Sports Logic: Parallel & Sequential Sports

Each sport possess its own competitor logic. This logic generates accompanying intellectual and physical virtues that connect to success given that logic of that competition. The logic of the sport then shapes the form of mental, emotional and physical characteristics needed to succeed. 

Parallel competition is one of those logics. It takes many variations but structures its competition around individual athletes competing alone unimpeded by others against other competitors. They may do this in lanes against each other or sequentially one after another. This parallel world differs fundamentally from direct physical competition such as soccer and football where physical interactions can impede actions. It also differs from competitions mediated by a net or any competitive world where the opposition can directly influence the competitors either physically or force applied direction on the competitive object. 

The parallel world isolates the competitor against other competitors but the other competitors cannot push back or fight via applied force. Instead each competitor pushes off and competes on the course. The archetypes of such competition lie in the sprints of running and swimming where each player sprints in their lane cannot cross the lane. The fastest person wins.

Different variations occur when the sport does not permit lanes but launches sequentially, but again does not usually permit contact based, competition. Golf, diving, shooting, rowing most snow boarding or skiing function the same way—they all often share same dynamics of “one shot” sports.

Taking sprints as an archetype the sports demand a particular focus upon practiced discipline and incredible focus upon minute but cumulative differences.  Angle of approach, starts, and finger placement, body discipline, and muscle deployment, wind resistance all adds up. Over even a short span of time and distance they matter. The longer the distance the more they matter.   Sometimes distance running vacillates between original parallel competition and mêlée competition and then back to parallel.

Several keys arise in performance and virtue:

1.   Athletes need to prepare meticulously. Because the opposition does not have the chance to contact or fake or use their power to displace or overwhelm a person, precision and practiced discipline or minute technical details matter. Preparation takes on immense importance.

2.  Focus in execution matters. As in one-shot sports, athletes have to be totally present and capable of pushing out all distraction. They must attend to the exact parameters of a situation. Often this might involve weather or natural conditions as in skiing or golf. But this capacity to narrow focus, attend to only what matters and execute takes on huge importance.

3.  The start matters immensely. In all these one shot and sequential or parallel activities, the launch or first movement has overwhelming importance. It takes immense and total concentration at the start since many competitors compete against the clock or the power of the launch determines the initial advantage or ability to complete the action as in golf, diving or skiing.

4.  Technique and adaptability to environmental conditions are supreme the vast majority of the time. The launch or precise technique must adapt to the conditions so that changes or even different techniques may be called upon depending upon conditions of the surface or weather.

5.  Tactics matter sometimes.  Because the sport is run in parallel or sequentially, people generally know exactly where others are in the standings or competition. Usually they compete in circuits so they know each other’s strengths and limitations as well as preferred styles. This puts great weight upon preparation for and anticipation of the other. Tactics are often set before hand. Only in true competitive running, swimming or relays where a competitor can see or glance at the competitor can they adapt on the fly.

a.    Managing energy and momentum depend upon situational awareness and timing. Here knowing when to go all out or when to conserve demands discipline, knowledge and self-awareness. The key to many of these races relies, again in the start where one can break away and create a commanding lead. Or knowing when to “kick.” This spurt of energy or kick can again break away and seal the race, or prematurely exhaust a competitor so that when opponents launch their kick, the competitor has “nothing left in the tank” and watches others pass by and win.

b.  On the other hand in sequential and highly formalistic sports such as diving or skating competitors may change their performance at the last minute in light of the successes or failures of their competitors. They may need more points or fewer points depending upon competitors and this can lead to different moves.

6.  Sometimes the moment demands everything. In the winter Olympics of 20014 a female US snowboarder had a sense of what the competitors were doing and what she needed. She literally changed her program in mid air because “it felt right.”

Parallel and sequential sport places immense pressure upon preparation. In more than a few of these sports iconoclast sheer talent folks will win for awhile, but not sustain it given their off course lack of discipline and focus.

The preparation demands serious discipline between competitions. It also requires knowing competitors very well. The capacity to adapt lies not just to the environment, but also to the positioning, lead and kicks or break-aways of opponents. It also demands a fearless view of what competitors are doing in way of meeting scoring requirements by judges and the ability to judge one’s own capacity and skills and whether to add or subtract from routines in light of what is going one.

