IN THIS ISSUE:
- News and Views:
- United Nations Recommends Sports
for Global Betterment
- Essay: Courting Danger
- Panel to Seek the Dope on Barry Bonds
- Baseball Cracks Down on Uppers
- Sportsmanship Trivia Test: The City Seeking Sportsmanship
- You Make the Call: Should Flopping Be Illegal?
- In Their Own Words: One Second, Cheap-Shotted
- Sportsmanship Principle of the Month: The Values We Absorb From Sports
- From the Gold Medal Standards for Youth Sports: Keeping Sportsmanship Fresh
- From the Gold Medal Standards for Amateur Basketball: Speaking With Boosters
- From the Ultimate Sportsmanship Tool Kit: Model Letter to Game Officials
- Sportsmanship Trivia Test: Answer
- Upcoming Events: Training Courses in 2006
- Commentary by Michael Josephson: "Winning the Silver or Losing the Gold"
That's just the sign of obviously a great program. They had enough guts as a man
to come over in their moment of victory,
pick someone up off the floor. If I could thank them, I would.
-- Adam Morrison, basketball player, Gonzaga University (b. 1984), on two UCLA basketball players helping him up off the floor where he lay weeping after a last-second loss in the NCAA Tournament
|
|
NEWS AND VIEWS
United Nations Recommends Sports for Global Betterment
A sense of the boons from sport may be spreading worldwide. On April 4, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged governments to use athletics as a "tool for development and peace." The task, he observed, is to "make sport an essential component of efforts to reach the world's development goals."
"Sport is a vital tool to make a better world," said Adolf Ogi, the Secretary-General's special representative for development and peace. "We want healthy, educated citizens on every continent. We want development. And we want peace. We can achieve these goals through sport. The fundamentals are there, the momentum is there."
Constitutional Sportsmanship
The European Constitution embodies a sportsmanship provision. It says, in part, that the European Union will aim at developing sport "by promoting fairness in competitions and cooperation between sporting bodies and by protecting the physical and moral integrity of sportsmen and sportswomen, especially young sportsmen and sportswomen." These sentiments resonate with the entirety of the Arizona Accord, and especially the Preamble. [The Hindu, 4/4; http://en.wikipedia.org]
Not only is there more to life than basketball, there's a lot more to
basketball than basketball.
-- Phil Jackson, American pro basketball
coach (b. 1945)
|
|
Collegiate Sports
Essay: Courting Danger
by John Wood, associate editor
March is the one month when we not only tolerate “madness,” but energetically whip it on. It's the annual NCAA college basketball championship frenzy: Upsets. Last-second shots. Blue-painted faces. Dick Vitale on caffeine. It’s all good, baby.
But that endearing term may be getting a little too close to the truth.
Rushin' Roulette
Fan-atics have been around since sport was invented. But their behavior crossed the line from exuberance to excess a couple of years ago when Southeastern Conference football fans tore down the goalposts after a game, injuring a spectator. Then came the 2004 Georgia-Florida basketball game when the crowd assaulted Florida guard Matt Walsh. Last year, an Arizona high school student suffered a stroke and paralysis when fans stormed the floor. According to The Washington Post, fans rushed the court at least 38 times during the last month of the 2003-2004 NCAA Division 1 season.
Enough, said the SEC, which two years ago became the first NCAA conference to ban spectators from playing surfaces. More legislation may be forthcoming. Bloomberg News columnist Scott Soshnick says he wouldn’t be surprised if the association soon convenes a national conference to study the crowd-control issue (it launched a similar initiative in 2003 following violent football incidents).
Spectacle or Safety?
Purists would say, Hey, there’s danger in everything. Spectators who storm the floor or the field know the risks. And who wants to curtail such a fine tradition? To many, the greatest college football finish ever was “The Play” in the 1982 Cal-Stanford game, when Cal lateraled its way through the Stanford team, its band and an unfortunate trombone player as time expired. Should we sacrifice stirring spectacle for prosaic safety?
America East conference associate commissioner Matt Bourque would say no. “If any of our teams beat Florida, we’d pay fans to storm the court,” he said.
But the spectacle can too easily get out of control. Safety isn't prosaic; it's a foundation on which all sports programs rest. So what can schools do?
A Few Recommendations
An angry mob is different from an ebullient one. For the former, every sports facility must have strict security procedures in place to protect players, coaches, officials, and spectators from the kind of violence that too often mars European soccer. As for the latter, schools and conferences can do more to deter fans from sprinting down the steps in post-game euphoria. Helpful tools include public-address messages, extra signage, increased floor security, and special exit routes for teams and officials.
Principle 14 of the Arizona Accord states, in part, that “to safeguard the health of athletes and the integrity of the sport, sports programs must…demand compliance with all laws and regulations” and Principle 9 declares “the academic, social, emotional, physical and ethical well-being of student-athletes is always placed above desires and pressures to win.” Nobody wants to dampen the drama of sports. The solution lies in preventing a celebratory tragedy from becoming the story itself.
