I found this on IPR (Click here for the original link), posted by someone who read it himself first and wanted to share.
The article was written by Harry Bruce, and is included in a book of essays that you can find here. I fond it a good read, actually, may explain a bit of th ementality. It's sports in general, and seeing that someone mentioned football and hockey it cold be an intresting hit up.
-Tyger
(begin)
And May the Best Cheater Win
Every youth knows he can get into deep trouble by stealing cameras, peddling dope, mugging winos, forging
cheques, or copying someone else’s answers during an exam. Those are examples of not playing by the rules.
Cheating. But every youth also knows that in organized sports across North America, cheating is not only perfectly
okay, it’s recommended. “The structure of the sport…. Actually promotes deviance,” says U.S. sport sociologist D.S.
Eitzen.
The downy-cheeked hockey player who refuses to play dirty may find himself fired off the team. The boy soccer
player who refuses to rough up a superior striker “to throw him off his game” may find himself writhing under a
coach’s tongue-lashing. The basketball player who refuses to foul a goal bound enemy star in the last seconds of a
close game may find himself riding the bench next week. Thus, we have that cynical paradox, “the good foul.” A
phrase that makes about as much sense as “a beneficial outbreak of the bubonic plague.”
If organized sports offer benefits to youngsters, they also offer a massive program of moral corruption. The
recruiting of college athletes in the United States, and the use of academic fraud to maintain their “eligibility,”
stunk so powerfully in 1980 that Newsweek decided “cheating has become the name of the game,” and spoke of
fear on U.S. campuses of “an epidemic of corruption.” But the epidemic had already arrived, and what really
worried Newsweek was national acceptance of corruption as normal: “Many kids are admitting that they have tried
to take the bribes and inducements on the sleazy terms with which they are offered. Their complaints are not so
much that illegalities exist, but that they aren’t getting their share of the goodies.” Fans, alumni, coaches, college
administrators, players, and their parents all believed nothing could ever are more important that winning (or more
disgraceful than losing), and that cheating in victory’s cause was therefore commendable.
“Candidates for big-time sport’s Gall of Shame have seemed suddenly to break out all over like an ugly rash,”
William Oscar Johnson wrote last year in Sports Illustrated. He constructed a dismal catalogue of assaults on cops,
drunken brawls, adventures in the cocaine trade, credit-card frauds, and other sordid activities by rich professional
athletes who in more naïve times might have earned the adulation of small boys. Jim Finks, then Chicago Bears
general manager speculated that the trouble with the younger lawbreakers was that they had “Been looked after
all the way from junior high school. Some of them have had doctored grades. This plus the affluence [astronomical
salaries] means there has never been any pressing need for them to work things out for themselves. They have
no ideal how to face reality.
No one in all their lives had taught them about fair play. “In the early days of playground and high school leagues,
one of the key issues was moral regulation.” Says Alan Ingham, a teacher at the University of Washington. “You
got sports, and you got Judeo-Christian principles thrown in there too.” Now, however, “the majority of things
taught in sports are performance things.” John Pooley of the school of Recreation, Physical and Health Education at
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, asked Calvin Hill, a former Dallas Cowboy, what percentage of all the football
rookies he’d ever met had said that as college players, they’d encountered no cheating. Hill’s reply was short:
“None.”
So here we have the most powerful nation in the world, and it blithely corrupts children so they’ll mature as
athletic machines without an ounce of the moral sense that might prevent their sniffing cocaine or complicate their
lust for victory. Pray for nuclear disarmament, fans.
Still, Canadians are a little better. We all know who invented the game that inspired Paul Newman to star in Slap
Shot, a black and bloody comedy about butchery on ice. We can’t argue that it’s only American coaches who teach
peewees to draw tripping penalties rather than let an enemy player continue on a breakaway on your goal.
Moreover, I happen to live in Halifax, where only last winter St. Mary’s University was disgraced for allowing a
ringer from Florida to play varsity basketball. The coach of the rival but inferior team ferreted out the truth about
the player’s ineligibility. In doing so, he imported one of the fine old traditions of amateur sports in the States: if
you can’t beat them, hire a private dick. Oh well, that’s what universities are supposed to be all about: the pursuit
of truth.
