get a competitive edge so teams invest in smarts as well as talent. All these dynamics are sapped when a monopoly or oligopoly controls competition.

In the last twenty years with the reluctant cooperation of unions and ultra-individualist owners, American professional sports have developed a series of devices to protect the possibility of level playing fields, if the teams are smart enough to use the leverage of the devices. These include:

1.   A draft system that permits the worst teams the year before to draft first in the talent pool.

2.  Salary caps in professional basketball, football and soccer. This cap limits the total expenditures by a team and requires that contracts be structured to maximize up front payments. It discourages stockpiling high priced talent because huge payouts to individuals like quarterbacks hurt the team’s ability to get strong supporting players.

3.  Baseball backed into a half ass solution that works despite itself with teams able to spend unlimited amounts but beyond a specified level teams pay very high luxury taxes that are commonly distributed.

4.  Most of the leagues now have strong minimum requirements of expenditure that ensures owners cannot simply milk teams as profit centers.

5.  Wider talent pools. This has developed by design in baseball, soccer and basketball with international scouting and signings. In football and basketballs it results from a deeper and earlier training pool where talented players are spotted and groomed from the age of 12.

6.  Expansion has diluted talent across teams where even with talent pool expansion the talent across vital positions such as pitcher or quarterback is diminished across many teams.

7.  Slotting salaries exist for first round draftees along with limited control periods. This minimizes the risk of teams to invest in untested rookies and increases money available for veterans. The rookies who succeed get their payoff when they reach end of control period and become free agents.

8.  Unlimited free agency permits players to gain serious salary increases at the height of their talent.

a.   More importantly from a level playing field, it means that teams can rebuild relatively fast if they have drafted well and have spot needs that free agents can address. Teams relying solely on free agency to build “the best team money can buy” have not fared so well. It turns out that the skill production of players becomes very unpredictable in late twenties and early thirties, so many free agency hires turn out to be economic mistakes.

9.  The leagues created larger playoffs and strategically used “wild card” teams to make the stakes of winning last longer and go deeper into the standings. This means a much higher percentage of teams are competitive for playoff status longer into the season. This has helped minimize the number of meaningless games.

Dave Cameron brilliantly analyzes baseball's competitive resurgence in these terms but adds several points.  “Institute testing for PEDS, lessoning the ability of high-revenue teams to buy inflated late-career production. Shepard in analytics that allow poorer teams to level the market for players values.” He concludes that this has transformed cultures of teams and fans who now believe they can compete and win creating a “virtuous cycle” of interest and achievement. 

He makes underappreciated points about PED limiting stockpiling of talent and the ability of “intelligence” to offset money.

These combined approaches have lead to a remarkable renaissance of competitive parity across leagues. While the balance is unstable, the proof lies in the interesting confluence that salaries are rising, most teams are making a profit or increasing in market valuation and multiple teams are winning championships while competitive surprises can and regularly do occur.

To stand up to legal scrutiny these restraints on trade in the interest of both profits and quality of competition require strong unions and commissioners. This means the settlements are voluntary contracts that the law can tolerate. Owners alone would conspire against players, illegally collude on salary but also permit the strong and rich to dominate and create permanent inequalities such as baseball.

To create a level playing field takes constant vigilance and work. Competition in limited domains can naturally devolve to dominance by wealth and inequality. Owners, on their own, would prefer this. It takes strong leaders such as commissioners to negotiate order on  the chaotic and individualistic owners as well as strong unions willing to protect the game to ensure economic rewards. Level playing field takes rules that permit long redistribution of talent and enable innovation and intelligence to be rewarded.

The commissioners have to work to  convince owners and players that protecting the quality of competition and game created a better “media product” as well as more fan interest. This permitted the leaders to align self-interest with game quality.

A level playing field invites players to compete with intensity and to devote effort to getting better because they have a chance to win and excel. A level playing field reinforces fan’s loyalty to their “home” teams by adding the thrill of enjoying winning and collectively partaking in the satisfaction of a team that ‘represents’ them. They can feel satisfaction in being connected to the excellence and achievement of the athletes as well as the delirium of for one brief second winning.

Sports Fan Ethics

Being a sports fan is an existential choice. It involves a way of being in the world and relating to other human beings. The point of the game is being a fan involves a moral stance. It means acting in ways that impact others and the game. This  means it involves obligations and responsibilities. As a friend of mine reminded me,  spectators refer to "the team" and fans use the word "we."

