IN THIS ISSUE:
FRONT ROW
- Youth- and School-Based Sports: Why Johnny May Not Want to Be MVP
- Collegiate Sports: Coaches Are Scrutinizing Players More - on the Web
- Professional Sports: Do You Believe in Miracles?
- The Media: Seven Things That Are Wrong With the Sports Media
- Sportsmanship User's Guide: Sportsmanship vs. Gamesmanship
- Michael Josephson Commentary: Should You Pick Your Child for the All-Star Team?
SIDELINES
- Trivia Test: How Many Little League World Series Players Have Made It to the Majors?
- Sportsmanship Forum
- You Make the Call: Should Student-Athletes Be Expelled for Posting Questionable Content Online?
- Principle of the Month: Sports Don't Need More Testosterone
- Say What? Head butts, head butts and more head butts, plus some testosterone
- Upcoming Seminars
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.
-- Aristotle, Greek philosopher (384 BC-322 BC)
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FRONT ROW
YOUTH- AND SCHOOL-BASED SPORTS
Why Johnny May Not Want to Be MVP
If you haven’t been to a Little League or soccer game lately, you might be in for a shock. Youth sports aren’t necessarily child’s play anymore. They look like pro leagues in miniature. Specialization, year-round practice, travel schedules, personal coaches, lingering injuries. Competition is fierce. Pressure on coaches is intense. Fans are out of control. Media hype sensationalizes every exploit.
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Witness the Danville White Buffaloes soccer team in California’s Bay Area. Despite leading the team to the California Soccer State Cup a few years ago, coach John Wondolowski was let go. Reason? The league felt a professional coach would be more qualified. The players were 11 years old.
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Witness the ugly rhubarb that ensued after a state semifinal girl’s softball game between the Colorado Hawks and the Green Mountain Rams in Brighton, Colorado, ended in a disputed triple play. Two adults were charged with assault and a third suffered a concussion. The players were eight-year-olds.
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Witness the number of kids who have turned pro at an early age like Luke Mitrani (snowboarding, age 13), Freddy Adu (soccer, age 14), Michelle Wie (golf, age 14) and numerous tennis players.
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Witness The HoopScoop Online, a basketball recruiting service that ranks sixth-graders. "It’s a subtle form of child abuse," recruiting analyst Tom Konchalski told The Washington Post. "No one knows who’s the best sixth-grader. Only God knows, and God’s not telling anyone."
- And finally, witness KickStart Spark, a caffeinated sports drink marketed to…four-year-olds.
Don Turley, a captain in the Houston Fire Department, managed the Spring, Texas, team that lost to Taiwan in the 1995 Little League World Series final. He knows the hysteria that can surround budding sports stars. "I could save one person from a burning building every month for the rest of my life and wouldn’t get near the attention I received managing that team," he told The San Diego Union-Tribune. "There’s something wrong about that." Some Kids Are Saying "No más!"
It’s no surprise that burnout rates for kids are off the charts. According to one study, 70 percent of all children involved in sports drop out before they turn 13. Why play anymore when play has all but been eliminated?
"It used to be high school, but now it is 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds," Erik Johnson, a former pro baseball player who now runs personal training programs for youth players, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "The kids get fried. They quit. They hate the game. They resent the game. They don’t want to see the game."
At Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Connecticut, the boy’s swim team has lost only one meet in the last 25 years. How many of its athletes have gone on to swim in college? Only a few. After years of double practice sessions, morning and night, almost every day, the grind takes its toll.
Section 4 of the Gold Medal Standards for Youth Sports urges sports programs to be aware of children’s emotional, cognitive, moral and physical-developmental stages, as well as the reasons why they participate in or drop out of sports: "This information should be kept in mind by all adults in forming expectations and making judgments as to the appropriateness of sports opportunities."
The Rest Are Having a Ball – If We Let Them
There are still some sports in which professionalism has yet to wedge its ugly head. One is lacrosse, which has jumped from 82,000 youth players in 2001 to more than 200,000 in 2005. Part of its appeal may be that few parents know the rules, so the Little League parent syndrome is rare. "Parents don’t have any idea what the rules are or what the expectations should be," Brian Logue, spokesman for U.S. Lacrosse, told cnn.com, "so the kids just go out and have fun."