Pursuing another truth, Pooley of Dalhousie surveyed recent graduates of three down-east universities. The grads
were both men and women, and they had all played intercollegiate field hockey, ice hockey, soccer or basketball.
“With one exception [a woman field hockey player], all felt there was immense pressure to win,” Pooley said.
Typical responses: “Winning everything in university sport… the measure of success was not how well you played,
but the win-loss record.. There is incredible pressure to perform because there are always two or three guys on
the bench ready to take your place.
Half said their coaches had urged, “winning at any cost.” One grad revealed, “Some coaches send their players out
to get a good player on the other team.” Another described “goon coaches who stressed intimidation and rough
play.” Coaches had not only condoned tactical fouls, but had actually taught the arts of fouling during practice. A
player who had competed against British and Bermudan teams said they played “intensely but fairly” while the
Maritimers “sometimes used dirty tactics” or “blatantly tried to stop a player.”
Pooley wondered if the grads, after years in intercollegiate sport, felt it had promoted fair play. Only the
field-hockey players said yes. Answers from the others were shockers: “Everyone cheats and the best cheater
wins… Fair play and sportsmanship are no promoted. This is a joke, you did whatever you could to win.. You are
taught to gain an advantage, whatever it takes.” Such cynicism, from people who so young they’ve barely doffed
their mortarboards, confirms the sad opinion of one Kalevi Heinila who told a world scientific congress in 198- that
fair play was “ripe to be dumped in the waste basket of sports history.”
The irony in all this-and its bother ludicrous and nauseating-is that universities defend their expensive programs
for intercollegiate sports with lip service to the notion that keen teamwork in clean competition nurtures good
citizens. Fair play in sports, don’t you know spawns fair players for the world of politics, the professions, and
business.
That’s a crock. What intercollegiate sport really teachers is how to get away with murder, how to be crooked within
the law. Just listen to one of the fresh-faced grads in Pooley’s survey as he sets out to make his way in the world,
his eyes shining with idealism: “ University sport teaches you to play as close to the limits as possible; and this is
the attitude that will get you ahead of the business world.” Another acknowledged that his “concept of fair play
decreased”; but, on the other hand, he had learned to “stretch the rules to my advantage.” A young woman
confided, “University sport has made me tough, less sensitive to other people’s feelings.” Still others stressed that
college sport had prepared them for “the real world,” for “real life,” in which winning was all.
“Cheating in amateur sport”, Pooley says, “gives it a hollow feeling. Many coaches do not have integrity. I’m still
sickened by that. It upsets me, at all levels.” A tall, talkative, forceful man with a bony face and a think brush of
steely hair, Pooley has coached soccer in six countries, once played for professional teams in Britain, and now at
53 cavorts on a team for men over 35. “I’m still playing league soccer,” he wrote in a paper for the 1984 Olympic
Scientific Congress in Eugene, Oregon, “Because: A) I helped to organize and plan my own youth soccer
experiences; B) Coming second or being beaten was okay; C) I was always much more interested in playing well
than playing to win; D) I never minding playing less well that I’d earlier played; and E) I always felt successful at
the level played.”
Those are highly un-American reasons for playing any sport, but Pooley is originally from Northern England, the
nation that invented “fair play” and knew that certain things just weren’t cricket. That was in a time long before
Americans institutionalized cheating, even in soap box derbies, before athletes gobbled steroids, before
universities invented courses n weight lifting and racquetball so quarterbacks could qualify as “students”.
Moreover Pooley believes that the few adults who stick with team sports until middle age do so because as
youngsters, “They preferred the feel of the all, the pass well made, the sweetness of the stroke or the power of
the shot, rather than whether they won or lost the game.” Such people don’t need to cheat.
Some scholars believe that the sleaziness of organized sports simply reflects the sleaziness of out entire culture.
Pooley points out, for instance, that one sociologist offers two reasons why cheating in sports shouldn’t be
“disproportionately reprimanded.” The first is that its “endemic in society,” and the second is that even more
cheating probably occurs in other fields. Pooley disagrees. He says this argument is like saying you should not
disproportionately reprimand the clergy for being dishonest. Poor Pooley. He has such quaint ideas about sports.
