What Role Does Ethics Play in Sports?

By Kirk O. Hanson and Matt Savage

http: //www. scu. edu/ethics/publications/submitted/sports-ethics. html

To understand the role ethics plays in sport and competition, it is important to make a distinction between gamesmanship[1] and sportsmanship[2].

Gamesmanship is built on the principle that winning is everything. Athletes and coaches are encouraged to bend the rules wherever possible in order to gain a competitive advantage over an opponent, and to pay less attention to the safety and welfare of the competition.

Some of the key principles of gamesmanship are:

• Winning is everything;

• It's only cheating if you get caught;

• It is the referee's job to catch wrongdoing, and the athletes and coaches have noinherent responsibility to follow the rules;

• The ends always justify the means.

Some examples of gamesmanship are:

• Faking a foul or injury;

• Attempting to get a head start in a race;

• Tampering with equipment, such as corking a baseball bat[3] in order to hit the ball farther;

• Covert personal fouls, such as grabbing a player underwater during a water polo match;

• Inflicting pain on an opponent with the intention of knocking him or her out of the game;

• The use of performance-enhancing drugs;

• Taunting or intimidating an opponent;

• A coach lying about an athlete's grades in order to keep him or her eligible to play.

All of these examples place greater emphasis on the outcome of the game than on the manner in which it is played.

A more ethical approach to athletics is sportsmanship. Under a sportsmanship model, healthy competition is seen as a means of cultivating personal honour, virtue, and character. It contributes to a community of respect and trust between competitors and in society. The goal in sportsmanship is not simply to win, but to pursue victory with honour by giving one's best effort.

Ethics in sport requires four key virtues: fairness, integrity, responsibility, and respect.

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