IN THIS ISSUE:
FRONT ROW
- Youth and School Sports: If They Awarded Medals for Sportsmanship.
- Collegiate Sports: Invasion of the Stringer Ringers!
- Professional Sports: Are Role Models Outmoded?
- Sportsmanship User's Guide: Coach's Dilemma: Who Plays, Who Sits?
- Michael Josephson Commentary: "What If a Hero Has Questionable Character?"
SIDELINES
- Trivia Test: Can You Guess Which Sport These Oddball Terms Refer To?
- Sportsmanship Forum: Take Part in Our New Online Discussion Group
- You Make the Call: Should Pro Athletes Be Penalized for High-Stakes Gambling?
- Principle of the Month: The Hazards of Hazing
- Say What? Dave Barry, O.J., Trevino, Arenas and 60,000 Reasons to Avoid (or Visit) Germany
- Upcoming Seminars
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation.
-- Plato, Greek philosopher (c. 427-c. 347 BC)
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FRONT ROW
Youth and School Sports
If They Awarded Medals for Sportsmanship.
The introduction to the Arizona Sports Summit Accord states that "at its best, athletic competition can hold intrinsic value for our society and "shape the quality and character of the American culture. In two recent track meets, separated by thousands of miles but as close as heartbeats, two female track athletes quietly and humbly exemplified such ideals and demonstrated why sports can so oftentimes move us.
Finishing With Character
Ottawa, Canada. The National Capital Secondary School Athletic Association Track and Field Championships. Girl's 500-Meter semifinal heat. Senior Jackie Pichette of Sacred Heart Catholic High School is five meters from the finish line when she stumbles and falls. The runner behind her, Nadia Pagliarello of Hillcrest, closes swiftly. Pichette struggles to rise but cannot. Crawling toward the finish line, she is not going to make it in time. Pagliarello is going to pass her and eliminate her from qualifying for the final.
Except Pagliarello slows down, then stops. And waits for Pichette to drag herself over the finish line before her.
Afterward, Pagliarello said she didn't feel right finishing ahead of the Sacred Heart runner, who she felt was clearly better than her. "I don't know how it came to me," she told The Ottawa Citizen later. "I felt bad for her."
Finish-line judge Anne Marie Vanneste called her gesture "beyond sportsmanship."
Pichette did not know about Pagliarello's act of kindness until later. "That's the nicest thing I've ever heard," she said when she was told. "That's going to make me cry."
Running With Class
Walnut, CA. The San Gabriel Invitational at Walnut High School. Girl's 3200-meter run. Early in the race, high school freshman Sarah Lopez of Hacienda Heights Wilson inadvertently cuts off Jessica Iida of Temple City. Iida goes on to win, while Lopez finishes fifth. The starter disqualifies Iida for the infraction, however. Lopez finds Iida and admits the starter was wrong. They find him, but he refuses to change the ruling.
Lopez decides for him. She gives her medal to Iida, who at first refuses. Lopez, who feels Iida deserved it, tells her she'll throw it away otherwise. Iida accepts the medal.
Lopez never tells her coach what she did. "I preferred it to be just between me and her," she said afterward. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, that's the way it would have played out, except Iida told her coach.
"A lot of people just want the medals," Iida said later. "She wanted to do the right thing." Her coach informed Lopez's coach of his athlete's "very classy gesture." Both felt Lopez's action should be celebrated, not hushed up.
"There's so much kid-bashing going on," said Mark Fessenden, coach of Hacienda Heights Wilson. "These are great kids out there, and given the opportunity, they will make the right decision."
In an e-mail to his colleagues, he said: "It is this type of act that goes far beyond the athletic performance. Many collegian and professional athletes could learn a very important lesson on character and humility from Sarah. These are the moments that remind me why I left industry to work with young people."
[Los Angeles Times, 5/6/06; The Ottawa Citizen, 5/19/06]
You spend a good deal of your life gripping a baseball, and it turns out it was the other way around.
-- Jim Bouton, baseball player, author
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Collegiate Sports
Invasion of the Stringer Ringers!
Pro Players Moving Into College Tennis
"They're here already! You're next! You're next! You're next!"
No, that's not actor Kevin McCarthy warning people of aliens from The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (okay, it is). It's also the collective cry of college tennis coaches bemoaning the onslaught of older and more experienced international professional players enrolling at U.S. colleges and competing in tournaments, which is against NCAA rules regarding amateurism. At last year's NCAA championship tournament, international players filled 38 of the 64 men's slots and 33 of the 64 women's berths, with as many as half alleged to have had professional experience.
