IN THIS ISSUE:

FRONT ROW

Youth- and School-Based Sports:
    • Testing May Deter High School Steroid Use
    • Sportsmanship Spell-Out Wins Essay Contest
Collegiate Sports: Being a College Senior Isn’t What
It Used to Be
Professional Sports: Is There More to Patriotgate?
Recently Overheard Answering Machine Greetings
Jocks Behaving Badly:
    • Let’s Hear You Whine About Your Dysfunctional
Family Now …
    • Then Again, You Could Live in Long Island …
Jocks Behaving Exceptionally:
    • LSU Players Chasten Their Student Section …
    • Good Sportsmanship Quells Argument …
    • An Honest Run for Their Money …   
Michael Josephson Commentary: Leadership By Example


SIDELINES

Announcements
Trivia Test: What Soccer Team Advanced to a Cup Final
By Deliberately Scoring Against Itself?
Sportsmanship User's Guide: How Much Do You Know About Hazing?
You Make the Call: Should Parental Sportsmanship
Classes Be Mandatory?
Principle of the Month: Stand Up for Integrity
Say What?
Upcoming Seminars
Trivia Test Answer

FRONT ROW

YOUTH- AND SCHOOL-BASED SPORTS

Testing May Deter High School Steroid Use

Last year, New Jersey became the first state to randomly test high school athletes for steroids. The results? Out of 500 student-athletes screened in 12 sports after championship games, one student tested positive.

In announcing the findings at the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association’s executive meeting, assistant director Bob Baly said the fact that just one athlete was caught doesn't suggest steroids isn’t still a problem in youth sports. Instead, he said, the screening program may have done what it was supposed to do: deter potential abusers.

This year two additional states – Texas and Florida – will conduct statewide screenings for the first time. Texas’s $3 million initiative will screen between 20,000 and 25,000 students across all sports. Florida’s $100,000 pilot program will test one percent of students of both sexes in baseball, football, and weightlifting.

[http://ca.today.reuters.com, 9/3/07; www.nj.com, 9/12/07]

YOUTH- AND SCHOOL-BASED SPORTS

Sportsmanship Spell-Out Wins Essay Contest

To honor National Sportsmanship Day (September 17), the Institute for International Sport conducted an essay contest. Four winners were selected.

Our favorite was by elementary school winner, Karoline Kent, of Centreville, Maryland. She took the word sportsmanship and cleverly made it into a winning team, with each letter representing a teammate. See how well they work together:

Safety means you play fairly and clean by not tripping or pushing. This shows respect for your team and the people you are playing against.

Participate in the game and practices and give it all you got. This shows you care about your teammates and fans.

Opinion means keep your opinions to yourself. If a player is not that good and you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything.

Ready means show up on time, have your sneakers tied, and do personal stuff before practice/game starts so you are not late and wasting people’s time.

Teamwork means work together and have fun while playing.

Show respect for your teammates/coach/fans and don’t be rude or brag.

Move yourself and don’t be lazy. If your coach needs help cleaning up equipment, don’t just watch…help out!

Ask for help from a coach or teammate if you don’t know what to do.

Nice to others means if somebody messes up, you should not be mean.

Say nice things to your teammates and the other team such as when you shake their hands after the game.

Help teammates out if they don’t understand something or need extra practice at something you are good at.

Improve yourself so you can become a better player and help your team.

Practice, practice, practice to always be the best you can!

[www.usatoday.com]

COLLEGIATE SPORTS

Being a College Senior Isn’t What It Used to Be

The year was 1971. Junior year at Sul Ross State in Texas. Mike Flynt, team captain and leading tackler of the football team, was a heckuva player with a bright future and a storied past. He had played on the first state championship team at Odessa Permian, the high school featured in Friday Night Lights, and was the son of a Battle of the Bulge survivor. He just had one problem: He liked getting into fights. Lots of them.

His character flaw eventually proved to be too much for the university, and he was kicked out. "I grieved the loss of that senior year for more years than I can remember," Flynt told ESPN.com. "I felt that was my team, and I had let them down."