An MSNBC.com article on the issue triggered this response from Jack L. Patton of Wichita, Kansas, who recalled the time he sub-coached a soccer team of seven-year-old girls: "One day one of the shy girls got the ball, nudged it toward the goal, and it went in. Her friends jumped up and down. I told her what a wonderful goal it was. The parents thought I had lost my mind. She had scored into the wrong goal. She didn’t know, her friends didn’t know and I wasn’t going to tell her. I could have yelled at her, and she would have cried and most likely quit. Instead, she fell in love with the game."
[sfgate.com; denverpost.com; msnbc.msn.com; Deseret News (Salt Lake City); signonsandiego.com; nisr.org; foodchannel.com; washingtonpost.com; cnn.com]
The Gold Medal Standards for Youth Sports are a common framework of requirements that all youth programs should meet. Read about them here.
It is necessary for us to learn from others' mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself.
-- Hyman G. Rickover, admiral (1900-1986)
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COLLEGIATE SPORTS
Coaches Are Scrutinizing Players More - on the Web
As if coaches didn't already have enough film to watch, they now have to troll the Internet. Not to recruit. To see what their players may be posting on risqué websites that are the rage among college students.
The issue threatens to become a firestorm that could pit scholarship athletes (claiming censorship) against their own institutions (claiming they're safeguarding the players and protecting the school's reputation). Both sides make a legitimate case, but the students aren't likely to win this one.
For one, athletes are different than regular students and often must sign a code of conduct as a condition of their scholarship. As Kermit L. Hall, president of the University at Albany (New York), told USA Today: "Students who join teams submit to a certain degree of regulation that doesn't follow the rest of the student population." Same goes for employees or members of a group. To remain a part of such organizations, individuals usually have to sacrifice some personal freedoms.
Colleges: It's Safety, Not Censorship
When underage kids post compromising photos of themselves on such popular sites as MySpace, Facebook, Xanga or Friendster, many surprisingly don't realize the whole World Wide Web is watching -- not just their friends -- or think about the dangers that could result. With many athletes displaying photos, e-mail accounts, screen names, cellphone numbers, home addresses and places often frequented, they can lure sexual predators, stalkers, gamblers, agents, the media and opposing teams' fans who may use their personal info to taunt them later. Negative repercussions can affect colleges, athletic directors, coaches and teammates.
The NCAA has no restrictions on website postings by student-athletes, but it is reportedly looking into the issue, prompted by incidents such as the following:
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Two LSU swimmers were tossed out of the team pool for criticizing their coaches on Facebook.com (where 65 percent of all undergrads -- more than 6 million students from more than 2,100 schools -- have profiles).
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Four members of the San Diego State women's soccer team were kicked off after posting negative comments about their practice sessions on MySpace.com (the top social networking site on the Web and the eighth most popular overall with more than 60 million users).
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Reed College in Portland, Oregon, denied admission to an applicant because his postings on LiveJournal.com discredited the institution.
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An employer balked at hiring a Vermont Technical College student after seeing his page on Facebook.
Students: It's Harassment, Not Protection
Colleges are beginning to issue edicts to their athletes to scrub their online profiles of all inappropriate content. Some, such as Loyola University Chicago, have banned sites such as Facebook altogether. "That would be like banning rock 'n' roll in the '50s," Facebook director of marketing Melanie Deitch told USA Today.
Students say websites don't cause rowdy behavior; they simply mirror what kids are already doing. Monitoring or prohibiting their usage amounts to invasions of privacy.
We suggest they read Principle 2.3 (d) of the Gold Medal Standards for Amateur Basketball (that applies to other sports as well), which holds that "Athletic programs should develop and employ a system to evaluate charges of.off-court behavior that violates a code of conduct. The system should provide appropriate sanctions that demonstrate the organization's commitment to its sportsmanship, ethical and character-building goals."
[usatoday.com; shreveporttimes.com]
The Gold Medal Standards are a common framework of requirements that all sports programs should meet. Click here to read about them and the summit that led to them.
There are many victories worse than a defeat.
-- George Eliot, British author (1819-1880)
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PROFESSIONAL SPORTS
Do You Believe in Miracles?
