Ethics and Athletics

     Last week I heard an interview with former major league baseball player Gabe Kapler. The subject was sign stealing and transferring certain information. He was explaining what was considered okay and what was considered cheating. Not being much of a baseball fan, I didn't completely understand his points. However, one comment has stuck with me. I don't recall the exact words, but I believe I can paraphrase correctly: that to a certain degree such behavior is just considered gamesmanship.
     This past weekend Manchester United player Ashley Young, who doesn't have the best reputation for such behavior, was castigated for diving to try to win a penalty kick. Of course, soccer players are infamous for this type of thing. However, United manager David Moyes called out Young publicly and said such things have no place in the game.
     Hmmmmmm...
     This post is not even going to consider both sides of the argument. I'll just come right out and say that I side much more with Moyes than Kapler. As someone who has played highly-competitive soccer and also coached, I understand the drive and pressure which can lead one to seek any advantage. I certain won't claim total innocence, although I can say that my attempts to get away with anything were rare and generally ill conceived. Most of my coaches discouraged it. I've never taught players any of the tricks, let along encouraged use of them. If one of my players did something I found unsporting, I tried to make it a teaching moment.
     But I have to say that all this can be a murky area. For example, let's say a ball goes a bit out of bounds off a player's foot as she is dribbling. The assistant referee doesn't see it and fails to raise the flag. I wouldn't call it cheating or even wrong for the player to continue play. The official simply made an error. Let's extend the logic to another common scenario. Two players are chasing a ball. One tugs at another's shirt to gain an advantage and thus he wins the ball. It's one of the things that angers an opponent and is considered bad form by a purist. The referee doesn't see it, so there's no call. Cheating or gamesmanship? Again, I see both sides. Are they really that different from each other?
     As an educator, I have a concern, albeit one that doesn't really answer the question. In fact, it's based on another question. Where is the line? Perhaps professional athletes have an understanding of it. They, like Kapler, probably would claim they do. Yet Moyes' comment about his own player suggests not. Maybe I shouldn't equate sign stealing in baseball and diving in soccer. However, the principle remains the same.
In any sport, where is the line?
     This question has other implications. We try to teach children fair play, but they see professionals trying to get away with things. Try explaining gamesmanship to a ten-year-old sometime.Plus I wonder how this can disorient one's moral compass point. By that, I mean that for certain individuals the line can shift rather easily. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the same perspective which justifies rule-breaking, per either the spirit or the letter of the law, could lead to using other means to gain an advantage, such as performance-enhancing drugs.
     I'm not naive enough to think competitive sports ever will be free of such misbehavior. The darker side of human nature can come out in competition, and I've spent enough time with elite athletes to know they will do just about anything to gain an edge. And I like to win at whatever I'm doing. But I also know all the wonderful lessons that I learned through athletics. Those are what we need to stress with our developing athletes more than anything else. Therein lies the real victory.

Power of Positive Feedback

                Last week my seventh-grade son had a very exciting volleyball match, and his team won after having lost to these opponents twice previously. The two schools are fierce rivals. As I left the gym, I saw another father and his son , who was from the other team. The dad was chewing him out about a series of mistakes the boy and his teammates had made. Once he finished ripping into the boy, dad snarled, “Let’s go so that I can get you to tennis.” An important bit of background is that all these boys just took up the sport this year.

                Having coached for over thirty years and having two children who have played sports, I have seen more scenes like this than I can remember. Unfortunately, as a coach I’ve sometimes lapsed into similar behavior. I don’t think I’ve done it as a parent, at least not too badly. (Maybe that is selective memory…) Something about athletics seems to bring out some of the more unsavory aspects in people. Maybe it’s our innate competitiveness; perhaps it’s because it’s so public. Of course, simplified psychology suggests we dream of our kids fulfilling our own thwarted athletic fantasies. It suggests a value system. I don’t know. I have wondered if the same sort of thing happens in the art world. You do hear stories about the archetypal stage mom, so I expect it does. With my sophomore daughter becoming involved in theater, I guess I’ll find out.

                I started thinking about classrooms and the desire to have students take risks. Let’s consider an English class. Perhaps the teacher has encouraged students to use more sophisticated diction or to craft more elaborate sentence structures. When a student does so, he or she may make mistakes. At that moment, the feedback is crucial. Does the teacher praise the attempt and give credit for that, or does the teacher take off points because it’s wrong? Most students’ response to either approach is obvious. I wonder which one occurs more often. Both must happen to some degree, and striking the right balance for any individual is tricky.

                In the example just cited, at least the feedback often is private. In athletics and arts, students perform in public. I recall a response I once gave to someone complaining about coaches being too serious about their sports and demanding too much practice time. I asked her to imagine if her students had to take their tests in front of their peers and families, with people yelling at them, a running grade being kept on a scoreboard.