A Baby Boomers Reunion with his Sul Ross teammates earlier this year confirmed that fear. One former player confessed that their 1971 season went down the drain primarily because Flynt wasn’t there.

When they saw him at the reunion, however, he wasn’t the same person he had been in college.

"I saw a difference in Mike that radiated throughout the room," one former teammate recalled on the reunion website Sulrossbabyboomers.com. "This change made me feel very good. Someone planted a seed that grew."

Flynt, now 59, a grandfather, and three years short of Social Security eligibility, decided to help "a bunch of young men to make up for those guys I let down." He asked the institution if his last year of eligibility was still good. It was.

"You’re an idiot," his former coach Jerry Larned said when Flynt told him he was going to try out for the Division III team again. His wife shook her head. "I’m married to Peter Pan."

Flynt was neither nuts nor out of shape. Running the 40 in 5.0, he made the squad. Quite a difference this time around. He’s a member of AARP, is eight years older than the coach, has two kids older than his teammates, and no longer has a short fuse.

When he took the field earlier this month in a 45-42 triple overtime victory over Texas Lutheran, he became the second oldest player to ever strap on a college football helmet (a 60-year-old reportedly played one down late in a blowout for Ashland, Ohio, in 1997).

Naturally, Sul Ross State has been besieged by the media. Especially its football coach, Steve Wright, whose reasoning for letting Flynt try out is just as quirky and refreshing as Flynt’s.

"Why not?" he told reporters. "This decision had nothing to do with publicity; it was thinking outside the box. Our football program is structured differently than Football 101, so Mike’s a good fit. He’s also a mentor and a positive influence to other players."

It took Flynt 37 years to hear someone say that.

Six Signs That Your Teammate May Be 59
The above story prompted the witty crew at Littlefivers.com to provide tip-offs that your senior may be, well, senior:

1. Tries to pass off liver spots as a new kind of tat.
2. Considers helmets a fad.
3. When opponents trash-talk with "Who’s your daddy?" he counters with "Who baby-sat your daddy?"
4. When he breaks his hip, he has the waterboy fetch a spare from his trunk.
5. Instead of putting in a mouth guard, he takes out his bridge.
6. To fire him up, teammates tell him the little punk with the ball is on his lawn.

PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

Is There More to Patriotgate?

Taking away New England Patriots’ sideline video cameras hasn't quashed the rumors of cheating. The Detroit Lions, Cincinnati Bengals, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Cleveland Browns are now accusing the Patriots of causing communication malfunctions in their headsets when they played at New England’s Gillette Stadium.

The most recent team to complain, the Browns, claim they lost communication with quarterback Derek Anderson eight to 10 times in the game, during which he threw three interceptions.

New England isn’t the only team accused of headset shenanigans. According to The Washington Post, Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs recently expressed his anger to a team executive about his headsets mysteriously going down in Philadelphia and Green Bay. He reported both clubs to the league. Then again, the Redskins themselves are rumored to illegally pump crowd noise into FedEx through their stadium speakers.

Former coach Bill Parcells told ESPN that the San Francisco 49ers used to deny opponents use of their headsets in a novel way. Because their coach Bill Walsh always scripted his team’s first offensive series beforehand, he didn’t need headsets during those sequences. Parcells said that in two different playoff games, the 49ers claimed their headsets weren’t working during their first offensive series.

According to league rules, if one team’s headsets malfunction, the other team must stop using its communication devices. After the 49ers used all their scripted plays, Parcells asserted, Walsh told the referee his headsets had been fixed.

That’s why they call it home-field advantage.

[http://sports.aol.com/fanhouse, 10/1/07, 10/23/07, 10/24/07]

JOCKS BEHAVING BADLY

Let’s Hear You Whine About Your
Dysfunctional Family Now …

When two parents in Licking Valley, Ohio, said only one of their three teenagers could attend a high school football game last month, the other two thought that was unfair.