Principle 3.10 of the Gold Medal Standards holds that "a large number of student-athletes from foreign countries are seeking admission into schools for clearly athletic purposes. These practices . . . completely undermine policies. State legislators and school administrators should create regulations to minimize the impact of transfers and international students and protect the opportunity of students to play."
The issue first broke when The New York Times revealed that last year's men's singles tennis champ, Benedikt Dorsch of Baylor University, earned prize money in a 2003 tournament in Germany while a member of the team. He's now the No. 245-ranked pro in the world. At the University of Arkansas, star women's tennis player Aurelija Miseviciute was revealed to have played in more than 25 pro events and won a tournament in Qatar before enrolling at the school.
In a survey of college tennis coaches conducted by the Times, many said they have been complaining to the NCAA for years about the problem, but little has been done. Since 2003, the NCAA has declared just three foreign tennis players ineligible while granting numerous exemptions. This despite the fact that minor-league baseball players and CBA basketball players are barred across the board from playing if they return to college. "The NCAA has been far from proactive," David A. Benjamin, executive director of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, told the Times. "The reason is we are not football or basketball, one of their moneymakers."
Baylor men's tennis coach Matt Knoll told the Times he has to recruit overseas to stay competitive. "We've historically had a difficult time attracting top American players to Waco, Texas, so we've gone to where we can get players. " Seven of Knoll's eight athletes come from abroad. Baylor won the NCAA title in 2004.
[The New York Times, 4/11/06, 4/20/06, 5/12/06]
Behind all the years of practice and all the hours of glory waits that inexorable terror of living without the game.
-- Bill Bradley, basketball player
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Professional Sports
Are Role Models Outmoded?
Putting Athletes on Pedestals Is Unrealistic
Is the term "role model" realistic anymore? Do fans and the media hold athletes to impossible standards? Should we cut our sports heroes a little slack?
Principle 4 of the Arizona Sports Summit Accord asserts that "athletes must conduct themselves, on and off the field, as positive role models who exemplify good character." The thinking is that certain professions come with particular expectations and responsibilities. Individuals spotlighted on the world's stage, particularly athletes, appear larger than life to many people, especially highly impressionable youth. Teams bid for them to fill their stadiums and arenas, sponsors woo them to endorse their products, the media follow them to boost ratings and fans watch them to emulate them. Consequently, there's a lot riding on their actions and behavior. A multi-million-dollar campaign built around "Be like Mike" means Mike better keep his nose clean 24/7, whether he likes it or not.
Unfortunately, there are four problems with that:
1. They're only human. We're not perfect, so how can we expect athletes to be? Most of us have skeletons in our closet. In fact, in many cases, that's part of an individual's allure. Golfer John Daly is arguably one of the most popular athletes in recent history precisely because he's a big lug with more problems than most of us - alcohol, gambling, weight, ex-wives, breakdowns. He's certainly no role model, but he's beloved precisely because he's vulnerable. He's one of us.
2. They're not ready. Some athletes are thrust into the limelight when they aren't emotionally cut out for it. Maybe they don't look right, speak right, dress right. Maybe they run with the wrong crowd. Maybe they're emotionally unable or mature enough to carry such a heavy burden. They didn't ask to be a role model, aren't prepared to be one and don't want to be one. Should society and the media fault them for something they've imposed on them? Would we fare any better in the same situation?
3. They've changed. Which side of one's character, or portion of one's life, should we judge? Steve Garvey, known as Mr. Clean during his L.A. Dodger days for his fame, looks, manner, philanthropy and family image, is struggling today to protect what's left of that reputation, which has been sullied by affairs, divorces, children out of wedlock, creditors and legal battles. Was he a role model before? Absolutely. Now? Not so clear. How do we judge an athlete's life as a whole?
4. They're not everyone's ideal. Whose definition of "role model" applies? The ethical standards one person expects athletes to uphold may be quite different from another's. To some, the shy, humble, homespun Mickey Mantle was the quintessential role model, but the heavy drinker and carouser never believed he was one. Sportscaster Bob Costas addressed this issue at his eulogy: "In the last year, [he] finally came to accept and appreciate the distinction between a role model and a hero. The first he often was not, the second he always will be."
