IN THIS ISSUE:

FRONT ROW

Youth- and School-Based Sports: Are Violent Coaches the Wave of the Future?
Collegiate Sports: Education Secretary Blasts NCAA and NBA
Professional Sports: How Tiger’s "Halo" Snookered Us All
Jocks Behaving Badly:
• Tennis’s Newest Gamesmanship Ploy
• If There Was a Trophy for Gamesmanship, This School Would Be the One to Beat
• When Athletics and Academics Don't Mix
Jocks Behaving Exceptionally: Why This Hockey Fan Will Remember Toronto


SIDELINES

Announcements
Trivia Test: Why Are Acts of Bad Sportsmanship Called “Bush League”?
You Make the Call: Should Signs Urging Home Teams to Vanquish Visiting Teams Be Prohibited?
Sportsmanship Users Guide: How to Improve Your Sportsmanship
Principle of the Month: How Athletes Justify Poor Sportsmanship
Say What?
Trivia Test Answer
Michael Josephson Commentary: Life Isn’t Like Figure Skating

FRONT ROW

YOUTH- AND SCHOOL-BASED SPORTS

Are Violent Coaches the
Wave of the Future?

Kids who sign up for sports today may not like what they see on the horizon: coaches hitting players (Kansas State basketball coach Frank Martin), locking them in sheds (former Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach), verbally abusing players (former Kansas football coach Mark Mangino), and grabbing a player by the throat and slapping him (former University of South Florida football coach Jim Leavitt).

Aurora Sentinel managing editor Aaron Cole writes that the ranks of abusive coaches are growing, and it usually starts at home. “It stems from a disconnection between what parents see as the value of sports and why children engage in sports in the first place.”

Many parents, he says, view athletic programs as a competition. “Some view participation as a competition between the child and other peers, between the child and themselves, and more dangerously, between the child and the parent when they played themselves.

“Children often view the participation as inclusion into a peer network. They’re involved because their friends are, with little or no importance placed on who actually wins.”

The result, Cole says, are coaches who, feeling the pressure of “helicopter” parents pressuring them for more playing time for their kid, have changed an accessory to education into a full-court press stress machine for everyone involved. “When winning is the only goal, unsavory conduct is inevitable.”

A study of 6,622 incidents in the Greater Toronto Hockey League during 2007-08 found coaches were responsible for the largest number of problems reported by referees.

One 20-year official was threatened by a coach who pinned his car with his own car. “Such confrontations don’t just frighten officials,” wrote Robert Cribb in thestar.com. “They set a terrible example for young players and could be at the root of growing disrespect and violence on the ice.”

Dr. Bill Montelpare, a sports injury researcher at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, told the website, “Many coaches misunderstand their role. The game is not about them. They are the stewards of the game, and their modeling matters to children.”

[thestar.com, 12/11/09; aurorasentinel.com, 1/10/10]

COLLEGIATE SPORTS

Secretary of Education
Blasts NCAA and NBA

At last month’s NCAA annual convention in Atlanta, Education Secretary Arne Duncan scolded the NCAA for not graduating more athletes; called the NBA’s age rule, which requires players to be at least 19 years old and one year removed from high school before they can enter the league, a “farce” and “intellectually dishonest”; and denounced “renegade coaches” who “run a program into the ground, get in trouble, and then move on – often at a much higher salary.”

Duncan, who was co-captain of his Harvard basketball team, asked, “Why do we allow the NCAA, why do we allow universities, why do we allow sports to be tainted when the vast majority of coaches and athletic directors are striving to instill the right values?”

Citing the fact that 25 percent of teams in last season’s men’s basketball tournament graduated fewer than 40 percent of their players, Duncan said, “If you can’t graduate two out of five of your players, what are they doing at your university?”

Critics of the controversial NBA rule say the policy forces athletes, the majority of whom are black, to attend college when they may not want to while sports with mostly white players, such as baseball and hockey, have no such age restrictions.

Duncan told The New York Times that he decided to speak forcefully because he remembered all the former college stars he used to see playing pickup games on the streets of Chicago. “They helped make their university successful, but at the end of the day, they didn’t have a degree. They didn’t have anything to show for it.”

[nytimes.com, 1/15/10]

PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

How Tiger’s "Halo" Snookered Us All

There's a remarkable article at psychologytoday.com by Richard Shweder on the “halo effect” surrounding celebrities that can singe anyone who gets too close to its glow.