One of them, their 14-year-old daughter, attempted to leave the house, but her father blocked the doorway. The other one, her 15-year-old brother, jumped on him with a steak knife. Mother quickly joined the fray, and the four wrestled on the floor until the police arrived. Both kids were arrested for domestic violence, and the son was additionally charged with attempted felonious assault.

We don’t want to know what happens when they’re grounded.

[www.newarkadvocate.com, 10/22/07]

Then Again, You Could Live in Long Island …

After two incidents last month involving Long Island parents attacking youth-league coaches, we wonder if there’s something in the water.

What, You Didn’t Copy Mommie Dearest?
A soccer mom in East Rockaway, angered over not being e-mailed directions to upcoming games, slammed a folding chair across the face of her daughter’s 68-year-old volunteer coach, then allegedly keyed a van she believed was his.

The coach, described by others as a selfless gentleman who “stepped up to coach the team when no one else would,” admitted he had removed the woman from the list because she often e-mailed “nasty letters” about practices and other matters.

Tony Soprano’s Boy Stays on the Field
When Little League coach James Edge benched one of his 11-year-olds for swearing at him during batting practice, the boy called his dad. Uh-oh.

His dad is Frank Basile who, according to the New York Post, allegedly once owned a mobbed-up Long Island restaurant with his brother, Roger, and was involved in an infamous tag-team beating of a fan at a restaurant with former New York Jets star Mark Gastineau in 1991.

Minutes later, the two brothers rushed to the ball field and, in front of the terrified kids, beat and kicked the coach so savagely, he was taken to a hospital with a concussion and other injuries.

“What beating?” Frank told reporters later. “He’s got no bruises. There was no beating.”

The two brothers were arrested and charged with third-degree assault.

[www.nydailynews.com, 10/18/07; www.nypost.com, 10/18/07; www.newsday.com, 10/24/07; www.nypost.com, 10/24/07]

JOCKS BEHAVING EXCEPTIONALLY

LSU Players Chasten Their Student Section …

In what may be the most unusual and admirable sportsmanship gesture of the year, two LSU football players published an open letter in their campus newspaper Daily Reveille urging the student body to cool it with their vulgar chants toward opposing teams at home games.

Here is the letter by running back Jacob Hester and All-American defensive lineman Glenn Dorsey:

The LSU student section is the heartbeat of Death Valley and the center of emotion for our great stadium.

But during the last two games, vulgar language directed at our opponents by the student section has been disappointing and embarrassing to our school.

Your chants can be heard by the national television audience that tunes in from all over America. When those chants include offensive language, it only damages Louisiana State University. More importantly, these chants can be heard by young children in the stadium who come to see their Tigers play.

We need to support our team. You are important to our success. But that doesn’t mean you need to insult our opponents. Let us, the players, take care of our opponents through competition on the field.

We are taught by our coaches to act like champions, play like champions, and win like champions. We need you to do the same.

Good Sportsmanship Quells Argument …

During a recent middle school boy’s soccer game in Maryland, a player prepared to take a corner kick with the score tied. He stepped forward and whipped his foot through the ball.

Seconds later, his low line-drive screamer was inside the goal mouth. His teammates jumped for joy. His opponents said no way; the ball clearly went through the side of the net. The referee shook his head. It was good. The goal counted.

The opposing parents and players exploded. Voices and tempers soared. The referee held firm. Just as the situation was threatening to get out of control, a lone opposing player raised his hand, and his firm voice was heard above the clamor: "The ref made the best call he could," he calmly reminded everybody. "Let’s get back in the game."

The magic words stopped the argument cold. The players and parents calmed down. The game resumed. All because of one player who respected the referee, the game, and himself.

[Thanks, Troy Foland, for your eyewitness account of this incident!]

An Honest Run for Their Money …

The following letter was sent by a parent to the staff of Wadsworth Middle School in Wadsworth, Ohio:

I was working the food tent for the Malone Cross Country race and observed a couple of runners from Wadsworth. A young man brought back a dollar bill to our tent that had blown away down the parking lot.