He actually believes they should be immoral, and should be fun.
-end
The article was written by Harry Bruce, and is included in a book of essays that you can find here. I fond it a good read, actually, may explain a bit of th ementality. It's sports in general, and seeing that someone mentioned football and hockey it cold be an intresting hit up.
-Tyger
(begin)
And May the Best Cheater Win
Every youth knows he can get into deep trouble by stealing cameras, peddling dope, mugging winos, forging
cheques, or copying someone else’s answers during an exam. Those are examples of not playing by the rules.
Cheating. But every youth also knows that in organized sports across North America, cheating is not only perfectly
okay, it’s recommended. “The structure of the sport…. Actually promotes deviance,” says U.S. sport sociologist D.S.
Eitzen.
The downy-cheeked hockey player who refuses to play dirty may find himself fired off the team. The boy soccer
player who refuses to rough up a superior striker “to throw him off his game” may find himself writhing under a
coach’s tongue-lashing. The basketball player who refuses to foul a goal bound enemy star in the last seconds of a
close game may find himself riding the bench next week. Thus, we have that cynical paradox, “the good foul.” A
phrase that makes about as much sense as “a beneficial outbreak of the bubonic plague.”
If organized sports offer benefits to youngsters, they also offer a massive program of moral corruption. The
recruiting of college athletes in the United States, and the use of academic fraud to maintain their “eligibility,”
stunk so powerfully in 1980 that Newsweek decided “cheating has become the name of the game,” and spoke of
fear on U.S. campuses of “an epidemic of corruption.” But the epidemic had already arrived, and what really
worried Newsweek was national acceptance of corruption as normal: “Many kids are admitting that they have tried
to take the bribes and inducements on the sleazy terms with which they are offered. Their complaints are not so
much that illegalities exist, but that they aren’t getting their share of the goodies.” Fans, alumni, coaches, college
administrators, players, and their parents all believed nothing could ever are more important that winning (or more
disgraceful than losing), and that cheating in victory’s cause was therefore commendable.
“Candidates for big-time sport’s Gall of Shame have seemed suddenly to break out all over like an ugly rash,”
William Oscar Johnson wrote last year in Sports Illustrated. He constructed a dismal catalogue of assaults on cops,
drunken brawls, adventures in the cocaine trade, credit-card frauds, and other sordid activities by rich professional
athletes who in more naïve times might have earned the adulation of small boys. Jim Finks, then Chicago Bears
general manager speculated that the trouble with the younger lawbreakers was that they had “Been looked after
all the way from junior high school. Some of them have had doctored grades. This plus the affluence [astronomical
salaries] means there has never been any pressing need for them to work things out for themselves. They have
no ideal how to face reality.
No one in all their lives had taught them about fair play. “In the early days of playground and high school leagues,
one of the key issues was moral regulation.” Says Alan Ingham, a teacher at the University of Washington. “You
got sports, and you got Judeo-Christian principles thrown in there too.” Now, however, “the majority of things
taught in sports are performance things.” John Pooley of the school of Recreation, Physical and Health Education at
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, asked Calvin Hill, a former Dallas Cowboy, what percentage of all the football
rookies he’d ever met had said that as college players, they’d encountered no cheating. Hill’s reply was short:
“None.”
So here we have the most powerful nation in the world, and it blithely corrupts children so they’ll mature as
athletic machines without an ounce of the moral sense that might prevent their sniffing cocaine or complicate their
lust for victory. Pray for nuclear disarmament, fans.
Still, Canadians are a little better. We all know who invented the game that inspired Paul Newman to star in Slap
Shot, a black and bloody comedy about butchery on ice. We can’t argue that it’s only American coaches who teach
peewees to draw tripping penalties rather than let an enemy player continue on a breakaway on your goal.
Moreover, I happen to live in Halifax, where only last winter St. Mary’s University was disgraced for allowing a
ringer from Florida to play varsity basketball. The coach of the rival but inferior team ferreted out the truth about
the player’s ineligibility. In doing so, he imported one of the fine old traditions of amateur sports in the States: if
you can’t beat them, hire a private dick. Oh well, that’s what universities are supposed to be all about: the pursuit
of truth.