This all became clear to me when I realize how early this all starts. Last week a major scandal erupted in Florida where the parents and fans of little league football had been indicted for betting on the games and hiring coaches who had criminal records amongst other things. Along with the incredible cost to the young student athletes and the horrible role models this provided, it reminded me again of how deep and important being a fan can be to many people, a link that can cause the craziness of Florida or a fun and important way to link to community and study and admire a form of human mastery.

Games depend upon rules. Athletes depend upon rules and conceptions of form and excellence. The very idea of winning requires rules that define what constitutes excellence, achievement and winning. The essence of competition builds upon the idea that rules govern behavior. Competition without rules reduces to war.

As I suggested, fans shape the environment and impact the athletes and competition. This involves them in the game and their influence, unlike spectators and audiences, carries a set of obligations; to be a fan is a moral stance about loyalty, commitment and participation.

I don't want to go overboard here, but as fans, people act, influence others and model for others. They infuse social gatherings with their presence and they pass on loyalties and relations to those around them.

Ideally a fan appreciates the team and sport and athletes. A deep aspect of being a sports fan lies in the aesthetic enjoyment (no true fan would use words aesthetic enjoyment) of the beauty and pure form of the sport they love. Being a fan involves people in communities of like minded people, so they can share common identity, emotions and conversations. Fandom through blogdom, bars and office NCAA pools demonstrates  and creates a subculture of identity, community and conversation. It enables people not only to vent and gloat but to discuss and appreciate the fine points of the form of the sport and the dimensions of its players.

All this suggests that the moral world of being a fan should involve respect for the game, players and fellow travellers. It means that fans can argue and shout and scream and holler, but it should occur within the bounds of norms of respect (these are elastic norms since some groups can use profanity laced diatribes and still laugh with and at each other). Simply by actions, taunts, movements fans force the athletes brain do do more and subtly can subvert the attention needed for a fine motor skill activity under active stress. Fan actions matter and influence games, no matter what athletes claim.

Fans have obligations to at least understand the game; you often see this dynamic played out in teaching younger fans the nuances or the painful experience of watching two people on a date, one a fan and the other bemused but trying hard to attend to the fan's nuttiness. You also see it among fans who can acknowledge the other team's excellence, "good play,"  "nice call," "good shot." You try to teach this to kids and neophytes so that they understand this is about both the sport and the team.

The problems emerge because of the identity pathologies of any community. Fans can become more committed to winning than the team or sport. The obsession with winning can be tied to collective need to feel superior (welcome to war again). The winning drive can coexist with another dynamic of identity--the we/they black/white world of asserting my identity and value by devaluing another. Racism depends  upon this dynamic, so does sexism.

One of the crucial borderland obligations of sports fans is how to treat opposing players and teams. If the fans have overinvested their identity in winning alone (if a fan arrives at the point where they cannot acknowledge a great play by an opposing player, they have crossed a dangerous boundary). (I must confess I have spent a decade booing and hating Alex Rodriquez for his betrayal of the Mariners and still cannot bear to acknowledge that he has any worth as a player or human being for that matter).

Here is a critical boundary area for fan. It is part of the oblgation to root for their team. Heckling and getting into the other guys head is more problematic but fits for a good fan. But as a coach friend of mine said "if you heckle, be clever, be good, but don't be cruel." We all know and appreciate good heckling, but more than a few fans personalize their screams or worse they invoke racists, sexist or foreign baiting (I am amazed at the number of mindless fans who shout "USA" when an international player is under pressure even when their own team may have three internatioanl players of their own, but who said consistency had anything to do with fans.)

One of the classic ploys, in movies at least, is for a coed to flash an opposing player to deflect their attention. A very clever and very subversive act occurred several years ago when California coeds created a fake coed identity named Victoria who engaged in on line chats with a UCLA player. At the game the Cal. rooters revealed the "Victoria" cheer and even quoted textings in their jeers/cheers/heckles. It ruined the players night and revealed a very clever and subversive use of the social web world of athletes.

However more than a few fans stalk players, abuse players and coaches mercilessly with profanity, racist and sexist catcalls and remarkably ugly comments to the players, coaches and administrators on line and through web sites.  I've sat by benches where fans spat on the players and those  nearby. The pseudo anonymity of the web as well as the fact that internet flames are not tempered by any sense of how they impact the people encourages the same sort of amoral or immoral behavior of being in a crowd. People lose their sense of accountability, respect and appreciation of both the sport, the humans and their own responsibilities. People who believe they are anonymous or lost in a crowd will do things they would never do if held accountable as an individual.