Commercials are the price we pay to watch sports, but nowadays we have the growing phenomenon of what has been called "Godmercials," in which players kneel or point to the sky after scoring, cross themselves before free throw or field goal attempts, huddle on the field in post-game prayer or wear expressions of their faith on their sweatbands.
Going one step further, the Atlanta Braves now offer special faith nights featuring Christian music following games. The Archdiocese of Pittsburgh runs commercials recruiting for the priesthood during college football games. And before a recent Major League Soccer game between Chivas USA and the Los Angeles Galaxy, a Catholic Mass was held and a 16th century statue of the Virgin Mary was carried around the soccer stadium.
Are sports and religion merging? A better question would be: When have they been separate? Since ancient times, athletic contests have become the ultimate morality play -- staged to hasten the seasons, alter the weather, assure plentiful harvests or win heavenly favor. They lift our spirit, test our faith, immortalize our achievements. With lit-up stadiums serving as a mecca for devout fans to watch demigods battle on the Sabbath, sports is as close to a religious experience as it gets for some people. In the words of Rabbi Dr. Rudolph Brasch, author of How Did Sports Begin?: "Primitive man believed that sport, if not divine itself, was a gift of the gods."
Should We Say a Hail Mary or Throw One?
Is this joining together a blessing or an unholy alliance? Some say that with the media shining its spotlight 24/7 on nearly every pro athlete's transgressions, what's the harm in letting a few express how their religious beliefs have helped them become more admirable? Others say that allowing a few to use sports venues to evangelize alienates or disrespects nonbelievers or those of different faiths.
Athletes should be allowed to observe and profess their spiritual beliefs, if they have them, however they wish. But in doing so, they should take into consideration how their words or actions may affect others, including their teammates. Legendary Green Bay Packer coach Vince Lombardi reportedly used to take his team to Catholic Mass every Sunday before games. Los Angeles Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax refused to pitch the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur.
Principle One of the Arizona Sports Summit Accord states:"the highest potential of sports is achieved when competition reflects the Six Pillars of Character." The second Pillar is respect, which holds that everyone has a right to be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of who they are and what they have done, reflecting such notions as civility, courtesy, decency, dignity, autonomy, tolerance and acceptance.
[brainevent.com; sojo.net; religionlink.org; Los Angeles Times, 7/15/06, 7/16/06]
Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.
-- Thomas Carlyle, Scottish essayist (1795-1881)
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THE MEDIA
Seven Things That Are Wrong With Sports Media
In a recent article in The Sunday Times of London, sportswriter Paul Kimmage, a former pro cyclist, took his peers to task for failing to ask challenging questions about drugs and for heralding sportsmen known to cheat during the scandal-plagued Tour de France, calling them "spineless, lazy, morally bankrupt wasters in the pressroom."
Howard Cosell would have been proud. But Kimmage could have gone further. Here, inspired in part by the National Institute for Sports Reform, are six other things that the sports media does wrong:
- Glorifies brutality. Local and national newscasts routinely sensationalize the most jarring football hits, unruly fans and bench-clearing brawls. Years ago, television stations stopped showing nuts running onto playing fields, hoping that by denying coverage they would discourage such behavior. Why not employ the same strategy by not magnifying the violent aspect of sports so much?
- Pimps athletes. Their cribs, their rides, their clothes, their affairs, their scandals. Athletes' off-court exploits get as much ink as their on-court performances, which has turned many sports pages, websites and newscasts into part news, part tabloids.
- Exaggerates importance. Sports is drama; academics are boring. So scholastic contests or achievements don't get as much coverage as jump shots. As a result, society gets the message that sports are more valued and important than other endeavors. Jack Higgs, author of God in the Stadium: Sports and Religion in America, says our society too often equates virtue with victory. "Instead of giving attention to all the dire problems of the world," he told the Kingsport Tennessee Times-News, "we focus on who's going to score more points in a game and analyze it to death."
- Professionalizes youngsters. Giving promising young athletes the same hype and coverage as pro superstars mythologizes children and distorts their sense of the world and themselves. [See "Why Johnny May Not Want to Be MVP" above.]