This might seem trivial, but there were hundreds of people around and it would have been easy just to say, "Wow, I found a buck." However, this runner walked all the way back to our tent and said he believed it belonged to us.

Then a young lady ordered a water, paid $1.00, and stood there for a minute. We asked if something was wrong, and she said, "I believe I underpaid you."

She had not, but she felt it was important enough not to just walk off and say to everyone she got a good deal.

This behavior cannot be isolated to these few; it must be in the system. I wanted to commend the Wadsworth parents, the school, the athletic leaders, and especially the runners.

Keep doing what you’re doing. People do notice.

George Schweikert
Malone College parent

[Thanks to Wadsworth’s assistant principal Pepper Bates for sending this to us!]

Want a Free Sportsmanship Patch?

We sent each of those who contributed an item a free Pursuing Victory With Honor patch for telling us about honorable deeds on and off the field of play.

We'll send you one, too, if you send us your stories at CharacterCountssports@jiethics.org. Put "Jocks Behaving Exceptionally" in the subject box.

You can also report acts of good sportsmanship to the NCAA's Committee on Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct by clicking here.

COMMENTARY BY
MICHAEL JOSEPHSON

Leadership By Example

Mark Gibson, a former gymnastics coach who worked with many elite athletes, tells a wonderful story about a 15-year-old girl whose work ethic and attitude brought out the best in everyone.

Cindy wasn’t a great gymnast, but when she was in the gym everyone complained less, worked harder, and, not surprisingly, achieved more. Cindy was a powerful motivator because she was blind.

When it was her turn to do the vault, her mom would run alongside telling her how close she was to the apparatus. When her mom said, "Vault!" Cindy would reach out and jump -- trusting her mother and herself.

Cindy loved the sport and kept improving because she and her mom refused to be defeated by her disability.

Mark called her the most important member of the team, not because of her athletic ability, but because of her heart and standard of fortitude and courage that inspired others to get more out of themselves. Everyone who watched her strive to be the best she could be realized how much more they could be.

This is leadership -- leadership by example. We see similar examples, not only in sports but in families and in the workplace. Often the most important members of a team are not the smartest, strongest, fastest, or most skilled. Their power and influence are in their attitude and their ability to energize and encourage others with their optimism, enthusiasm, and determination.

People who know how to get the best out of themselves get the best out of others.

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, 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 improve personal and organizational decision making and behavior in sports.

Archives of Past Issues

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Michael Josephson Named One of America’s 100 Most Influential
Sports Educators

Tiger Woods, Bill Russell, Billie Jean King, Andre Agassi, Cal Ripken, Jr., John Wooden, Phil Jackson, Joe Paterno …and Michael Josephson?

Mr. Josephson, founder and president of Josephson Institute, was recently honored along with these sports luminaries, not because he can swing a racket or a club or even finish a heptathlon, but for being one of America’s 100 Most Influential Sports Educators.

The honor, bestowed by the Institute for International Sport, recognized Mr. Josephson’s efforts to promote good sportsmanship through Josephson Institute’s Pursuing Victory With Honor initiative.

When Dan Doyle, the Institute’s executive director, surveyed coaches and athletes for his forthcoming book The Encyclopedia of Sport Parenting, many respondents said that the sports experience had profoundly shaped their views and that certain individuals had been key mentors in their lives. As a result, Doyle and the Institute embarked on a three-year project to select the 100 most influential sports educators in the country.

The organization received more than 1,500 nominations. After reducing the list to 200 finalists, the Institute appointed a final selection committee made up of coaches, athletic administrators, journalists, and academicians.

“In America, we honor elite athletes, winning coaches, wealthy team owners, and media moguls. We praise sports educators, yet we really do not honor them,” said Doyle. “This project honors individuals and organizations who have creatively and effectively used sport in the very best way -- to educate and shape positive values.”

See the full list of honorees here and read more about Pursuing Victory With Honor here.