                Contrast any instance of negative feedback to the following anecdote. Last week I published a post titled “Heed the Dodo” in which I linked recent works by Howard Rheingold and Will Richardson. These men are true leaders in their fields. Rheingold, who has taught at Stanford and UC-Berkeley, explores the relationship between technology and human intelligence. Richardson is one of the most important voices in the education debate and the desperate need for reform. As usual, after putting up a post, I tweeted an announcement. Then, something inspired me to tweet Rheingold and Richardson about the post. After all, I follow both of them. I didn’t know what to expect. One time I tried replying to a tweet by Tom Peters and heard nothing. But within a couple of hours both Rheingold and Richardson replied with some very nice words. Even more, they re-tweeted my original message to their combined 70,000 or so followers.

                Now, bear in mind that I am 51 years old, and I have been fairly successful in my field. But when this happened, I did a literal and metaphorical jig while letting out a whoop of joy. I bragged about it at dinner that night. A few days later, it still makes me smile. In time the nice memory will linger, but the emotions will fade.

                Four points strike me as significant reminders from this. One, these gentlemen could have simply ignored my tweet or dismissed my reaching out. Instead, they responded with a generous spirit and simple act of kindness. Two, little things matter, particularly in how they can make one feel. Indeed, how you make someone feel may matter more than any particular action. Three, this is particularly important when working with young people, who are developing the cognitive strength to put things into perspective. Four, the closer the source, the more impactful the feedback.

                My son’s volleyball team plays that other school again soon. After the game, win or lose, as I always do, I’ll wrap my arm around my boy, give him a high five, and tell him I’m proud of him.

Say It Ain’t So, Lance

So Lance Armstrong has given up his fight against all the doping accusations. 

This makes me sad. I desperately want to believe that Lance didn’t cheat as part of his remarkable story. He says this is not an admission of guilt, just that he is worn out by the “witch hunt,” the “nonsense,” and the “toll on his family.” He believes he cannot win in an unfair fight. I can understand that, particularly since he is the most drug-tested person in history. Of course, many people will ask, “Why now?” There will be the conclusion some sort of deal is being struck because the anti-doping agency finally has the goods on Lance. Maybe so.

But that’s not what depresses me. During my life I’ve seen plenty of heroes fall because of their human flaws. I understand that’s the power of classical tragedy, and that in modern tragedy all humans (not just the “great” ones) have our flaws that bring us down.

What really makes me sad is how blasé people seem to feel about this. Similarly, while I care, I have to admit I’ll be disappointed but not surprised if he did cheat. I had discussed this with several people throughout the saga, and many simply assume he cheated. Indeed, they would be much more shocked to learn that he hadn’t than that he had. After all, cycling is a sport in which illegal doping has gone on for years, with amphetamines used heavily before that. We’ve seen the prevalence of PEDs in many other sports. Just this week two major league baseball players received fifty-game suspensions for illegal use of testosterone. Much of the commentary I’ve heard on one focused not on the act, but on the ludicrous attempt to cover it up by creating a fake website. I worry that we accept, even expect, cheating to be part of sport now.

By extension, then, what do children come to internalize as normative behavior? That holds true in many aspects of their lives, particularly since they haven’t developed their filters yet. I’m not suggesting that we have to express outrage at every turn.  I just hope we are talking about cases like this with our children in ways they can begin to understand.

That’s why I want Lance to be clean. I yearn for champions who inspire. I love to tell kids, “Look at what this guy did. Listen to his story. It’s incredible! You don’t have to cheat or take shortcuts.” Now I have more doubt in Lance than I had before.  And if he really is clean, then I want him to keep fighting, just like he did/does against cancer, no matter how much the struggle beats him down. Because that’s another lesson we have to try to teach young people: that when you truly believe you’ve done the right thing, you keep on fighting the good fight.

I believe it was Charles Barkley who said professional athletes should not be given the responsibility of being role models (or something along those lines). That reminds me of celebrities who complain about a lack of privacy. In both cases, it simply comes with the territory, rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly. That’s why, even with all the good he has done through LiveStrong—maybe even more so because of that—one of my first thoughts upon seeing today’s headline was, “Say it ain’t so, Lance.”

Lin-Sane Rush to Judgment

                This morning I clicked over to www.cnn.com, and there was the latest Jeremy Lin piece: a video titled “Jeremy Lin’s lessons for success.” Below the video were link to multiple other Lin videos and stories. (One was Letterman’s top-ten worst Lin puns, a part of which I’m sure my title could become, but I simply couldn’t resist.) I hear he’s been added to NBA all-star events. All this, I keep thinking, after a streak of seven excellent games. Meanwhile, I look at the book my wife pulled off the shelf last night and left in the den: Mandela’s Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage.