Then, sometimes, as with young Olympian, a competitor must just go all the way and throw the dice.  Of course that all or nothing, that immense imaginative leap in the moment, depends upon the steeled discipline, practice and focus that lead up to the moment of execution.

What Should a Student Athlete Graduate Look Like Part II

Graduating from college is no guarantee of a job, and this applies to students athletes as well as most college graduates. The modern economy has made clear that getting a job is much harder than graduating from college, and many colleges are struggling to connect career preparation with traditional university generalist education. One of the major changes in higher education in the last twenty years has been the increasing importance for experience based learning of internships, extra-curricular activities or service learning or in experience based labs and exercises

We also have to remember the baseline entry level will shape the baseline of the graduates. The exact level of skill and exacting rigor and reasoning capacity may be tied to the mission of the university and level of commitment by the student body at large including student athletes. I don't’ expect the quality of knowledge and skill on average of many state college open admission students to match that of an elite private student graduate, but I do expect it to match strong standards of writing, reasoning and competence needed by business and life paths.

The vast majority of student athletes graduate at rates comparable or above similarly situated populations at their universities. This has been the great unheralded success of the NCAA and college athletics over the last twenty years. 

Graduating surveys support that graduating student athletes possess comparable levels of skills in the first three areas to their peers. Few university graduates master the professional path. It is even rarer to master the professional path given how hard it is for student athletes to get the advanced class requirements given their travel schedules.

I also want to acknowledge the real challenge that colleges face in bringing in a number of special admits each year to play athletics. Many of them are minority athletes from low social economic status backgrounds. Many come from broken urban or rural high schools and have not received the resource investment or education to be prepared for college level classes.

These special admits are admitted in clear knowledge that the admitted student does not fit the academic profile of regularly admitted students. These special admitted students will need strong academic and personal support the first two years to become a viable college students with their reading, reasoning analytic, math and class room skills.

These students come in identifying as athletes and aspiring to become professionals. Their reading levels may hover around 10^th grade and they have grown up seeing themselves as academic failures and athletic successes. The amazing thing is that with strong support from staff, a strategic academic plan over two years and relentless pressure from coaches linking their ability to play to their performance in the classroom, the vast majority of these special admits can grow into viable academic students as well as athletic students. Colleges are now graduating minority student athletes at record high levels after twenty years of sustained effort and making it in coaches’ interests to get athletes to class and move towards degrees. I don’t want to romanticize this, a large number of schools still need to bring up the graduating level of their minority basketball and football players.

The key lies in strong investment in academic and social support for this development and unremitting coaching support. The NCAA reforms are all aimed at changing coaches’ incentives to put more effort into pushing academics and invest in robust academic support.

The Broader Case for Student Athletes

Here I want to make a case about what college athletics can also achieve. Many students learn the most in their internships, extra-curriculars or service learning or in experience based labs and exercises.  I would make the case that student athlete graduates possess not only the three academic dimensions but have gained other vital capacities that will stand them in good stead for life and careers.

Here are four vital skill sets that student athletes graduates often have gained.

1)   Goal setting, self-discipline and time-management are inbred into the process of being a successful athletic student.

2)   Cooperation, self-sacrifice and team coordination and commitment are ingrained in athletic team competition.

3)   Sophisticated pattern recognition of situations that develop in real time. Athletes must master complicated patterns of play and real time opposition and understand, integrate and deploy this perceptual skill.

4)  Taking responsibility and making decisions that have real time consequences based upon the pattern recognition while under intense stress. This real world acclimation to deploying knowledge and judgment under competitive stress infuses all athletic activity.

The data on the cognitive and emotional attributes of athletes supports the maturing of student athletes in these areas. I found one of my greatest hopes and frustrations was getting students who are athletes to understand how these athletic driven attributes transfer to the academic classroom and to the life they will face after college. When young student athletes figure this out, their lives change profoundly. 

I cannot emphasize enough how much this second set of attributes depends upon a high and moral quality of coaching, the type that the recent Rutger's scandal illuminates what should not happen. 

