Putting sport back in its box

July 31, 2012 by
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Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching too much of the Olympics, but this week’s Moral Maze topic has me in a muddle. We are to debate the moral value of sport and despite being something of a sports moron – the other day I voluntarily watched dressage – I find myself on the sceptical side of the argument.

Any generalisation is belied by the vast range of competitive activity. There is little in common either in terms of culture or values between my experience of being a veteran cross country runner for Belgrave Harriers and following my sons as they pursue their ambitions to be football pros.

The world of amateur distance running is egalitarian and friendly, with runners of all abilities discussing their times over a piece of cake and a cuppa. Football by contrast can be a nasty, aggressive business in which at all levels winning now (forget the long term) and individual advancement seems to be everything. Whilst I have chatted happily and without embarrassment to runners who represent their country, elite footballers are a distant breed who generally only mix with ordinary mortals as part of a structured process of outreach.

As for the moral claims made for sport, the evidence seems pretty shaky, particularly if we try to distinguish the specific benefits from the wider value which research suggests comes from any form of structured sociability. Sure, sport is better than hanging around on street corners but is it better than artistic activity, community volunteering or religious worship?

In terms of the morals of sport itself there are memorable times when ‘playing the game’ is more important than ‘winning the game’. Here is one nice example  Being fascinated by complexity in social relations, I also loved the women’s cycling on Sunday in which the three cyclists who broke away had to practise trust and exercise strong tacit agreement in order to stay ahead as a group, all the time knowing that sooner or later they would be in all out competition.

But – and here again – football is the most egregious offender, the general feel of professional sport is that winning and getting rich are more important than pride in craft or the Corinthian spirit.

Ultimately (although imperfectly) sport has the strengths and weaknesses of an extreme meritocracy. Ability wins out over privilege but there is a merciless division of the spoils between the triumphant winner and the forgotten also-ran. Both the brutalisation of sport and the leaching of its winner takes all values into wider society are symbolised by the way ‘loser’ has become a generic term of abuse.

Another problem with meritocracy lies in the question ‘who decides the basis for merit’. It is precisely because sport can generate extreme inequalities of outcome based, first, on relatively minor differences of performance and, second, on the basis of specific attributes of questionable wider value (exactly how useful are most Olympic skills outside competition) that it is important to keep the whole thing in perspective. But this we have failed to do, not only in the high and rising profile of sport in society, not only in the massive rewards given to the lucky few, but also in the tendency to attribute wider character strengths to people who happen to be very good at a particular game.

Participating in amateur sport can be great. It can improve our health, provide the basis for new friendships and encourage us to set and meet personal challenges. Watching sport too can bring people together and there are certainly worse forms of escapism. With so much going for it, the supporters of sport as an activity and a recipient of public and private beneficence should be much more wary of making wider claims about impact on character, on the relevance of sporting ethics to wider society or assuming that people who happen to good at hitting objects with sticks or even getting horses to walk sideways are exemplary role models.

Mind you, having said all this I can’t help suspecting I would be taking a very different stance if team GB hadn’t so far been such a wash out !

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4 Comments on Putting sport back in its box

  1. Sam Earle on Tue, 31st Jul 2012 9:16 pm

    2. Can sport be moral? I would think that properly speaking it is amoral – or at least it’s been done is amoral. If sports-persons as agents do sport as sport – that is hitting things with sticks, for example, for the sake of competing at hitting things with sticks, then how can it be morally relevant behaviour, given that it is self-contained and consensual? When it becomes not-sport -i.e. Premiership Football, or Olympics, is when the purpose is changed (corrupted) to suit financial or political ends, in which case it is no longer self-contained but ripples into the rest of society. These effects on other, non-consenting people render this scenario morally relevant. But by this point, it’s just not cricket!

  2. Carl Allen on Wed, 1st Aug 2012 9:48 am

    3. There is judo and there is jujitsu.

    There is sport (competition) and there is combat.

