Scots Sports
9 February 2007
Volume 119, Issue 12
Faceoff: Professors discuss violence in sports
[Editor’s note: This series of debates between Professors Vivian and Gibson is meant to spur dialogue and discussion about sports on this campus, and in society in general. Please remember that this is intended to serve as a venue which will increase and improve CIVIL discourse on this campus about a subject on which there is a spectrum of opinions. Of course, any supporting or dissenting views about the columns are welcome. Rather than address the professors individually, letters to the editor are welcome.]
Thank you,
The Editors
By: Tobias Gibson
Contributing Writer
Professor Vivian suggests that violence in sports is prolific. None of the incidents that he uses as examples are found within the bounds of the game being played. As Dr. Vivian questioned that high levels of performance in sports made certain individuals viable political candidates or that sprinters on the medal stand were still within the bounds of the sport, I question the use of an off the field sodomy or including the violence of a non-participating father as examples of “sports violence”. Reprehensible violent acts, yes. Sports violence, no.
Here is the thing about all of Professor Vivian’s examples. The perpetrators were punished. Players were suspended, perpetrators were arrested, fines were paid; precisely because the actions of these players were outside the bounds of the game or the rule of law. The rules of the game, no matter whether played on a court, a field or diamond, are clear. Sports are not the problem. Actions taken outside of the boundaries set up by the governing bodies of the sports are the problem.
I again note that sports reflect society. As acts of violence grow in the sports arena, let us look to other areas of society. Violence continues to be glorified in many areas of society: television, video games, movies, music. If you look to violence outside the myopic view of sports, you notice that violence is on the rise in several areas of entertainment. Let us blame CBS’s quest for domination for its violent programming or Snoop’s quest for domination for his lyrics (and his recent spate of arrests). Or, note the proliferation of violence across society’s venues and wonder if Professor Vivian’s argument has merit, but then question if his question addresses the symptom or the disease. Let’s talk about why society has ills and let’s discuss ways that we can address the root causes of violence; but let’s also refrain from blaming one place where violence has reared its ugly head.
Professor Vivian’s examples of violence are newsworthy precisely because of their rarity. People are extremely concerned about violence in school. This is because of high profile school shootings like Columbine and the murder of several Amish students last year. Few people know is that school violence is dropping. Because of the (legitimate) shock value of these stories, people become more concerned about events that are increasingly rare. Miami/FIU gets looped continuously, but it is possible that it is overplayed for a 20 minute riot that led to no injuries. In our world of 24 hour ESPN, perhaps violence is increasingly shown, but not increasingly acted upon.
I will take my argument a step farther. Violence in sports is a good thing. Boxing gyms are often found in the worst, seediest, poorest, most violent parts of big cities, because it is precisely those areas where aggressive individuals need to find a viable, constructive outlet. Football is extremely popular with teenage boys and young men. At the times when hormones are raging and their bodies and minds are playing havoc, football presents an opportunity to participate in controlled violence, work off some aggression and lose themselves, if only for a few hours a week, in the beautiful flowing ballet of extreme ferocity in the game. If anything, while society inches closer toward chaos, sports serve as a retardant against the advance of senseless violence. Don’t focus on the violence that proliferates around sports, focus on the shift in societal norms that lead to this violence. And don’t blame sports. Sports may very well be the cure for society’s illness.
Professor Vivian also overlooks one small fact about sports; team or otherwise. An admittedly quick look at Google and a sweep of my memory provided me with not one example of female athletes involved in “extracurricular” violence. This is not to say that girls and women can’t, or won’t fight. However, the only fighting at sports events that involved women were examples of excellent athletes pairing off in martial arts or boxing contests. Laila Ali might fight and she most definitely continues the family tradition of stinging like a bee, but there is nothing to suggest that women athletes, in any sport, feel the need for domination as suggested by Professor Vivian. As I have suggested above, the problem is not sports. Instead, we should be looking to cultural and societal treatment and expectations of both genders, whether athletes or not.