Like what happened to many of us with Tiger Woods. But there's good news, says Shweder. Unless we're total numbskulls, once we've been burned, we should be immune to the lure thereafter. “It’s an opportunity to get real,” Shweder writes. “Disenchantment can be liberating.”

Why are we so easly fooled by the halo effect? Shweder says it's because we assume greatness generalizes. “We are beckoned to imagine that our heroes are heroic over all horizons.”

In Tiger’s case, we assumed his greatness, perfection, and character displayed on the golf course transferred to his private life.

That’s why Magic Johnson, John Edwards, the 1919 Chicago White Sox, and countless others have fooled us over the years. Until we learn to scale back our expectations and realize that our heroes’ greatness is confined only to their miraculous talents and accomplishments, we're liable to be shocked and disappointed again.

In Tiger’s case, the superior standard he set was his golf prowess. Period. Not family values or civic virtues.

Shweder has little empathy for anyone stunned by Woods’s revelations. “Within which pantheon of gods did you actually have Tiger Woods located, rendering you distraught by the mere recognition that he is in some ways human? Upon what type of pedestal has Tiger Woods been standing in your mind’s eye so that you now think he has taken a great fall? The halo effect does that to the human mind; it sets you up for the crash.”

Shweder says it works on most of us, in part, because we refuse to stop gazing at the spin machines. “The media, public relations agents, and corporate sponsors profit from puffing up celebrities and by manufacturing heroes,” he writes.

They also know how to lay them bare and choreograph their banishment, contrition, and subsequent resurrection. “Who really doubts that the script for Tiger’s rebirth has already been written?”

[psychologytoday.com, 12/16/09]

JOCKS BEHAVING BADLY

Tennis’s Newest Gamesmanship Ploy

Ballers flop. Soccer players “writhe” in pain. Football receivers spread their arms and make the “throw the flag” gesture. What do professional tennis players do to gain an unsportsmanlike advantage?

They “cramp.”

In the old days, players suffering muscle spasms during play were disqualified if they received assistance from a trainer or medical official. The rules were eventually loosened to allow treatment.

But the International Tennis Federation and the men’s and women’s tours have reversed that policy, banning medical timeouts for cramping once again. This year’s Australian Open is the first Grand Slam tournament to enforce the new ban.

Why the reversal?

“Cramping is what we used to call ‘a loss of conditioning,’” Stefan Fransson, the Grand Slam supervisor of officials told The New York Times. “Because of that, it shouldn’t entitle players to have a medical timeout.”

But there's another reason. Players were taking advantage of the rule change. Dr. Tim Wood, chief medical officer for the Australian Open, told the Times, “There was a lot of suspicion that players were cramping to get timeouts at crucial stages in matches. They were tactical medical timeouts – with cramps as the excuse.”

The new rule allows players to receive a maximum of two treatments but only during a change of sides or at the end of a set.

Andy Roddick, ranked seventh in the world, agrees with the new sanction. “If someone is getting treated for 12 minutes and then you have to come out and serve, you’re the one who’s getting cold,” he told the Times. “It lent itself to gamesmanship sometimes.”

When asked if any of his opponents had cheated that way, he acknowledged some had. Dr. Wood said insiders know who they are, but they’re usually not the better players.

“Did you ever see Agassi take medical timeouts, or Federer? How many matches does Roger play every year, and how many medical timeouts does he have?”

[nytimes.com, 1/16/10]

If There Was a Trophy for Gamesmanship, This School
Would Be the One to Beat

Earlier this year, Jack Yates High School in Houston, Texas, sparked national outrage when its perennial powerhouse basketball team, undefeated and ranked #2 in the nation, demolished Lee High School 170-35 (halftime score: 100-12), breaking the state’s previous high score of 166.

It was the eighth time this season they've scored more than 100 points. Not surprisingly, tempers flared during the game, triggering a bench-clearing brawl.

There’s often great disparity in quality among high school teams, unlike in college or the pros. Still, Yates’s philosophy of pressing every minute of every game, no matter how far they’re ahead, has bewildered many.

Lee’s coach Jacques Armant told the Houston Chronicle, “I feel very disrespected right now. I don’t understand why Yates just kept pressing when they were up so much. It isn’t good to do that to other young men.”

Yates’s coach Greg Wise defended his actions, explaining that he played all 15 of his players. “We are looking for another state championship, and we can’t get that unless we are continuing to get better and perfect our game.”

