| |
 Gamesmanship vs. sportsmanship
Posted: Wednesday September 01, 1999 12:55 PM
The shootout in the Women's World Cup final. The Chinese player stepped up, fired -- and the shot was beautifully blocked by Briana Scurry, the U.S. goalie. The difference between championship or defeat, between going to the White House or going home, between being on the Wheaties box or being toast. Only it turned out that Scurry had clearly broken the rules, moving forward to cut off the shooter's angle before she shot ... Final seconds of a big NFL game last December. New York Jets near the Buffalo goal line. The quarterback, Vinny Testaverde, is stopped short of the first down. After the whistle, he jerks the ball forward. First down, Jets. Jets win. Bye-bye Buffalo. Jets proceed to conference championship. These sorts of examples occur every day in big-time sports. The two cited here are only the most egregious ... and visible. The issue is, of course, ethical: Did Scurry and Testaverde cheat? On the surface, yes, of course they did. But, to many people, how can it be cheating if you do something brazen right in front of an official? No, goes the alibi chorus, the only thing these two athletes did was simply exhibit quick thinking. Their actions were just good plays -- only in this case, they weren't beating the opposition. They were beating the referees. Same thing. It's all part of the game. And, morally, this is pretty much how we look at sports nowadays. Where once we valued sportsmanship, now we prize what we have come to call gamesmanship. The rationale invariably offered is that we Americans want to win more than anybody else, that there is no subsititute for victory. Show me a good loser, I'll show you a loser , etc. But I think values have changed. Hey, we've always wanted to win. It's just that now we're much more accepting -- forgiving, even -- about the means to victory. And, as is so often the case with our sports, this pretty much reflects the attitude we possess about other elements of our whole broad society. Nowadays, we seem to be much more a divided culture of winners and losers, and once that dichotomy is accepted, then we really don't care more about winning; we simply care less about the niceties of how the winners did win. Edge has become a much more important word in our language. Everybody is looking for an edge. It would be sappy, even old-fashioned, to immediately conclude then that we are less honest than we used to be -- on the field, in life. I don't know. I do think that whereas it used to be cagey to stretch the rules, to see how close you could come to skirting the line, now we feel less compunction about stepping over the line. And, after all, Testaverde and Scurry weren't censured, were they? So, at least in that sense, we are, in sports, what we so often hear -- we are a more permissive society. Or perhaps what has happened in sports suggests primarily that we have less respect for authority. Players don't seem to see the officials as custodians of the game so much as obstacles to work around, to fool. I find it especially instructive that in the one major sport where there really aren't any referees -- golf -- the ethic is still one of honesty. Above expediency. Interesting, isn't it? When the ruling authority is me, myself and I, we still have respect for the rules. Periodically, even with great sums of money on the line, golfers volunteer a penalty on themselves. Does that mean golfers care less about winning? Does that mean golfers are finer people than other athletes? Rather, I hope it means that we all of us are capable of being sportsmen instead of gamesmen if only we can believe that winning is not as important as caring how we win. These commentaries, which appear each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, are posted weekly by CNN/SI. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
| |||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 1999 CNN/SI. A Time Warner Company. Terms under which this service is provided to you.
| |||||||||||||||||