By: Craig Vivian
Contributing Writer
“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.” –George Orwell
Last week I argued that it is a mistake to take sports seriously, that doing so leads to false beliefs. Ultimately, I argued, fans, players and others are left believing, incorrectly, that winning/losing are serious issues—seemingly just as important as other real world concerns. So, one year we might witness people rioting in Seattle over WTO decisions and another year we see people rioting in Oakland over the result of a football game. The first is a political act, the second is an act of stupidity. Yet both groups believe they are participating in serious causes. That was last week.
This week I want to examine violence in sports. I want to claim that sports also contribute at least one negative thing to many people’s lives—violence in one of its forms—psychological, emotional, or physical.
Let’s look at a few examples of the types of violence that permeates sports at their various levels.
In a quick search I came across hundreds of incidents similar to these. I have chosen some of the most recent incidents on the pages of the New York Times over the last year. The question is not whether violence is endemic to sports, but rather why it is increasing in intensity and scope. Is there a reason why people involved in the aforementioned sporting events suddenly resort to violent behaviors not found in other activities. I proffer a hopefully provocative, yet useful, answer—namely, sports are no longer primarily concerned with competition, they are driven by a need to dominate. And a logic of domination has presented serious problems for the sports community.
If you look up the word “competition” you find it comes from the Latin competere, meaning “to seek together.” In other words, the original objective of a competition was to work cooperatively in order that opponents might seek the best in themselves while helping others find their best. Competition, experienced as a seeking together, implies that mutual support, empathy and fairness exists between rivals. Domination implies the control and submission of others by any means. Today sports are really nothing more than opportunities for one person or team to dominate another. The psychology of domination makes it necessary that others submit to your will. You do not dominate others by seeking together, or working with them to do something, you force them to do it—to dominate is to control. If a team or individual feels that the goal of sports is to dominate the other, then it makes little difference how that is accomplished. During a game the need to dominate can result in players fighting, intentionally injuring, cheating, ridiculing and taunting. Once domination and control become a part of sports, then any extension of sports will see those means as being legitimate to reach a goal. Beating someone up during or after a game is one way to show dominance, injuring someone as a way of eliminating them from the game is another, raping a younger team member is one more.
What I am asserting is that feelings and actions centered on true competition will not lead to violence, but that feelings and actions centered on domination will lead to violence. This connection might explain why so many aspects of sports are imbued with violence; if we examine the behaviors and attitudes of those players, coaches and fans who have adopted a belief in domination, we might see a disregard for fairness, empathy and mutual support before, during and after the game. Following the logic of domination, it makes sense that when a team is losing a game on the scoreboard, they will see no problem starting a brawl to show themselves and others that they, in fact, can still dominate the opposing team by other means—simply put—“If I can’t outscore you I can still beat the crud out of you.” If domination is the most important factor, then a coach will have no problem telling a player to “take out” an opposing player who is thought to be preventing a win. As a high school basketball player I was instructed to elbow another player in the face to get him out of the game, since he was dominating the boards on rebounds. That is not part of a competition.
Let me turn to those areas of life where we do have competition without violence. How about spelling bees? Now these bees are intensely competitive, yet we would be hard pressed to imagine a scenario in which an irate parent jumped onto the stage and strangled a judge. Or a chess tournament interrupted by the two teams brawling over the capture of a queen during one of the games. And if we witnessed five chess tournaments in one year containing any level of violence we, as a nation, would be very concerned. We would be asking questions about “what went wrong?” Yet violence happens every month in sports. Why aren’t we more concerned with the increasingly violent nature of sports? The reason is simple-- in accepting an ethos of domination in many sports we also accept the violence associated with domination, much as we do with war. Tragically, we have given up on the notion that a competition is about being the best you can be---it is, instead, about being better than everyone else. I think we need to call a time out and rethink our strategy.
