Fairness. Responsibility

• Similar to fairness, in that any athlete who seeks to gain an advantage over his or her opponent by means of a skill that the game itself was not designed to test demonstrates a lack of personal integrity and violates the integrity of the game. For example, when a player fakes being injured or fouled in soccer, he or she is not acting in a sportsmanlike manner because the game of soccer is not designed to measure an athlete's ability to flop. Faking is a way of intentionally deceiving an official into making a bad call, which only hurts the credibility of the officiating and ultimately undermines the integrity of the game.

Responsibility

• To be sportsmanlike requires players and coaches to take responsibility for their performance, as well as their actions on the field.

• Many times athletes and coaches will make excuses as to why they lost the game. The most popular excuse is to blame the officiating. The honourable thing to do instead is to focus only on the aspects of the game that you can control, i. e. your performance, and to question yourself about where you could have done better.

• Responsibility requires that players and coaches be up to date on the rules and regulations governing their sport.

• Responsibility demands that players and coaches conduct themselves in an honourable way off the field, as well as on it.

Respect

• All athletes should show respect for teammates, opponents, coaches, and officials.

• All coaches should show respect for their players, opponents, and officials.

• All fans should show respect for other fans, as well as both teams and officials.

The sportsmanship model is built on the idea that sport both demonstrates and encourages character development, which then influences the moral character of the broader community. How we each compete in sports can have an effect on our personal moral and ethical behavior outside of the competition.

Some argue for a " bracketed morality" within sports. This approach holds that sport and competition are set apart from real life, and occupy a realm where ethics and moral codes do not apply. Instead, some argue, sports serves as an outlet for our primal aggression and a selfish need for recognition and respect gained through the conquering of an opponent. In this view, aggression and victory are the only virtues. For example, a football player may be described as mean and nasty on the field, but kind and gentle in everyday life. His violent disposition on the field is not wrong because when he is playing the game he is part of an amoral reality that is dictated only by the principle of winning.

An ethical approach to sport rejects this bracketed morality and honours the game and one's opponent through tough but fair play. This means understanding the rules and their importance in encouraging respect for your opponent, which pushes you to be your best.

Kirk O. Hanson is the executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Matt Savage was a Hackworth Fellow at the Center. These materials were prepared for the Institute for Sports Law and Ethics, of which the Markkula Center is a partner organization.

[1]Gamesmanship is the art or practice of winning a game by clever methods which are not against the rules but are very close to cheating (искусствоигры).

[2]Sportsmanshipis behaviour and attitudes that show respect for the rules of a game and for the other players (спортивноемастерство).

[3] In baseball, a corked bat is a specially modified baseball bat that has been filled with cork or other lighter, less dense substances to make the bat lighter. A lighter bat gives a hitter a quicker swing and may improve the hitter's timing.

[4]Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness (принципиальность, добросовестность, честность, неподкупность).