In his Nike commercial a few years ago, Charles Barkley unabashedly proclaimed, "I am not a role model." His point was that parents should be our role models, not a bunch of jocks. Olympic diver Greg Louganis, however, may disagree with that. In the quarterly journal, Media & Values, he recalled a 10-year-old boy he once saw smoking. He asked the boy why he did such a thing.
"Because you do," the youngster said. Louganis quit smoking that day.
With the unrelenting tabloid atmosphere permeating big-money sports these days, perhaps expecting someone to be a role model is asking too much. Costas may have inadvertently touched on the solution with a story Mantle often liked to tell on himself: "He pictured himself at the pearly gates, met by St. Peter, who shook his head and said, 'Mick, we checked the record. Sorry, we can't let you in. But before you go, God wants to know if you'd sign these baseballs.'"
[Los Angeles Times, 4/9/06; Media & Values, summer 1986; The Yale Herald, 9/8/95; Sports Byline USA; full article here]
When anyone tells me I can't do anything,
I'm not listening anymore.
-- Florence Griffith-Joyner, track athlete
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SPORTSMANSHIP USER'S GUIDE
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.
Coach's Dilemma: Who Plays, Who Sits?
A Preseason Meeting With Parents May Help
In February's "You Make the Call," we asked, "Should parents complain to the coach if their child almost always sits on the bench?"
This is a valid and common concern. Many coaches believe in equal participation for everyone -- and many parents and athletes would agree -- but is that practical in every situation? One intriguing counterpoint was raised by this reader: "In my first coaching experience, I had one goal: Get everyone into each game. But the weaker players didn't want to go into close games. They understood their limitations and didn't want to feel responsible if they played and the team lost. I had to adjust my goals to honor their concerns."
What's a coach to do?
One idea is to conduct a preseason meeting with the parents of all the members of your team. By airing and discussing all the issues upfront, you can forestall misunderstanding later. Here is a model agenda for such a gathering from the Ultimate Sportsmanship Tool Kit:
- Give your views on playing time, the nature of competition and the upcoming season. ("Playing time depends on effort in practice. I would like to play Johnny more, but he needs to work harder.")
- Discuss your ground rules and what you expect of your student-athletes. ("I know you want to win and think your son gives us the best chance to do so, but other kids want to play, too.")
- State your coaching philosophy. ("Your daughter loves to play and she will, but know that she understands she's not the best one to be on the field at the end of a close game and confided to me she does not wish to participate at such times.")
If parents know exactly what you expect of their kids (and, perhaps more important, what their kids want out of the experience), they can become a valuable asset in helping you achieve your overall goals.
For more information about the Ultimate Sportsmanship Tool Kit, click here.
If you're losing a tug of war with a tiger, give it the rope. You can always buy a new one.
-- Max Gunther, author
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 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.
What If a Hero Has Questionable Character?
It would be easy to talk about character if people were either wholly good or bad. But as much as I hate to admit it, many of my heroes had serious flaws and some of my favorite villains have considerable virtues.
I've been forgiving about Thomas Jefferson's illicit affair with a slave, Winston Churchill's alcoholism and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s plagiarism and probable womanizing because I think it's wrong to judge a person's character by their worst act. I've been less generous with such individuals as Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich and coach Bob Knight.
Now I'm conflicted about a man who has represented for me the worst in pro sports. Basketball player Allen Iverson looks and often acts the part of street gangster. His bad attitude, selfish petulance, obscene reactions to heckling and continuing ties to old gang buddies convinced me he was a horrible example for youngsters. Then he was named the league's Most Valuable Player. I couldn't stand it.
But now I'm conflicted. Since then I've seen this 6-foot, 165-pounder demonstrate astonishing tenacity and courage as well as superb athletic ability. Can I admire one aspect of his character and hate another?
Despite a frightening and mounting array of injuries the last few seasons, no matter how beat up he gets, he won't quit. In interviews, he declares his loyalty to his team and commitment to their common cause. I find myself rooting for him.
Teddy Roosevelt said, "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." And this dog is showing an important aspect of character. I hope he uses the respect he's earned from thousands of naysayers like me as a platform for a more positive image.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that 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
CHARACTER COUNTS! Sports, a project of the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics, leads the Pursuing Victory With Honor sports campaign, which is endorsed by the country's leading amateur athletic organizations. The campaign's purpose is to help administrators, athletes, coaches, legislators, officials and parents change personal and organizational decision making and behavior in sports.
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