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This unique standards-based curriculum about actual conservation dilemmas around the world -- and your own community -- will help students 1) understand actual conservation issues, 2) resolve an environmental emergency, 3) explore a hypothetical issue closer to home, and 4) take on a real-life conservation issue.

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How Much Do You Know
About Hazing?

Hazing is a shadow disease of high schools, colleges, sports teams, and private societies. It exists in darkness. One and a half million high school students alone are hazed each year -- half of them athletes -- and the figure is rising.

How knowledgeable are you about hazing? Take this quiz and find out.

True or False
1. Hazing has existed since ancient times.
2. Hazing is like bullying except it’s in an institutional setting.
3. Hazing is a form of rejection.
4. Most people don’t know what hazing is.
5. Extra vigilance can determine if hazing exists at your school.
6. Public figures generally condone hazing.
7. Many groups need hazing in order to bond, which is why it’s so difficult to eliminate it.
8. Many hazing victims say the experience was fun.
9. Hazing victims are less likely to inflict it on others.
10. In sports, hazing is most prevalent in football, rugby, and hockey.

Answers
1. TRUE. St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) described the phenomenon, and Byzantine emperor Justinian I (483-565) issued laws against it. It was particularly rife in medieval European universities, where hazers preyed on poorer students desperate for privilege that a degree would confer.

2. FALSE. Both are abuses of power, but hazing differs from bullying in two significant ways: It’s often secretive and victims usually consent.

3. FALSE. Actually, it’s a rite of acceptance.

4. TRUE. Hazers typically admit to acts that constitute hazing while denying they’ve hazed.

5. FALSE (usually). It’s often difficult to determine if hazing is going on because it’s so secret and victims are often ashamed and don’t know whom to tell or how to tell. It’s typically detected from bruises or other problems.

6. FALSE. Hazing has always had well-known champions who have offered an array of justifications for it.

7. FALSE. Teams and groups can bond very well without hazing.

8. TRUE. They often claim they enjoyed it to try to salvage their self-respect.

9. FALSE. The worst hazers have almost always undergone it themselves.

10. FALSE. The most widespread hazing occurs in swimming, diving, soccer, and lacrosse.

“Hazing” refers to any activity expected of someone joining a group (or to maintain full status in a group) that humiliates, degrades, or risks emotional and/or physical harm, regardless of the person's willingness to participate.

It is a complex social problem shaped by power dynamics that operate in a group and/or organization and within a particular cultural context.

For more information, go to Stophazing.org.

Should Parental Sportsmanship Classes Be Mandatory?

To reduce violence and abuse from unruly parents, some youth leagues are requiring parents to attend a sportsmanship training course prior to their child’s athletic season. Parents who don’t participate are prohibited from attending games.

What do you think of this idea?

• Approve.
• Disapprove.
• I’m not sure.

Click here to vote

Results of Last Month's Poll

Natural League or Robocop League? One possible way to curb the arms race in professional sports cheating would be for every sport to operate two distinct leagues - a clean (tested) league and an anything-goes (untested) league. Traditionalists could follow the Natural League, which would play the game as it was intended, while extreme fans could watch the Robocop League, which would emphasize prodigious athletes and colossal feats. Would you be in favor of this? Yes. No. I'm not sure.

PRINCIPLE OF THE MONTH

Principle Nine: Stand Up for Integrity

Leaders with bold ambitions rarely have an easy road. Weak ones cave under the obstacles; strong ones forge ahead. Karen Holbrook, former president of Ohio State university, is among the latter.

"She’s been a trailblazer, and sometimes the trails are tough to blaze when you’re the first one out," trustee and Ohio political operative Brian Hicks told The Columbus Dispatch after Holbrook, the first female president of the university, stepped down this summer after five years at the helm, a tenure some have called the greatest in the institution’s history.

Others weren’t so appreciative. Not since the riot.

Two months before her appointment in 2002, Ohio State’s football team beat Michigan. The campus had a long culture of unlawful alcohol use and rioting, and this particular postgame celebration turned into one of the worst riots in recent history. Video of the mayhem was seen around the world.