On January 20, Yates triggered another controversy when it attempted to break the record for the most consecutive 100-point games.

With less than three minutes left, the team had scored 84. To stretch out the time, coach Wise instructed his players to continually foul the opposing players to create clock stoppages and give them more scoring opportunities. Yates fell short, 94-64.

But that’s okay. Next game they defeated Davis 154-39.

[khou.com, 1/6/10; parentdish.com, 1/26/10]

When Athletics and Academics Don’t Mix

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools must demonstrate progress in academic tests or they’re penalized with federal sanctions and/or reduced funding. Opponents say this additional pressure on parents, students, teachers, schools, and states has led to widespread cheating.

Good thing a school’s “progress” doesn’t hinge on their students' athletic success.

Not so in China. How well students do in the gaokao, the all-important national university entrance exam, determines if they’ll get into a prestigious university. For some unknown reason, students are allowed to add bonus points to their gaokao if they run under 2 hours and 34 minutes in the Xiamen International Marathon.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, we were shocked, shocked to hear that 30 of the top 100 finishers in last month’s race cheated. Video footage captured some hopping on buses or hitching rides midway through the course. Others hired professional marathoners to assume their identity. Still others paid faster runners to carry their time-recording microchips across the finish line for them.

If only they’d had Google access, they would have known how Rose Ruiz did it.

[iol.co.za, 1/22/10; deadspin.com, 1/24/10]

JOCKS BEHAVING EXCEPTIONALLY

Why This Hockey Fan
Will Remember Toronto

A Washington Capitals hockey fan was so moved by an interaction with an opposing fan that he posted this account on livejournal.com:

“I am a season ticket holder, and every game I go to I bring my hand-drawn ‘Unleash the Fury’ sign. While I’ve received the occasional smile from visiting fans, nothing struck me as much as what happened at last night’s game vs. Toronto.

“Canadian teams always bring a lot of their fans to Verizon Center. My seats are on the side where the visitors warm up, so many Toronto fans came downstairs to watch them warm up.

“As everyone is heading back to their seats, a man in a Toronto jersey approaches me. He compliments my sign, shakes my hand, and wishes me and the Caps luck in the game tonight. This guy was a total stranger. I was so in awe and honored at his actions and words.

“We should all follow the lead of this one Leafs fan. While rivalries will always be there, I think it’d be more fun if we took more joy in our team winning than the opposition losing.

“Maybe if we wished each other luck more often, we’ll put smiles on each others’ faces like Mr. Leafs Fan did to me. Sportsmanship is a great, great thing.”

[crzyjewishotaku.livejournal.com, 1/16/10]

MICHAEL JOSEPHSON'S COMMENTARY

Life Isn’t Like Figure Skating

I once attended the National Figure Skating Championships and watched a group of dedicated and talented athletes compete for the right to represent the U.S. at the Winter Olympics.

The skating was wonderful, but what struck me most was the scoring system. In addition to being subjective, it places a huge premium on not making mistakes – momentarily losing one’s balance or changing a triple jump to a double costs points. Falling can be fatal.

Consequently, although the skaters wore forced smiles, the anxiety emanating from the ice and the stands was palpable. The top skaters were only as bold as they had to be to stay competitive. You could almost see their lips saying, “Just 30 more seconds. Don’t mess up.” I found it more stressful than enjoyable.

Thank goodness, real life isn’t like figure skating. Perhaps this negative mindset is necessary for skaters, but in other settings, preoccupation with avoiding mistakes can prevent us from experiencing the pride and joy of taking on new challenges.

In real life, there’s no scorekeeper docking us for every misstep. We can trip, fall, get up, and start again as many times as we want. It’s never too late to be happy. It’s never too late to succeed. It's never too late to be significant. So go for the gold.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

For an archive of Mr. Josephson’s commentaries, click here.