Contagion is a psychological reality where the emotional and behavioral actions of one person can change the emotional affect of others. In economic terms bad fans drive out good fans. In social psychology the haunting example of the death of Kitty Genovese reminds us all that people will stand around while another person is murdered waiting for others to act. In fandom  this "bystander effect" encourages people to stand around while one obnoxious idiot spews invective to hurt the players and infect those around him. The picture here is of a young kid giving finger--is  this what we want to hand on as fans? Like racism, bad fanhood is learned and handed on.

Another crowd effect encourages the darkside of fans. Being in a crowd that feels anger and rage encourages people to feel release from their normal moral commitments. The crowd encourages a form of anonymity and people who believe they are anonymous will do things they would never do if alone and accountable. The soccer riots in Europe epitomize all these coming together. The recent killings of fans as people stood around and cheered resembled gang executions.

Moral and psychological life is strange. Every good aspect of being a fan carries a shadow. Identity, common fate and language, particpating with others in emotional expression, if turned ever so slightly, end up with vile cruelty to other teams, to human players and to other fans.

Being a good fan matters and carries obligations. 

Why Athletes Can't Afford Loyalty

I watch Bruce Jenner on the Kardashian reality show with appalled sadness. Bruce Jenner once stood as the greatest athlete in the world winning the 1976 Olympic Decathlon. Shaggy haired with an ah shucks attitudes, he stood as an American hero. Now he haunts the  haunts the outskirts of the Kardashian family circus with a face wrecked by too many bad plastic surgeries, a shadow of fading glory. I remember seeing Mickey Mantle selling autographs at a casino. I read of the fate, genetic and otherwise, of the great East German Olympians many cast off by their society just like some of the recent Chinese Olympic champions who live on streets.

Every athlete lives one injury from oblivion. The brilliant Brandon Roy just retired from the Portland Trailblazers, no longer able to play on knees that betrayed him at the age of 27. The Indianapolis Colts and their fans are cold bloodily thinking of passing on their greatest quarterback Peyton Manning because of an injury. Athletes cannot rely upon the loyalty of fans and owners. It took one second in a meaningless late season game to rupture Adrian Peterson's ACL and MCL. In one second his seven year 100 million dollar contract with the Vikings could be compromised even if he recovers since so much of his skill depends upon his explosiveness, one of the consistent casualties of ACL injuries. 

Every athlete will lose their career physically before they are ready emotionally. Too many athletes do not have a backup plan, a degree or altnernative career. When most of us are just launching their careers in late twenties, most athletes are obsolete. With the average pro career 3-5 years, most professional players end on the scrap heap by 27.

Every athlete knows this—even the ones living in denial.

Athletes also know how utterly fickle and ruthless fans can be. Just go to a basketball game, any level, and watch fans wave and yell and scream for a team or athlete. But the fans’ mood will shift almost instantaneously. Fans shower down praise,  love and ecstasy, but in a second will boo, scorn or curse the same athlete in the same game. Athletes know that fan loyalty cannot be relied upon; fans want blood and victory, but will settle for blood if they cannot get victory.

Experienced athletes know who we fans are and rightly do not trust us. Just watch the kvetching about Bernie Williams or now Derek Jeter on the downside of magnificent careers with the Yankees. In my hometown fans are turning on Ichiro on the downside of glorious career. Fans do not give unconditional love; it is tightly conditioned. Yet we scream and moan and accuse athletes of being greedy when they leave us.

Albert Pujols just accepted a 250 million dollar ten year contract from the Los Angele Angels, rather than accept a 19 million dollar per year contract with St. Louis for fewer years.  More than a few fans and commentators have excoriated him for not staying with St. Louis his only team. They argue that he grew up in the Cardinals system and should stay with them out of loyalty.  But Pujols helped St. Louis win two world series in five years. His mentor and manager who helped him grow into the star, Tony Russo just retired. What did Pujolis owe the fans? Nothing. He was willing to take a small discount but 5 million per year difference, 20 percent of the St. Louis offer over ten years added up, a lot.  Over the life of the contract it would be worth 50 million dollars or 5 percent of a billion!

We and the St. Louis fans should be glad for him and celebrate his commitment and achievements for the team and the city.