For more on this issue, see “Controlling the Crowd With Fines” (http://insider.espn.go.com/blog) and “Stopping the Rush” (www.nwanews.com/story).
You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own
highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy.
-- Arthur Ashe, American tennis star (1943-1993)
|
|
Professional Sports
Panel to Seek the Dope on Barry Bonds
This year, the grand old game’s most prestigious landmark could fall as 41-year-old San Francisco Giant slugger Barry Bonds, embroiled in a potentially career-ending steroid scandal, begins the season only seven home-run swings away from Babe Ruth’s former career benchmark of 714 and 48 shy of Hank Aaron’s all-time record of 755.
With the recent publication of the book Game of Shadows, which alleges Mr. Bonds used steroids since 1998, and Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig’s appointment of former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell to head an independent panel investigating such drug use, the issue has mushroomed into an uproar that promises to linger.
Inside Pitch?
Sen. Mitchell certainly has impressive credentials: President Clinton offered him a seat on the Supreme Court in 1994, but he declined in order to focus on a health-care plan before the Senate. He led the Northern Ireland commission in 1995 that led to the historic Belfast Peace Agreement. And in 2005 he served as co-chairman of the Task Force on the United Nations.
On the other hand, he is currently a director in the front office of the Boston Red Sox. In 2004 he was named chairman of the board of The Walt Disney Company, which owns ESPN. Last year, ESPN inked an eight-year contract worth $2.4 billion to televise MLB games. This month ESPN2 will debut Bonds on Bonds, a reality show focusing on the slugger’s pursuit of Mr. Aaron’s record.
Principle 15 of the Arizona Accord warns against the "undue interference or influence of commercial interests,” and Jim Bunning, Philadelphia Phillie Hall of Fame pitcher and current U.S. senator, said baseball would have been wiser to pick someone who “is not as close to the game and may be able to take a more objective look into the facts.” [New York Times, 3/23; San Francisco Chronicle, 4/1; http://en.wikipedia.org; www.cbs.sportsline.com/mlb; www.sports.espn.go.com/mlb]
Baseball Cracks Down on Uppers
Greenies. In baseball, the term refers not to monsters from outer space, but potential monsters of inner space: amphetamines like benzedrine, dexedrene and methedrine. And almost lost in the Barry Bonds turmoil, Major League Baseball has finally outlawed them.
In spring training, many players were wondering how they'd slog through this 162-game season without them. "Half the position players in baseball [took them] almost every day," says one anonymous Philadelphia Phillie. "Some days you might need it because you had a bad sleep or you went out the night before. And if you take it once, you feel like you need it every day. You feel like your bat is quicker and you throw better."
Hitler on Speed
First synthesized in 1887, amphetamines breed wakefulness as well as a baseless sense of power, and greater motivation and assertiveness. They are also addictive, and lab animals will self-administer speed until they die. During World War II, governments on both sides gave soldiers more than 72 million amphetamine pills to keep them alert, and Adolf Hitler injected amphetamines daily. They became illegal in the U.S. without a prescription in 1965. By then, they had penetrated baseball.
Uppers Versus Juice
Greenies and steroids have influenced the game differently. Steroids bred homerfests and blew away long-held records like tissue in a wind tunnel. But amphetamines let weary players simply take the field and play, game after game.
If he had to ingest either steroids or amphetamines, said Dr. Charles Yesalis, a professor at Penn State, he'd pick steroids because greenies "can stone-cold kill you." Users can get trapped in a vicious cycle where they need depressants like alcohol to kill the high. And death, though uncommon, can occur from heart attacks, heatstroke and brain aneurysms.
Back From the Outlaw Circle
Principle 14 of the Arizona Accord says in part that athletic programs must "demand compliance with all laws and regulations, including those relating to … the use of drugs." The new ban brings players back from the outlaw circle, makes them healthier, evens the competition (so players don't have to take greenies to compete with others who do), and aligns policy with that on steroids. It may also lead to less demanding schedules.
The game, says San Francisco Giants manager Felipe Alou, "will be a lot more relaxed." [Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/5; CBS SportsLine.com, 3/27; Dallas Morning News, 3/5; http://espn.go.com/special/s/
drugsandsports/amphet.html]
We didn't lose the game;
we just ran out of time.
-- Vince Lombardi, American pro
football coach (1913-1970)
|
|
FROM THE GOLD MEDAL STANDARDS
FOR YOUTH SPORTS:
Keep the Sportsmanship Program Fresh
Enron had a code of ethics, and it meant nothing because its people ignored it. Likewise, a sportsmanship program is only as good as its people. Everyone in an athletic program not only must model good character, but follow through on all the rules. As a result, the program must "select, retain and promote only those who will pursue the mission and objectives." It is a crucial principle, and it applies to administrators, coaches and officials. (Section 2.2)
The Gold Medal Standards for Youth Sports are a common framework of requirements that all youth programs should meet. Read about them, and the summit that led to them.