    There is the not-for-private-profit/public benefit organisation and there is the for-private-profit/ethics be dammed organisation.

    And though the coin has three sides, it usually falls to one side when it stops rolling.

  3. Livy on Wed, 1st Aug 2012 1:19 pm

    4. The lynchpin may be the extent to which you are persuaded that games reflect life and aid in personal development. To those who are staunchly unconvinced, then a bat hitting a ball is merely a bat hitting a ball and there is nothing beyond the physical domain, no triumph of the intellect, no mental or spiritual awakening. Certainly, aspects of human experience that defy weight or measurement can be elusive to the empiricist or the athletically un-inclined, and it is reasonable to accommodate these individuals by refraining from attaching loaded terms like morality to sporting endeavour.

    The question of whether the same benefits accrue in any structured social activity is one a social scientist would raise; it can in part be unpacked by justifiably taking football out of the equation, for reasons more plausible even than players being overpaid or badly behaved. Provided we accept there are realms of human activity beneficial for individual growth and developing a healthy world view, which most of us do, then it’s possible to make a stronger case for some sports over others. As a thought experiment, if we re-wound the clock 100,000 years back to the African Diaspora and rolled the dice on humanity once more, we could ask whether it would all happen again. Children wearing baggy jeans below their hips may not happen again – even if American prisons confiscated belts to prevent suicide, it probably wouldn’t catch on as a fashion trend. Music, however, would happen again, in all cultures developing independently of each other across the Earth. The alignment and specific policy positions of left and right politics wouldn’t happen again. But hunting and fishing would.

    Football would not happen again. Archery would.

    The research and evidence strength on this admittedly amounts to merely well informed, accurate guesswork, but we can safely say that the bow emerged six or seven different times. It almost had to as a means of survival, both for procuring food sources and as a weapon for personal protection. You need not search long or hard to observe that certain athletic individuals tend to live their lives with an inner peace, agreeable nature and deep humility after pushing their minds and bodies to extremes that aren’t required by modern day office jobs. A similar positive effect can be found among military personnel, whose egos are broken down in the training stage by intense physical exertion. Activities that satisfy biological needs tend to inculcate in their practitioners a certain indescribable quality, a gravitas or character strength, as they are connected to an aspect of our common humanity we either forget or prefer to deny. The same sense of fulfilment comes from picking fruit or catching fish, experiences that trigger a temporary connexion to a primal state of man.

    When those biological holes are not filled, when no controlled outlet exists for individuals to safely dominate each other in a sporting arena then those impulses manifest themselves in other ways. They manifest themselves in awkward corner positioning behaviour in crowded lifts, cutting up other drivers in traffic, egocentric personalities, and even hostile business practices or tribal politics.

    It is also instructive to note the kind of language we use, particularly in the UK, to describe people who take personal responsibility for their own well being, grow their own food or compete in sports. Health ‘nut’, or fitness ‘freak’ are common expressions, sometimes when we subconsciously wish to disparage those who thrive in an enviable way that eludes our own experience. We belittle them with thinly veiled implications of narcissism.

  4. sophie on Tue, 7th Aug 2012 7:37 pm

    5. Yes, sport is in many ways totally arbitrary and detached from modern living.

    However, as you should know from your experience of long distance running, it’s really not those who just ‘happen’ to have the relevant physical attributes. What makes top athletes so inspiring is their resilience both physically but also psychologically. (See Matthew Syed’s book on sports psychology, ‘Bounce’). They display years and years of dedication to be the best they can be and must confront the prospect of failure constantly.

    Success in any endeavour requires these qualities – they are universal. It’s just that in sport there is a certain purity to it. We all want to be the best, but we have multiple objectives at work, home, etc. This means that sports as objectively bizarre as synchronised swimming and weightlifting, can be inspiring and moving for everyone. You don’t have to analyse it much – you can just watch the spectators.

    And finally, your comparison with football is really very selective – it’s a sport that’s been totally distorted by money and is pretty peripheral to the Games.

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