Pursuing another truth, Pooley of Dalhousie surveyed recent graduates of three down-east universities. The grads
were both men and women, and they had all played intercollegiate field hockey, ice hockey, soccer or basketball.
“With one exception [a woman field hockey player], all felt there was immense pressure to win,” Pooley said.
Typical responses: “Winning everything in university sport… the measure of success was not how well you played,
but the win-loss record.. There is incredible pressure to perform because there are always two or three guys on
the bench ready to take your place.
Half said their coaches had urged, “winning at any cost.” One grad revealed, “Some coaches send their players out
to get a good player on the other team.” Another described “goon coaches who stressed intimidation and rough
play.” Coaches had not only condoned tactical fouls, but had actually taught the arts of fouling during practice. A
player who had competed against British and Bermudan teams said they played “intensely but fairly” while the
Maritimers “sometimes used dirty tactics” or “blatantly tried to stop a player.”
Pooley wondered if the grads, after years in intercollegiate sport, felt it had promoted fair play. Only the
field-hockey players said yes. Answers from the others were shockers: “Everyone cheats and the best cheater
wins… Fair play and sportsmanship are no promoted. This is a joke, you did whatever you could to win.. You are
taught to gain an advantage, whatever it takes.” Such cynicism, from people who so young they’ve barely doffed
their mortarboards, confirms the sad opinion of one Kalevi Heinila who told a world scientific congress in 198- that
fair play was “ripe to be dumped in the waste basket of sports history.”
The irony in all this-and its bother ludicrous and nauseating-is that universities defend their expensive programs
for intercollegiate sports with lip service to the notion that keen teamwork in clean competition nurtures good
citizens. Fair play in sports, don’t you know spawns fair players for the world of politics, the professions, and
business.
That’s a crock. What intercollegiate sport really teachers is how to get away with murder, how to be crooked within
the law. Just listen to one of the fresh-faced grads in Pooley’s survey as he sets out to make his way in the world,
his eyes shining with idealism: “ University sport teaches you to play as close to the limits as possible; and this is
the attitude that will get you ahead of the business world.” Another acknowledged that his “concept of fair play
decreased”; but, on the other hand, he had learned to “stretch the rules to my advantage.” A young woman
confided, “University sport has made me tough, less sensitive to other people’s feelings.” Still others stressed that
college sport had prepared them for “the real world,” for “real life,” in which winning was all.
“Cheating in amateur sport”, Pooley says, “gives it a hollow feeling. Many coaches do not have integrity. I’m still
sickened by that. It upsets me, at all levels.” A tall, talkative, forceful man with a bony face and a think brush of
steely hair, Pooley has coached soccer in six countries, once played for professional teams in Britain, and now at
53 cavorts on a team for men over 35. “I’m still playing league soccer,” he wrote in a paper for the 1984 Olympic
Scientific Congress in Eugene, Oregon, “Because: A) I helped to organize and plan my own youth soccer
experiences; B) Coming second or being beaten was okay; C) I was always much more interested in playing well
than playing to win; D) I never minding playing less well that I’d earlier played; and E) I always felt successful at
the level played.”
Those are highly un-American reasons for playing any sport, but Pooley is originally from Northern England, the
nation that invented “fair play” and knew that certain things just weren’t cricket. That was in a time long before
Americans institutionalized cheating, even in soap box derbies, before athletes gobbled steroids, before
universities invented courses n weight lifting and racquetball so quarterbacks could qualify as “students”.
Moreover Pooley believes that the few adults who stick with team sports until middle age do so because as
youngsters, “They preferred the feel of the all, the pass well made, the sweetness of the stroke or the power of
the shot, rather than whether they won or lost the game.” Such people don’t need to cheat.
Some scholars believe that the sleaziness of organized sports simply reflects the sleaziness of out entire culture.
Pooley points out, for instance, that one sociologist offers two reasons why cheating in sports shouldn’t be
“disproportionately reprimanded.” The first is that its “endemic in society,” and the second is that even more
cheating probably occurs in other fields. Pooley disagrees. He says this argument is like saying you should not
disproportionately reprimand the clergy for being dishonest. Poor Pooley. He has such quaint ideas about sports.
He actually believes they should be immoral, and should be fun.
-end