I believe that if the student athlete graduates from college and if the combined endeavor of the athlete and the college have achieved three of the four outcomes above, then colleges have done justice to the student athletes and vice versa.

I also believe that the value added attributes generated from athletic participation enrich and deepen the quality of the person who graduates from college.

What Should a Student Athlete Graduate Look Like--Parts I & II

The NCAA defense of the concept of student athlete drives the immense efforts and progress college athletics has made over the last decade in increasing the graduation rates of student athletes. This increase has occurred in all areas and also led to pronounced increases in graduation rates of minority athletes as well as athletes in revenue sports. This progress is by no means perfect and requires constant pressure on schools and recruiting. The NCAA assumes that if a person graduates from the school, then the college has achieved the purpose that it sets for all entering students—a college graduate.

I want to discuss what this ideal of graduating from college looks like for a student athlete to see if it makes sense. Most media critics of the NCAA seem to assume that no student athletes graduate and that their degree is meaningless. This gives credence to their claims that the system is a “plantation” and based on “exploitation” because the student athlete, beyond playing what they love for four years, gains nothing of lasting value.

What should a graduated student athlete look like?

We need to remember that American higher education exists at many levels from private colleges to state comprehensive or open enrollment universities to R1 world-class research institutions. Each set of schools has different missions and different graduation rates. 

Students coming from well off homes and attending good private colleges may graduate at rates of 90 percent over a 6 year period while students coming from wildly diverse homes to open enrollment comprehensive state schools may graduate over six year period at 40 percent rates.  The NCAA covers all these rates, but reasonable rates across all levels suggest that strong state schools—which can be a proxy for NCAA colleges, will graduate students at the rate from 50-65%. This is a simple rate where you take the number of students who enter at a given year and divide it by the number who have graduated six years later. This simple division rate is what the federal government uses for its graduation rate numbers. This “target” rate drives the NCAA’s own efforts to graduate student athletes at the rates normal students graduate. The NCAA ideal would be to have student athletes graduate at an 80 percent rate.

This simple federal rate does not capture the complexity of student lives. While few students flunk out of the modern universities, many drop out from lack of money or lack of motivation or they transfer. Many drop out for a while and come back later.

Schools know simple 6-year averages do not capture the true reality especially at large schools serving diverse populations where the path to completing college can be nonlinear. This same issue impacts college athletes in a powerful way. Simply measuring the number of athletes who enter a class and those who graduate 6 years later tells you very little for two reasons.

1)   Many student athletes transfer and move on to graduate from other schools. In sports like men’s basketball the transfer rate can be over 30 percent. The federal rate misses this while NCAA numbers positively account for a transfer who graduates. 

2)   A very few student athletes leave to become professional athletes. This is not the norm but afflicts a few elite institutions. The effect is mitigated in baseball and football by rules made by professional teams who do not draft players until they have at least three years of college. Given the modern emphasis upon summer school classes and progress towards degree, a student athlete at the end of three years is often very close to graduation and well ensconced in a major. The NCAA does not penalize a school who leaves in good standing to play professional ball. 

As a membership organization the NCAA tries to respect the autonomy of different schools with different missions. The schools demand that autonomy. The NCAA gives schools immense freedom on their classes and graduation requirements but requires markers to ensure student athletes make reasonable progress toward graduation. This seeks to avoid past scandal where schools could go years without graduating their players.

What Graduates Should Know

Let’s get down and dirty and ask what a college graduate should possess and whether a graduated student athletes possess this. I believe we want to see several outcomes from any college graduate:

1)            They can read, write and reason. This is the bottom line of college, and many fine state universities face high school populations who possess real deficits in their ability to read and comprehend advanced prose, or reason and express it in writing. 

This miscarried outcome of modern high school education wounds the capacity of many college freshmen to reason or write clearly. Universities around the country have scaled down introductory writing and expanded writing requirements to adapt to this shortfall bringing students up to higher writing and reasoning levels. The reading and writing ultimately are means to a deeper end, the trained capacity to reason about problems.