FROM GOLD MEDAL STANDARDS
FOR AMATEUR BASKETBALL:
Speaking With Boosters
Boosters can have a vital impact on the climate of a sports program. In the worst cases, they contribute to vulgarity and disruption in the stands, and even lure recruits with bribes. Yet they can also improve the whole tenor of competition, as by giving out sportsmanship awards. Hence the Gold Medal Standards for Amateur Basketball says that "athletic administrators should establish communication channels with boosters and foundations to be certain that they understand and comply with applicable rules and regulations including those relating to recruiting and compensation of student-athletes." (Section 2.3(l))
The Gold Medal Standards for Amateur Basketball (previously called the Game Plan for Amateur Basketball) are, as NABC executive director Jim Haney describes them, a "serious effort by many of the most influential people in amateur basketball to outline a realistic game plan to address some of the most serious issues facing the game." Read these Gold Medal Standards here.
FROM THE ULTIMATE SPORTSMANSHIP TOOL KIT:
The Ultimate Sportsmanship Tool Kit is an all-in-one resource to help athletic programs achieve sportsmanship and character-building goals. It comes in two versions — youth and high school — and covers everything from mission statements and codes of conduct to evaluation tools and ideas for rewarding players and coaches.
Model Letter to Game Officials
Since game officials are generally not employed by the organization administering the program -- and yet share the responsibility for sportsmanship on the playing field -- a special appeal to officials is appropriate, asking for their cooperation in Pursuing Victory With Honor. Distribute this letter to all officials who work your games, enclosing with it the Pursuing Victory With Honor Code of Conduct for Officials (available in the “Codes of Conduct” section).
Educational athletics provide a unique opportunity for teaching values such as the Six Pillars of Character: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. As part of the nationwide Pursuing Victory With Honor program that our school has adopted in association with CHARACTER COUNTS! Sports, we will be working to raise the behavior expectations of our coaches, student-athletes, officials and spectators at our athletic events.
We are doing so by adopting the ideals of the Pursuing Victory With Honor program: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. We believe we have an obligation to counter the negative influences of other levels of athletic competition on sportsmanship.
We would like to enlist you in this cause by asking your help in promoting and enforcing these ideals. As an official, you can speak out for good sportsmanship and help elevate the consensus for acceptable behavior by our coaches, student-athletes and spectators. More importantly, your leadership by example -- conducting yourself in an exemplary manner at events -- is essential to our success in this area.
We have enclosed a Code of Conduct for Game Officials produced by the national office of CHARACTER COUNTS! Sports, in the hope that you will agree to abide by the code and encourage your colleagues to do the same. More information on CHARACTER COUNTS! Sports and the Pursuing Victory With Honor campaign is available at www.charactercounts.org/sports or by phone at (800) 711-2670.
Schools like ours must be vehicles for promoting sportsmanship. To avoid this responsibility would reflect negatively on our school and our community. Thanks for your help in this important endeavor, which we feel will have far-reaching benefits for everyone in our school system.
Read about and order the Ultimate Sportsmanship Tool Kit here.
The more you sweat in practice,
the less you bleed in battle.
— Unknown
|
|
 COMMENTARY BY MICHAEL JOSEPHSON
The following is adapted from Michael Josephson's Gabriel Award-winning radio commentaries airing daily on our flagship station, KNX 1070 AM in Southern California, on American Forces Radio worldwide, and on other stations throughout the U.S.
Winning the Silver or Losing the Gold
During the 1996 Olympics, a popular Nike ad sent the message: "You don't win the silver. You lose the gold." That's consistent with the sentiment often attributed to Vince Lombardi -- "winning isn't everything; it's the only thing" -- that’s become a modern mantra for many people who compete in sports, business and politics.
Such pumped-up attitudes about the importance of victory may be effective in motivating some people to maximum effort, but there are serious harmful side effects.
Martina Navratilova, the great Czech-born U.S. tennis player, observed that "the moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else."
Those who choose to live in a self-created, cruel and unforgiving, all-or-nothing world rarely live balanced lives, and they place enormous strain on their relationships. It's a world more often filled with anxiety and anguish than joy because, exceptional winning streaks aside, most of us lose more often than we win.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to win, but if losing is treated as a mortal enemy, every loss produces demoralizing feelings of failure and inadequacy. What's more, when our self-image depends on winning, we begin to think of victory not simply as something we want, but as something we need. This makes us vulnerable to those who whisper, “If you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough.”
Happier and healthier people know winning most certainly is not everything -- it's not even the most important thing. Real joy and fulfillment can be found not only in accomplishments and efforts that fall short of winning, but in the striving, the passionate pursuit of victory, and the competition and the quest itself.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that things get better when good people get involved because character counts.
For an archive of Mr. Josephson's commentaries, with audio files, go to: www.charactercounts.org/knxtoc.htm
To receive free weekly e-mail including all five of Mr. Josephson's commentaries from that week, please sign up at: www.charactercounts.org/newsletters.htm
|