                I am fascinated by the Jeremy Lin story—not just the athletic angle, not just the overnight sensation angle. I’m intrigued by what it is revealing about so many facets of our cultural anthology. Lin embodies the quixotic notion that with hard work and perseverance, anyone can achieve his or her dreams. Plus his parents moved to California from Taiwan, so it has the immigrant angle. And that last aspect is part of what I find most compelling: at the same time, Lin both affirms and discredits commonly held stereotypes. Asian-American who graduates from Harvard? Got it; makes sense. Star point guard in the NBA from Harvard? Maybe, but unlikely. Asian-American star point guard in the NBA? You’re kidding me.

                So it’s natural that we’ve been inundated with Lin stories. They are remarkable and inspiring, and we have an obsession with athletics. It’s very similar to the Tebow-mania from a couple months back, and there have been several pieces comparing the two. Whose rise is more amazing? Whose story is more compelling? Which of the two is more likely to last? We have no way of knowing, and we even are wondering. Some are doubting. Yet at the same time we already have granted Lin some sort of mythic status.

                Watching the story unfold, I can’t help but think of certain young athletes I’ve worked with and watched through the years. I always find one oft-repeated story the saddest. I’ll share a single tale that captures the essence of the narrative. I’ll call the boy Joe. In the early grades, Joe was a soccer star. While other kids were forming a hive or doing cartwheels, he was scoring all the goals. Unusually agile, fast, and big for his age, he dominated. With it came all the accolades, particularly the predictions that later he would be a star. Certainly he would play in college, maybe even the pros. His father loved all this and encouraged it to a large degree. The problem was, Joe succeeded early on because he was physically precocious. He dominated only because of that. He did not develop skills or a real sense of the game. Even by middle school Joe was an average player. He never made the high school varsity. His confidence suffered not just in athletics, but in other areas.

                While obviously I’m talking about people at two extremes of the sports ladder, they both capture our desire—maybe even basic need—to anoint a hero. When we do that, we place unrealistic and thus unfair expectations on the emerging idol because of our own desires. For a professional athlete, particularly a superstar, that simply is part of the job. But it shouldn’t be part of the job of growing up. Doing that is hard enough, and children inevitably disappoint their parents. It’s part of how we all learn. And those are the moments when it’s probably most important that we recall and stress what really constitutes long-term success.

                Young people also see that, as quickly as we crown heroes, we will knock them down. For a while there, Tebow was the amazing story, defying all those who said he couldn’t make it as an NFL quarterback. Remember how the Broncos knocked out the Steelers and he was celebrated? Then they were crushed by the Patriots, and all the naysayers chanted, “Told you so.” It’s difficult to convince young people that setbacks and failures are all right when they see this unfold. And our criticism is illogical. I’m perpetually amazed how quick we are to lambaste professional athletes, who are the best in the world in ways many of us can’t conceive. I’ve competed against some professional soccer players, and it humbled me quite quickly. It also helps me remain grateful for the fact that, while I couldn’t reach the highest levels, I loved playing and gained massive life lessons.

                I’m rooting for Jeremy Lin. I want this to be a happily-ever-after story. We crave those. But rather than get too swept up in the Lin-sanity, let’s also use it as a reminder to keep youth athletics in perspective.

An Athletic Education

                Watching Game 2 of the World Series last night, I had one of those moments that reminded me why I love sports and their educational value.

                I think it was in the fifth inning. I say think because, despite the tension of the game, I was dozing off a bit. Suddenly there was the Rangers shortstop, Elvis Andrus, lunging full length at a sharp grounder straight up the field. He snared the ball, managed to prop himself up on his other elbow, and flipped the ball out of his glove towards second base. Second baseman Ian Kinsler arrived just in time—he had been shaded towards first base and thus had extra far to go—to catch the flip right before the runner arrived. Crisis averted. Without this play, the Rangers probably don’t win. (Amazingly, the defensive duo had pulled off a pretty sweet play to end the previous inning as well; it just wasn’t as spectacular.) I snapped wide awake.

                Let’s think about what qualities were captured in this play. There was pure athleticism on display. Both Andrus and Kinsler made great individual efforts. They reacted instinctively, and Andrus was amazingly innovative. At the same time, they had to collaborate in perfect sync. In those couple of seconds, we saw the result of thousands of hours of practice. Interestingly, in the past both players have been criticized at times for making too many errors, so they certainly have shown resilience. Andrus also put aside individual ego for the team. After game, when asked about the play, he said, “I always say when you're not hitting good, you better do something good defensively.” And he did get a key hit in the ninth inning rally.