2)            Students know basic math and can deploy sensible math including statistics skills to understand the world around them and use it to budget their lives and understand the realities of business and government. This remains the most fundamental failure of modern American education. Universities around the country have scaled down math requirements deal with the mathmatically illiterate populations they get from high schools. With the exception of technical professions that require strong mathematical literacy, modern higher education struggles to secure reasonable proficiency in applied math or statistics or even spread sheet math required by so much of modern life. Colleges strive for this but are floundering in achieving it for all their students.

3)            Reading, writing and math literacy—sound familiar? These should provide the basis for a college student to enter a major—a selected area where a student masters a field of knowledge and can solve problems within it using the technical and language based skills of the field. Many majors such as sociology, my own political science, anthropology, English literature, history etc. teach a student to reason about issues and integrate reading and analysis, but not necessarily practical mathematics, to engage serious problems. 

None of these majors guarantees a job or job preparation. 

Many social sciences and humanities rank very low on some the job preparation scales. Good majors provide the chance for students to become educated individuals capable of thinking through issues, reasoning about them, communicating their reasoning and writing about them. These skills contribute to multiple career and life paths.  Some majors such as economics, applied math, or modern empirical psychology provide a level of mathematical and analytical competence that can be deployed in many professional paths that differ from the reasoning and analysis of many social sciences and humanities.

4)           Professional competence that prepares students to leave school and enter into a professional career path. This is a more rare outcome, and the vast majority of college students do not pursue this route. Students, however, who enter engineering programs, science programs or information science or computer science for example can achieve this as they can in applied humanities such as design or art or theater programs.  Business schools offer undergraduate degrees but with the exception of accounting, most of the “skills” tend to be softer and lead to less efficacious reasoning outcomes than anticipated.

I think any student athlete who graduates as a true student must meet categories 1 through 3 at least—in this they would join the vast majority of American undergraduates.

Graduating from college is no guarantee of a job, and this applies to students athletes as well as most college graduates. The modern economy has made clear that getting a job is much harder than graduating from college, and many colleges are struggling to connect career preparation with traditional university generalist education. One of the major changes in higher education in the last twenty years has been the increasing importance for experience based learning of internships, extra-curricular activities or service learning or in experience based labs and exercises

We also have to remember the baseline entry level will shape the baseline of the graduates. The exact level of skill and exacting rigor and reasoning capacity may be tied to the mission of the university and level of commitment by the student body at large including student athletes. I don't’ expect the quality of knowledge and skill on average of many state college open admission students to match that of an elite private student graduate, but I do expect it to match strong standards of writing, reasoning and competence needed by business and life paths.

The vast majority of student athletes graduate at rates comparable or above similarly situated populations at their universities. This has been the great unheralded success of the NCAA and college athletics over the last twenty years. 

Graduating surveys support that graduating student athletes possess comparable levels of skills in the first three areas to their peers. Few university graduates master the professional path. It is even rarer to master the professional path given how hard it is for student athletes to get the advanced class requirements given their travel schedules.

I also want to acknowledge the real challenge that colleges face in bringing in a number of special admits each year to play athletics. Many of them are minority athletes from low social economic status backgrounds. Many come from broken urban or rural high schools and have not received the resource investment or education to be prepared for college level classes.

These special admits are admitted in clear knowledge that the admitted student does not fit the academic profile of regularly admitted students. These special admitted students will need strong academic and personal support the first two years to become a viable college students with their reading, reasoning analytic, math and class room skills.

These students come in identifying as athletes and aspiring to become professionals. Their reading levels may hover around 10^th grade and they have grown up seeing themselves as academic failures and athletic successes. The amazing thing is that with strong support from staff, a strategic academic plan over two years and relentless pressure from coaches linking their ability to play to their performance in the classroom, the vast majority of these special admits can grow into viable academic students as well as athletic students. 

Colleges are now graduating minority student athletes at record high levels after twenty years of sustained effort and making it in coaches’ interests to get athletes to class and move towards degrees. I don’t want to romanticize this, a large number of schools still need to bring up the graduating level of their minority basketball and football players.

The key lies in strong investment in academic and social support for this development and unremitting coaching support. The NCAA reforms are all aimed at changing coaches’ incentives to put more effort into pushing academics and invest in robust academic support.