	ANNOUNCEMENTS
Rouse Your Team With Power Quote Posters Deck out your walls with these 18” x 40” inspirational posters with messages like: • Compete with heart. Win with class. Lose with dignity. • Don’t leave the gym today until you can do at least one thing better. • Within these walls are endless opportunities. Help yourself. • Who you are is much more important than how you do. Two separate packs are available (nine posters in each). Learn more »
	TRIVIA TEST
When we see something unsportsmanlike, our first thought is usually, “Hey, that’s bush league!” Why Are Acts of Bad Sportsmanship Called “Bush League”? See the answer below.
	YOU MAKE THE CALL
Should Signs Urging Home Teams to Vanquish Visiting Teams Be Prohibited? Before Hoover High School’s (North Canton, OH) volleyball match against the visiting Jackson Polar Bears, students hung a “Bury the Bears” sign on the gymnasium wall. The next morning, Jackson’s athletic director phoned his counterpart at Hoover and complained. It was taken down. That’s because several years ago, the Federal League enacted a rule prohibiting signs that denigrate visiting teams. “You cannot have any signs other than positive signs for your school,” Federal League Commissioner Joe Eaton told the Akron Beacon Journal. What do you think? • Such a policy is necessary. You have to draw the line somewhere. • Such a policy is too strict. It would thwart creativity and school spirit. • I’m not sure. Click here to vote [ohio.com/news, 9/24/09] Results of Last Month’s Poll Should chest bumps and pointing to the sky be penalized? Yesto both. 21% No to both. 59% Yes to chest bumps, no to pointing. 11% No to chest bumps, yes to pointing. 4% I'm not sure. 2%
	SPORTSMANSHIP USERS GUIDE
How to Improve Your Sportsmanship After the Kentucky High School Athletic Association reported that approximately 700 players and coaches are ejected from high school contests each year due to unsportsmanlike conduct, one blog poster ("Lighthouse," a veteran of 30 years of officiating), proposed the following measures to improve sportsmanship: Athletes: Just play the game. Concentrate on your performance, not on putting down your opponent. You have someone looking up to you, so set a good example. Coaches: Hold your players accountable for their conduct. You control their most precious commodity: playing time. Your players will take their lead from how you behave. Adminstrators: Create an atmosphere where good sportsmanship is expected. Control your coaches. They are teachers of young adults. You would never allow a science teacher to act like some coaches do. Fans: Your ticket is not a license to abuse coaches, players, officials, or other fans. Attending a game is a privilege and should be treated as such. Accept the fact that officials will make bad calls, players will make mistakes, and coaches will not always play the players you think they should. Officials: When you fail to address unsportsmanlike actions, you do a disservice to the game. Enforcing rules related to poor sportsmanship is your job. If you allow a coach to bait or work you and you turn a deaf ear because you’re worried about your rating, for the betterment of the game turn in your stripes. [wildcatnation.net/forum, 1/21/10]
	PRINCIPLE OF THE MONTH
Principle Three: How Athletes Justify Poor Sportsmanship In a study of sports morality, University of Birmingham researcher Maria Kavussanu found that unsportsmanlike athletes justify their actions by using eight psychological means of moral disengagement: 1. Moral justification: “I had to do it to protect my team’s honor.” 2. Euphemistic labeling: “I bent the rules a little” (translation: “I broke them”) or “I dusted him off” (translation: “I hit him”). 3. Advantageous comparison: “I hit him, but I didn’t throw at his head like others would have done.” Or as Serena Williams defended her profanity-laced tirade to an official at last year’s U.S. Open: “There are a lot of people who’ve said way worse.” 4. Displacement of responsibility: “It was the coach’s decision. My job is to do what he asks” or “It’s not a foul if the ref doesn’t see it.” 5. Diffusion of responsibility: “It wasn’t just me. The whole team charged the mound.” 6. Distortion of consequences: “It’s a small injury. He’ll be back in no time.” 7. Dehumanization: “They’re a bunch of animals, and you have to treat them that way.” 8. Attribution of blame: “He started it with his trash talk” or “If he’s got a weak ankle, he shouldn’t be playing.” Unfortunately, the above sports metaphors are found in society, too. On psychologytoday.com, Peter Gray writes that businessmen often use them to justify ruthless tactics as being “good for the team.” Anything’s fair as long as it isn’t detectable by authorities. “But the really successful people I see around me, who measure success in happiness and wealth in friendships, don’t use those metaphors,” he wrote. “To them, life is an informal sport.” Informal sports, like sandlot baseball, have no coaches, refs, fans, or permanent teams. The whole point is to have fun. “If you deliberately throw a fastball at someone, you will get scorn and destroy their fun. So they quit and the game is over. Even little children know this.” Principle Three of the Arizona Sorts Summit Accord states that “To promote sportsmanship and foster the development of good character, sports programs must be conducted in a manner that enhances the mental, social, and moral development of athletes and teaches them positive life skills that will help them become personally successful and socially responsible.” [psychologytoday.com, 12/16/09] 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. Read the full text here.