Holbrook took immediate action. She increased police presence on game days, enforced open-container laws for tailgaters, led a campaign to ban alcohol advertising from radio and television broadcasts, suspended students, and promised severe consequences for future rioters.

Students protested. Trustees and alumni accused her of ruining the school’s traditions. A website called for her ouster. Fans booed her at the stadium.

"They said, ‘You’re a goodie two-shoes. You don’t understand what it is to be a Buckeye," Holbrook told ESPN.com. "Maybe that’s true, but I didn’t think this great university deserved the black eye to its reputation for this kind of behavior."

Principle Nine of the Arizona Sports Summit Accord states that "The highest administrative officer must maintain ultimate responsibility for the quality and integrity of sports programs.

"Such officers must assure that ... the academic, emotional, physical, and moral well-being of athletes is always placed above desires and pressures to win."

For this reason, many others came to Holbrook’s defense. She won local and national praise for her courage and for setting an example for other schools. There have been no more riots, and students have created a Sportsmanship Council to improve campus behavior and conduct.

"She’s been proven right," Hicks told The Dispatch. "The game-day experience today is for the better. You can take your family to a game and not be accosted by drunks."

Nearly 50 influential leaders in sports issued the Arizona Sports Summit Accord in 1999 to encourage greater emphasis on the ethical and character-building aspects of athletic competition.

There are youth/interscholastic and collegiate/Olympic versions. Read the full texts here.

"You would think a leadoff walk would lead to more big innings than a leadoff home run. But we've done the research. It turns out that more big innings have come from leadoff home runs than leadoff walks."
-- Fox broadcaster Tim McCarver during the Boston Red Sox-Cleveland Indians American League Championship Series

"If we got into a fight, who do you think would win?"
-- New York Nets guard Jason Kidd’s alleged comment to a woman who accused him of groping her in a nightclub

"Everyone on the international level is using performance-enhancing drugs. It's widespread, and it's going to continue."
-- Former Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, who was banned from the sport for taking steroids, in a radio interview with Al-Jazeera

"You look at things that have happened to us this year. You look at some of the moves we made and didn’t make. You look at some of the games we’re winning. Those aren’t just a coincidence. God has definitely had a hand in this."
-- Colorado Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd before being swept by the Boston Red Sox in the World Series

"It's an amazing thing they accomplished just to get here. It would have been nice to have another two, three, four days. I think this team is a better team than Boston."
-- Colorado Rockies owner Charlie Monfort after being swept by Boston in the World Series

"You know something’s wrong when the New England Patriots face stiffer penalties for spying on innocent Americans than Dick Cheney and George Bush."
-- New Mexico governor and Presidential candidate Bill Richardson

"I do not wish them any luck in pursuing the undefeated title."
-- Former Miami Dolphin running back Larry Csonka on the New England Patriots threatening the Dolphins' 1972 undefeated season

~ Classic From the Past ~

Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.
-- Joe Theismann

Barbados.

In the 1994 Shell Caribbean Cup, Barbados needed to beat Grenada by two goals to advance to the finals. The rules stated that if a game ended in a tie, a sudden-death overtime would be played. The first team to score would be designated a two-goal winner.

With three minutes left, Barbados held a slim 2-1 lead. Realizing they were unlikely to score again against Grenada’s defensive wall, they kicked the ball into their own net, tying the score.

Realizing Barbados's strategy, Grenada tried to score an own goal themselves.

The bizarre ending saw Barbados defending both nets as Grenada desperately tried to score into either goal. The game ended in a tie, as Barbados hoped it would, and went into sudden-death.

Barbados scored first, won the game (officially by two goals, according to the rules), and thus advanced to the finals.

[www.snopes.com/sports/soccer/barbados.asp]

Please let us know what you are doing -- or what you see others doing -- so we can share your stories to strengthen character-building efforts everywhere. Go to: CharacterCountsSports@jiethics.org

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