The Broader Case for Student Athletes

Here I want to make a case about what college athletics can also achieve. Many students learn the most in their internships, extra-curriculars or service learning or in experience based labs and exercises.  I would make the case that student athlete graduates possess not only the three academic dimensions but have gained other vital capacities that will stand them in good stead for life and careers.

Here are four vital skill sets that student athletes graduates often have gained.

1)   Goal setting, self-discipline and time-management are inbred into the process of being a successful athletic student.

2)   Cooperation, self-sacrifice and team coordination and commitment are ingrained in athletic team competition.

3)   Sophisticated pattern recognition of situations that develop in real time. Athletes must master complicated patterns of play and real time opposition and understand, integrate and deploy this perceptual skill.

4)  Taking responsibility and making decisions that have real time consequences based upon the pattern recognition while under intense stress. This real world acclimation to deploying knowledge and judgment under competitive stress infuses all athletic activity.

The data on the cognitive and emotional attributes of athletes supports the maturing of student athletes in these areas. I found one of my greatest hopes and frustrations was getting students who are athletes to understand how these athletic driven attributes transfer to the academic classroom and to the life they will face after college. When young student athletes figure this out, their lives change profoundly. 

I cannot emphasize enough how much this second set of attributes depends upon a high and moral quality of coaching, the type that the recent Rutger's scandal illuminates what should not happen. 

I believe that if the student athlete graduates from college and if the combined endeavor of the athlete and the college have achieved three of the four outcomes above, then colleges have done justice to the student athletes and vice versa.

I also believe that the value added attributes generated from athletic participation enrich and deepen the quality of the person who graduates from college.

Sports Ethics: Finish It

Last year I watched both the Seattle Seahawks and the Washington Huskies take strong leads into fourth quarter of their football games. The games felt" in the bag" so  I could switch channels. In both games, however, the teams lost the games in the final minutes. I listened to the Husky coaches and players repeat the mantra “we have to finish.” Commenting on the Seahawks game Leon Washington who had a fantastic kickoff return for a touchdown stated, “finish, finish, finish. That’s what we have to do, that’s what the coaches had reminded us.” After the Seahawks came from behind to win their first road playoff game in 25+ years, Redskins half back Alfred Morris reminded everyone, "it's not how you start, it's how you finish."

The words sound so simple—finish it. The concept is fundamental to the ethics of high achievement in life and sports, and its execution very hard.

It sounds so easy but really demands more than any of us think. Any writer trying to finish a manuscript; any lawyer trying to finish a case; any salesman trying to finish a sale; they all understand the discipline of finishing. The context does not matter, the concept of finishing it highlights how results overshadow effort or excellence.

Finishing as an Accomplishment:           Finish it hints at how just finishing the game can be an achievement. I think this can be true in both a good and bad sense. If a team reaches a moment where they are only playing to finish the game, period, and they are going through the motions and just want it over; that team has failed in its purpose and betrayed itself and its integrity. Playing to finish in this way insults sports integrity.

On the other hand, playing to finish can involve a team or person that might be outmatched, but the athletes play on with intensity, focus and at their highest skill. They do not give up; they may lose but they finish the game, even a loss, with heads held high. They kept in the game and finishing this way even though outgunned involves a form of honor.

In life we often face these challenges that tempt us to quit. In an iconic example any runner knows he or she can quit at any step, at any time. Their legs hurt, their breath shudders out, their body screams quit and their mind mutters that this is stupid. An individual runner can finish their first marathon or even their first mile or in my case their first block and feel great pride at the accomplishment of finishing the race and above all of not quitting. To finish in these terms of not giving up, keeping up intensity and focus and finishing despite pain and obstacles bring honor and a true sense of accomplishment. The reality and metaphor of a "finish line' solidifies  the power and importance of getting across the line, of finishing what we started. It implies a level of responsibility and self-discipline that accompanies finishing what we start. 

Sometimes just finishing, period, displays integrity and moxie and should be recognized. An injured player who plays to the finish elicits the same admiration. There is a reason coaches and trainers and friends all urge us to "finish strong" at that moment when we most want to quit. 