	SAY WHAT?
“Warren Beatty is the subject of a biography in which he admits bedding 12,000 women. Tiger Woods just told Jack Nicklaus to rest easy. He’s decided to go after Beatty’s record instead.” – Comedian Argus Hamilton “The extent to which he can recover depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger is, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’” – Fox news anchor Brit Hume’s advice to Tiger Woods “I didn’t know anything. Mark and I never confronted it. He never told me until this morning.” – St. Louis manager Tony La Russa on Mark McGwire’s admission that he used steroids “We’ve got weapons. We still have weapons…that’s terrible.” – Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl on the challenge of facing his next opponent after his team was depleted following the suspension of four players on gun charges 1.Nostalgia for the old Washington Bullets days. 2. A few shots in the air always puts a nice exclamation mark on coach’s rousing halftime speech. 3. One of the best ways to rid the showers of the occasional water bug. 4. Ready for first fool who snaps you with wet towel. 5. NBA, NRA. It’s so confusing! Littlefivers.com’s “Top 5 NBA Reasons for Keeping Guns in Your Locker” “Curling is not a sport. I called my grandmother and told her she could win a gold medal because they have dusting in the Olympics now.” – NBA commentator Charles Barkley “Good sportsmanship, which this bowl promotes, wouldn’t be the same without a corporate sponsor. And when Americans think of humanitarianism, the first thing that comes to mind is a Roady’s truck stop.” – Sportingmuse.com's Rick Newman on the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl “I don’t like Utah. In fact, I hate them. I hate everything about them. I hate their program. I hate their fans. I hate everything. The whole university and their fans and organization is classless. They threw beer on my family and stuff last year and did a whole bunch of nasty things. I don’t respect them, and they deserve to lose. So it feels good to send those guys home. It is a game I’ll always remember.” – BYU quarterback Max Hall after throwing the winning touchdown pass in overtime to defeat Utah 26-23 in the season-ending game “It’s tough when the fans are yelling stuff at you, but you have to be stronger than that. This is what [Martin Luther King, Jr.] heard, and how many times did he turn his cheek? If he can do it, why can’t we do it on a basketball court?” – Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers after his player Glen “Big Baby” Davis shouted an obscenity at a heckler “I always did in my heart what I thought was right, and I chose friends who were good people. I didn’t want to lose what I had, so I made the right choices.” – New York Yankee legend Yogi Berra describing sportsmanship to students in New Jersey “My opening statement is [bleep] UCLA.” – USC women’s basketball coach and former Los Angeles Lakers star Michael Cooper after his team’s 70-63 win over UCLA “[The Lions defensive line] broke through like they were at airport security in Amsterdam.” – Fox sports broadcaster Chris Meyers “This isn’t baseball. When you break a guy’s arm that you hate and let him know you’re glad you broke his arm, it happens sometimes. It’s not the greatest sportsmanship, but ‘Oh, that guy is terrible, he’s a horrible man, and he shouldn’t fight anymore,’ this is the fight business. Crazy stuff happens in the fight business.” – Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White after mixed martial-artist Shinya Aoki broke lightweight champion Mizuto Hirota’s arm and then flipped him off as he writhed in pain. “Just staying aggressive with it. As Lou Holtz used to say, ‘It’s our job to score points. It’s their job to stop us from scoring points.’ It wasn’t rubbing it in. It’s just taking care of business and being aggressive at the end of the game.” – Minnesota Viking coach Brad Childress on why, with less than two minutes left and his team leading the Dallas Cowboys 27-3, he threw a touchdown instead of running out the clock or kicking a field goal “Mark McGwire finally admitted that he used steroids, joining Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez. After three presidents, two wars, and a financial crisis, the only person who told us the truth was Jose Canseco.” – Comedian Argus Hamilton ~ Classic From the Past ~ “Any time Detroit scores more than 100 points and holds the other team below 100 points, they almost always win.” – Basketball broadcaster and former player and coach Doug Collins
	TRIVIA TEST ANSWER
The word “bush” originated from the Dutch word bosch, which means “woods or forest.” In the early 1900s, baseball’s minor leagues were known as the “bush leagues” because they often competed in small, out-of-way towns. The term evolved to mean anything less professional or less than fitting of a professional. [QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, timesdaily.com, 12/09/09]
	CONTACT US
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