Players cannot and should not trust fans. We forget too easily and remember too long. Fans claim to have loyalty, but the reality is that we do not and turn quickly and viscously upon our heroes. As fans we will forget the journeymen and haunt the retired stars who did not have a safety net at conventions or memorabilia gatherings. The players exist only as amber dipped memories of the fans. We cast off athletes like we cast off almost everyone else. They have no safety net and fans have very short memories. They know the pain of "once I was somebody."

Every professional athlete should be trying to maximize their income. We should not be surprised when they do this. We should not begrudge them seeking to maximize their gain with their very limited economic window of opportunity. We should also realize they understand fans better than we understand ourselves. Our momentary adulation and quicksilver attitude shifts cannot feed their kids or build their homes.

Sean Payton's Injury--Never Forget the Violence in Football

It can all look so clean and strategic on TV. The TV overlays emphasize the patterns and schemas of the football teams. The dangerous combination of beauty and force enamors football fans. But all this distanced and technologically enhanced viewing can distance and hide the reality from us, one I have mentioned before—force and violence rule football.

This week Sean Payton, the coach of the New Orleans’ Saints sat in the box calling plays, he could not be on the sideline. He is recovering from surgery last Monday to repair a torn meniscus and a broken left tibia. One Sunday ago  an NFL player ran out of the sidelines and collided with him and Payton's leg fell under the player.  Payton went down. His quarterback later joined him on the disabled list with a shattered collarbone.

Payton is not a small guy and full of the intensity and intelligence common to good football coaches. Yet the collision when he fell under a player fractured his tibia, tore his meniscus and left him with massive contusions.

You can look at the weekly list of broken and battered players who are out for the season in football, college and professional to remember that sheer collective force impacted on the human body by weaponized football players. We can follow the funeral track of premature dementia for men whose brains are battered to insensibility by the game or crippled forty five year olds. We have long lists and codes and forgotten faded once players to remind us.

What happened to Payton really should make clear to us fans on the side of the sheer energy and might unleashed on the football field.

When you stand on the sideline during an elite football game, the sheer vital force on the field overwhelms your senses. The players move so fast; they loom so big and the hits are so fierce you flinch when you feel the concussive power. You can see the players hold their bodies taught to hold the pain or bay or adjust a gait to protect a sprain, hit or bruise. The sheer sound and shaped force can be overwhelming. It feels nothing like the more sterile sense you get watching television. The graph below demonstrates where football hits rank compared to the G force impacts of flying jet airplanes!

 

Much of that power and ferocity is blunted by technique or the armor that players wear. But in Payton’s case we see the sheer violence unleashed upon an unprotected human being by a weaponized football player in full armor. An 200 plus pound football player impacts with  1600 pounds of force when he hits another player. If both players are moving that combined force grows to multiple G levels of force. In the professional league almost 300 players weigh over three hundred pounds and multiple that force impact even more.

The unprotected human body does not stand a chance. It breaks under the impact.

This reminds us that football employs mass+speed=force=impact to achieve its goals. This collision involves immense force and when it is inflicted upon a human body, it transmogrifies into violence. Beneath football's controlled force lurks ever present violence that impacts and hurts the human body.

Violence is force that inflicts pain and disruption to the human system. Every single football player imposes violence on every player on the field for every play. We should never forget this. Technique and armor diffuse some of this, but each player from grade school to professional ball endures this violence. It requires courage and strength and commitment and perhaps a little bid of madness.

As Payton’s experience reminds us, football would shatter normal humans. It would bruise and rupture our tissues; break or splinter our bones; rattle and disable our brains.

When we watch and take pleasure in the game and the beauty and power of the game, we should never forget the foundation of violence upon which it is build..

The Difference between Fans, Spectators and Audiences

I have a friend who attends all the basketball games at University of Washington. He endlessly works the sidelines. "Nice shot, Q." "Good D., Mac." He calls encouragement and criticism to the players which they often hear. He works the refs. "How could you do that Wanda!" "You owe us 2 now, Kathy." "Nice call, Bill." I watch him carefully because he epitomizes the nature of a true sports fan. Fans are not spectators and not audiences; just watch the participation of the painted school clad fans at the NCAA tournament.