- Discourages reporting. Requiring your local team's beat reporter, who needs continual access to the players and coaches, to also probe thorny issues is like expecting a quarterback to publish a tell-all book about his offensive linemen. The result will be soft coverage. Instead, sports departments should add investigative journalists to go after the hard stories.
- Is gun-shy. With circulation and money woes plaguing the publishing business, editors and publishers don't want any more headaches and may discourage writers from taking on controversial subjects.
Journalists who expose the skeletons in their own clubhouse, however, are often ostracized from the team. Kimmage got some flak for his comments, among them an admonishment from Gilles Le Roc'h, a French reporter who works for Reuters, to respect his colleagues. "Doping is bad for the sport," he said in an interview, "but the riders are at fault, not the journalists."
Kimmage, as a good journalist should, provided a better end quote: "The rule when I was riding was the code of silence," he told the Times. "I didn't follow it then and I won't follow it now."
What upsets you about the sports media? What other mistakes do they make? How would you improve sports journalism? Voice your opinions and read others' in our sports discussion forum.
[The Sunday Times, 7/2/06; The New York Times, 7/10/06; nisr.org; thephoenix.com; timesnews.net]
Success without honor is an unseasoned dish. It will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good.
-- Joe Paterno, college football coach
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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.
Sportsmanship vs. Gamesmanship
There are essentially two ways to engage in an athletic contest: play for sport (to enjoy it) or play for the game (to win it). The first is the sportsmanship model, in which how you play the game is central. Glory is not attained by victory but by how honorably you pursue it. The second is the gamesmanship model, in which all that matters is winning, by whatever dubious, but legal, means you can use to gain an advantage.
Gamesmanship Model
Gamesmanship coaches and athletes are pragmatists. They believe ethical standards revolve around what works rather than what's right, so they have no obligation to abide by rules. It's the official's job to catch violations and impose penalties. Consequently, they use shady tactical maneuvers to gain advantage over opponents such as psychological ploys, breaking the flow of action, intentionally making a mistake to nullify play, etc. The gamesmanship model often dominates the practice of sports.
Advantage: By finding new and better ways to cross the line and get around rules, gamesmanship coaches and athletes often gain a competitive edge.
Disadvantage: Victories attained unethically are counterfeit.
Sportsmanship Model
Sportsmanship coaches and athletes are idealists. They are committed to scrupulous integrity (including compliance with the letter and spirit of the rules even when they could get away with violations), fair play, respectfulness and grace. This model is deeply rooted in the Olympic spirit and lies at the foundation of all major athletic mission statements and codes of conduct. It is the way sports ought to be played.
Advantage: When victory is achieved, the gratification is greater because it was attained by pursuing victory with honor.
Disadvantage: Those who play by the sportsmanship model are often at a substantial disadvantage when competing against those who adopt the gamesmanship theory. A true sportsperson must be willing to lose rather than sacrifice ethical principles, even when the stakes are high.
Read about or order the Ultimate Sportsmanship Tool Kit here.
If you can't win, make the one ahead of you break the record.
-- Jan McKeithen
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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.
Should You Pick Your Child for the All-Star Team?
Mike wrote to say he had a dilemma. He and a friend, I'll call him Carl, were co-coaches for their daughters' softball team. All the league coaches were asked to rank the top 15 players for the annual all-star team. Mike suggested they vote for their own daughters as #1 and #2, arguing that he and Carl had put in their time and were good coaches. "I've earned the right to help my child," Mike said. "Besides, other coaches will most likely vote for their kids."
Carl objected, saying their daughters were not the top two players in the league and they should both vote according to their true opinions. Carl said he had told his daughter that if she made the all-stars it would be because she deserved it and not because her dad was the coach. Mike said he wasn't sure what to do.
Mike, Mike, Mike, what are you thinking? Loyalty is admirable but way out of place here. What lesson do you want to teach your daughter about truth and honor and fair play? Your strategy is fundamentally dishonest because your rankings do not truly reflect your opinions as to skill. It also violates your obligations of citizenship to play by the rules and is patently unfair to any girl who might lose her rightful position because you favor your daughter as a perk for service.
As to the argument that other coaches may favor their own children, it's a non-starter. If you use this "fight fire with fire" argument, all you'll end up with will be the ashes of your own integrity.
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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