Finishing as Focus at the End:      When Leon Washington repeats the mantra “finish,” he means something different that deserves attention. He describes a team that does not manifest the intensity, mental focus and physical prowess at the end of a game in a way that allows them to hold a win. The expression refers in a good way to teams that “finish off” teams they should beat. But more often it indicts teams or athletes that that lose games they should win or to teams that are ahead and cannot finish. The once winning team loses at the end of the game and lets the other team back in because they do not play at their highest level at the end of the competition.

Competition means human beings opposed to us will be trying, thinking, training and developing new ideas to surprise us or win over us. It never ends. During games opponents adapt and if they do not lose heart, they strive to come back and change to gain a victory. Athletics exposes this archetypical core that rivalry in life or sport never stands still. 

To focus upon the finish reminds athletes and professionals that they are always on the clock. The game is never over until is is over or at least until the fat lady sings. Until the court closes, the surgery ends, the time clock runs out, a person must be present, focused, skilled and attuned to what is going on around them.

Athletes can lose in a number of ways. Sometimes adversaries just erupt and blow a team out of the water fast. Athletes finds themselves so far down so fast, they literally go into shock and underperform and stumble forward just playing out the clock. Sometimes, the game seesaws back and forth, and every play counts. Every player knows they are locked in a tight hard contest and must be fully engaged; people who play or witness such games know either team could have won. People remember such great competitions.  But sometimes a team is winning, and the other team claws back from being down and snatches the victory away. The athletes fail to finish it.

Finishing as a Mind Set:     Every game or series has built in attrition. To finish involves not just a point or play or even a game, but a rhythm where a team can start off winning and then faces the opponent's come back. Sometimes mental and physical attrition can distract or wear down intensity and focus. A team might relax when it gets ahead. Finishing involves a mind set and discipline. A team that knows how to finish does not relent but keeps its attention and resilience intact when runs and surprises occurs. It involves a form of focused emotional discipline coupled with the suppleness to bounce back when stress erupts.

Good finishers exploit their advantages and keep pressing to the end. But a failed finisher lets the opponent just “hang around.” An opponent keeps competing and gains confidence and energy rather than give up. The winning team cannot “put them away.” The other team stays within striking distance.  The failed finisher  should finish them off but does not have the energy, intensity or skill to up their performance and “pull away” or “put the game out of reach."

Sports contest have a winner. They end with a victor, and that requires someone must finish the game. High performers, athletes and professionals have the ability to envision the end and to let that vision discipline their training and attention before and during the competition. Life throws curves and just having the capacity to envision the end game and focus upon it is not enough. Getting ahead, facing a run from the other side, making mistakes all can tumble quickly into downward spirals and games get out of hand quickly.  A finisher must have the resilience to adapt and bounce back within the course of a completion to address these surprises and keep focused amid the ebb and flow of a competition.

The language of finishing can migrate into predatory language. To “finish someone off” resembles the language of hunting to kill. I had a student who left her sport because her coaches demanded that she display a “killer instinct.” She possessed superb skills and court sense as well as a balanced presence during the game, and won regularly. But her coaches wanted some type of zeal or emotional delight in beating the other person. They believed this emotional motivation to destroy the opponent would permit her to heighten her game and move in for the kill. I am not sure the structure of being a finisher requires having a killer-instinct. Too many coaches who see competition as war fall into that trap, but most good soldiers never do. They master discipline, focus and tempered ability to draw on emotional reserves when required. The involves the capacity to step up a person’s game. Here the person  unites skill, effort and judgement under stress  in order to finish off the competitor.

Focussing on finish it creates an imperative to stay present and focused upon the task at hand.  The ethics implied by finish reminds us that we cannot take anything for granted, and we can never rest on our laurels. Even when things are smooth sailing, things can go wrong. It requires a situational awareness of when to press an advantage and above all when not to let down one’s intensity that permits the other side get back into the game.

Finishers compete to the end; they cross the finish line with strength and attention intact. They compete fully with effort, attention and physical effort. Know the finish line and pressing forward involves responsibility plus resilience to hold on against the temptations of attrition, quitting or letting the other team steal a game.