Spectators watch. The Latin root of the word emphasize "seeing" and "watching," sometimes in a disinterested way. Spectators can be very sophisticated, watchers know the nuances of acting or playmaking and enjoy the finesse and fine points of the game, art, spectacle. You can often recognize them as they lean forward with intent stares and moving eyes. But in a sports context they remain passive in their interaction with the game; they watch, analyze and appreciate. (of course there are spectators like those who watch too much beach volleyball who gaze and oogle rather than watch and see, but that is another story)

Audiences hear. Again the Latin root gives it away; audiences listen to the audio dimensions of the world. Symphonic audiences provide an archetype; they listen in intense attention enraptured by music. Sophisticated listeners hear theme and variations and transpositions and understand and appreciate the nuance and mastery of musicians whether at Cleveland symphony or Green Day or Sugar Land concerts. Some listen with their whole bodies and you can see their  metronome feet or hands move  or they sway with their whole bodies. Sometimes they hum or mouth or sing along with the music or voice; many modern musicians invite this form of participation and the audience jumps in.


An experience like Cirque de Soleil creates both audience and spectator with its multidimensional world of sound, site, action, fancy, music, acting, gymnastics and sheer virtuosity. But at the core, the spectator and audience member remain receptors of the experience.

Sports fans participate in a different way. The linguistic roots are obscure for this uniquely American term but seems a shortened form of fanatic. That should warn us right away.  Linguistically, fanatics are "inspired by god, mad, enthusiastic" and carry a lot of frightening connotations that suggest fans move beyond reason and analysis into a different realm. The regular soccer riots and deaths in Europe do nothing to dispel these linguistic and emotional roots.

Sports fans create and shape the experience of sports. They are not passive receptors but active parts of the game itself. They influence action on the field of play. As my friend demonstrates, true fans participate in the sports. Go to a college game and you find bands blaring, student sections hollering and waving hands. Fans desperately impart emotional energy, support and distraction whenever they can. At football games they cheer so loud they force teams to wear radios or use sign language to convey plays. In basketball games they augment runs and try to break the other team's momentum or concentration.At races runners can literally feel and be moved by the energy from the fans.

Fans matter so much that sports often has a "home field advantage" largely created by the fans in the stands. Student sections and fans heckle and try to get inside players heads; they work to take players out of their games or reinforce their own players. They work referees as hard as any sideline coach. Leaving aside the litigation about who owns the "12th. man," a number of teams rely upon their home fans to give them a home field advantage. This advantage grows from the fan's emotional contagion and the comfort and the support it imparts to players. The fan base can infuse energy and hope in emotionally flagging moments as well as provide an endless stream of invective against other teams. Sports fans actively shape the environment in which athletes play as well as interacting in some obscure way with players and teams, for good or bad.

I've often commented upon how individuals who follow sports teams link an aspect of their identity to the team's presence and actions. This identity carries over into memory, but it also affects off field behavior. Fans sit in front of TVs with other fans wearing paraphernalia and talk, socialize and scream at TV suffering when their team suffers and exalting when their team excels. More than a few of us have been known to bow our heads or fold our hands in supplicant prayer--we know God has better things than to attend to a Mariner's game--but we do it anyway.

If you want an interesting lesson into the fanatic psychology of American sports culture, just peruse the hundreds of thousands of blogs devoted to teams and sports or follow twitter about teams and players. The vast majority carry rants and raves and expletive laden infantile comments upon teams and the going ons. But a surprising number (witness this one) offer thoughtful and interesting commentary upon their teams, sports or culture. The world of baseball is laden with sophisticated blogs like Fangraphs that link remarkably obsessive and smart individuals (who clearly need a life) who bring to bear passion and sophisticated analytical imaginations to offer fascinating ways to analyze and understand their beloved sport.

This baseball blog sphere now interacts with the world of professional assessment of players as well as leading to more interested and engaged fans for teams and sports. It offers an opening into sports for the life of the mind as well as the life of identity, aesthetics and deep appreciation of the form and achievement of human possibility.

Fans are different and that difference has some important implications for how they should act as fans. Being a sports fan is an existential choice. It involves a way of being in the world and relating to other human beings. The point of the game is being a fan involves a moral stance. It means acting in ways that impact others and the game. This  means it involves obligations and responsibilities. As a friend of mine reminded me,  spectators refer to "the team" and fans use the word "we."

I think being a fan involves taking oneself seriously and how we act in relation to our team but also to other teams and to other fans. At the core, we share a common appreciation of the sport and its own dynamics, but because fans often link their identity to their teams, the very ugliness that communal loyalties can unleash can climb out from fan tribal loyalties. So being a fan involves not just passion but, as I have written in another post,  being responsible  and self-controlled in your passion and loyalty.