                Certainly my experience playing soccer drilled into me the importance of these qualities. In fact, I think about the reasons I was drawn to the sport. First, I simply found it fun because it challenged me in ways no other sport did. Second, soccer provides ample room for tremendous individual creativity and flair within a strong team concept. One of my favorite players was Vladislav Bogicevic, a Yugoslavian who played for the New York Cosmos in their glory days. Bogie had magical skills and amazing vision. Rather than look to score, he continually tried to make the unexpected killer pass. He derived pleasure from untangling the knot and from making others look good. I found myself trying to play that way (admittedly, sometimes to my coaches’ consternation, when I would not take certain shots). Today, I frequently say most of the qualities that serve me well emerged during my soccer career.

                This notion calls to mind the story I once read about an upper-level math teacher’s response to the inevitable question, “When are we ever going to use this?” He told the students that they might have to, but they very well may not. Then he compared it to lifting weights as part of training for a sport or for better health. They weren’t, he explained, doing math for the sake of doing math. They really were pumping intellectual iron to strengthen themselves. The analogy works better than the response I’ve often given to that question: “You may, or you may not. But you want to be ready because you never know what life may throw at you.”

                All schools actually teach two curricula: the explicit and the implicit. The explicit is what you normally think of—the objectives, standards, content, skills, et cetera. The implicit curricula encompass all the other lessons that occur along the way, such as self-discipline and perseverance. Both certainly matter; and, structured well and intentionally, they feed each other in a virtuous circle. It can happen anywhere. I know people who talk about their theater experiences, for example, in the same way I talk about soccer. In fact, the implicit curricula is learned in very powerful, often longer-lasting ways than the explicit. I don’t recall much calculus, but I do remember the logical precision that Dr. Haytock required. And while my touch on the ball is now rather pathetic, I draw on other skills every day.

Winning at What Cost?

By now most of you have probably seen the video of a trick play pulled off by the Driscoll Middle School (Corpus Christi) football team. The video went viral rather quickly, and a column about it by Frank Deford has appeared on both npr.com and cnn.com. This post will echo some of Deford’s points—although I think he goes a bit far in equating it to child abuse—and, I hope, put my own spin on this.

When you first watch the play, it can be easy to agree with the 92.1% of poll respondents who called the play “genius.” It is creative and totally effective, and it’s within the rules of game. But I’ve grown dismayed as I’ve read some of the comments on various sites about the play. Most people see absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Here’s what wrong with it. The players are kids. Not even high school kids. Middle school kids. They are at an age when they should be learning fundamentals and teamwork and sportsmanship. We should be teaching kids not just how to be good losers, but gracious and dignified winners. Instead, this sort of antic introduces the notion that only the result matters, not the manner in which it may be attained. Yes, the play is within the rules. But it’s very easy to make the leap from this to breaking the rules, and that it’s okay if the official misses it. That is, unless it’s being done to your team.  I’m reminded of how the rector at my church recently told of a conversation he’d overheard. A father had violated a traffic law. His son said, “Dad, isn’t that illegal?” The father responded, “It’s only illegal if you get caught.”

Speaking of the adult in charge, he may have shown a spark of genius in designing this play. But keep one thing in mind. He used kids to pull this off on a bunch of other kids. That doesn’t require genius. It requires narcissism. It necessitated his need for everyone to see just how clever he is. It reminds me of those teachers who are always teaching over the heads of their students, just to illustrate how brilliant they are. It feeds their egos, but not the kids’ growth.

Also, the play may not violate the literal rules of American football. It does, however, seem to violate the spirit of the game. That’s debatable. But part of the deception involves a coach yelling that his team has committed a penalty. He may not deserve a yellow flag, but he certainly breaks a pretty basic life rule: thou shall not lie.

If this had happened in a professional game, I would cut the coach a bit of slack. A tiny bit. At least there he would have been competing against athletes with a richer understanding of the sport who could react to such chicanery. Professional sports are rife with it. A long-time soccer player and fan, I’m particularly aware of the “gamesmanship” associated with my sport. I’ve heard more than enough jokes about players taking dives and faking injuries. It’s a sport that has “the professional foul.”  Growing up and moving higher in the ranks, I encountered more and more of it; sometimes I was even coached how to do it. But I had no patience for it as a player, and I hate it as a fan. I was fortunate that most of my coaches didn’t let us get away with such cynical play, and I’ve never allowed it from my own players. It’s about integrity.

I know from personal experience the powerful impact sports can have on individual development. I attribute most of what now serves me well to my soccer background. So I worry about what the kids on the Driscoll team are learning. I also wonder about something else. Suppose your child/player were on the opposing team. How would you turn this into a learning experience for them given the cultural reaction to the incident?