Young athletes are often encouraged by their coaches to give 110 percent effort in every game. But what happens when they actually do their best and have a modicum of talent? They are chastised for exhibiting unsportsmanlike conduct.
It’s been called unsportsmanlike. It’s been called ugly. The question now is whether Christian Heritage (Utah) High, which routed West Ridge (Utah) Academy, 108-3, in a girls basketball game last week, actually did anything wrong by blowing out an overwhelmed opponent.
The stunning scoreline — from a varsity game in which Christian Heritage reportedly never used a full-court press — nearly defies belief. As reported in the Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune, Christian Heritage scored 28 points per quarter for the first three periods and 24 in the fourth, providing a consistent average of nearly two baskets per minute across the entire game. . . .
“I don’t know why the score was that high, or what the point was,” Jamie Keefer, West Ridge’s athletic director and a coach for the girls’ team, told the Salt Lake Tribune. “I don’t think it would’ve happened that way if it were the other way around.”
Yet while Christian Heritage is a clear and obvious target for criticism, Crusaders coach Rob McGill has argued that he had little choice. According to ABC 4 News out of Salt Lake City, the program had just nine players available for both the varsity and junior varsity games against West Ridge, leaving the coach with little option when considering whether to pull out his starters early in the game.
And with his starters still in the game, McGill decided it would be more disrespectful to slow the ball down and pass around the perimeter than continuing to run the team’s offense.
“I have been on the other side of this equation,” McGill told ABC 4. “It was very insulting when teams slowed the ball down and just passed it around. That’s why I’d rather have a team play me straight up, and that’s why I played them straight up. Because I didn’t want to taunt them, I didn’t want to embarrass them, I didn’t want them to think we could do whatever we want.”
Coach McGill is absolutely right. There is no shame in losing—even by 100 points—if you give your best effort. But it is shameful and dishonorable to treat a sports opponent as if they are not worthy of your full effort. When you step onto the playing field you want your competitor to play fairly and to the utmost of their skills and talent. As Jesus said, “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12). That is what is required of an honorable sportsman.
Of course, this being America, if you exhibit excellence and talent you’ll likely hurt someone’s feelings, which means you’ll need to apologize. The administrators of Christian Heritage not only apologized to West Ridge for the 105-point margin but also agreed to meet again before the two teams play each other again on February 3 to ensure that “a blowout like this doesn’t happen again.”
“We’re going to sit down with them and make sure they know how we feel,” said Christian Heritage head of school Don Hopper. “We didn’t mean to do anything to hurt them or upset them. It got away from us, and we’re going to do things differently next time.”
What terrible lessons to be teaching these children. On one side they are told that if they work hard at honing their skills and teamwork, that they’ll be expected to hold back—give less than 110%—so that they don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. On the other side they are being told that adults believe they are so fragile that the only recourse is to ask the other team to condescend to them and treat them as inferior.
The fact is that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you get thrashed like Walter Mondale in ’84. That’s life. If we don’t have the courage to tell that to our children, then let’s adjust our expectations—and coaching clichés—accordingly.
January 26th, 2011 | 9:45 am
I disagree Joe. Unless the score is 300-200, winning by 100 points in a basketball game is wrong, plain and simple. It doesn’t matter if the losing team is “giving their best effort”, an athletic contest that one-sided benefits no one. It’s not a good challenge for the winning team and it’s not a good learning experience for the losing team. Youth sports should have mercy rules specifically to prevent issues like this. I also think the winning coach should have been self-aware enough to maybe talk to the other coach at half-time to determine the best outcome for this.
On a related note, anyone notice that the two winning teams in recent stories like this were Christian schools? I’m not sure if that means anything, just wanted to bring it up.
January 26th, 2011 | 9:54 am
Chris Blackstone . . .is wrong, plain and simple.
Why is it wrong?
It’s not a good challenge for the winning team and it’s not a good learning experience for the losing team.
Would it be a better challenge for the winning team if they didn’t do their best and played as if they didn’t respect the other team enough to try their best?
Also, if learning to lose gracefully is considered a “good learning experience” (as most people believe), then why does the score change that?
January 26th, 2011 | 9:57 am
I have no objection to being trashed; it’s happened to me on more than one occasion. It builds character, I can tell you.
I do object to coaches who do not use such blowout situations to allow their second and third string players some playing time. Once there is no realistic chance of loosing, why not put in the bench warmers? They are part of the team, the contribute even if most of the time they just sit there. It will give them some experience and might come in handy if one of the first stringers should get injured. For that matter, injuries happen even in blowouts, so why not sit down your first string and avoid the risk?
January 26th, 2011 | 9:58 am
Hey Chris, I’m with Joe on this one. Certainly you give the starters plenty of rest and the second and third string experience in a game like this, but how do you play basketball so as to avoid such a lopsided victory when all you have are starters? The coach had it right, to treat their opponents with kid gloves would have been insulting. In chess you can arrange a handicap to even up matters but that is never done in tournament play.
About the only criticism I can think of here is that the small team might not have been much of a team. That is, it’s possible that the team was limited to only the best as winning was everything. OTOH, perhaps only those nine at that high school wanted to play.
January 26th, 2011 | 10:19 am
When the score was 56-3 at halftime the coaches should have called it off.
January 26th, 2011 | 10:44 am
I agree with Barry. In most Little League baseball games I know of, when the margin reaches 7 (or 10?) runs, the game is called after the losing team bats. But Joe’s point is certainly well-taken.
January 26th, 2011 | 10:54 am
I think it is more defensible in basketball. As the coach said, passing the ball around woulc or could be worse than running up the score. If he didn’t have a bench, who else was he going to play?
I think it depends on the sport, however. I think it is reasonable in football for a coach to switch to a running game and not continue a big-play pass offense if there is a big score disparity. Unlike passing the ball around, which seems a bit insulting, it is reasonable to run the ball and eat up the clock in a blowout. It has the advantage of being both appropriate football and charitable.
But if there is no similar appropriate option for a given sport as there is in football, or if you can’t put in second- or third-string players, I agree the only option is to let them play.
January 26th, 2011 | 11:00 am
If it’s insulting to not play your best, how is it any less insulting to beat a team by over 100 points? The former at least acknowledges the obvious inequality with some sympathy. The latter simply rubs it in the other’s face.
January 26th, 2011 | 11:06 am
As a former high school basketball player from Northern Michigan who was “mercied” in a game (we had a 4-16 record), I bring a slightly different viewpoint to this story.
Being blown out in a game teaches some very valuable lessons. Yes, does it hurt your pride? Good. If you can’t back up your boasting on the court, you just received a great mental check. It also provides a great opportunity for you to reevaluate your weaknesses and strengths, both mentally and relating to the game at hand.
In my 4-16 sophomore season, we learned that we had to bone up on the fundamentals and we further learned that we needed to try new ways to play. Our offensive and defensive schemes changed throughout the season, so despite our terrible record, we still were having fun and not getting bored (although we all wanted that season to end).
The most depressing and terrible moment was when we were losing by 40 points one game in the third quarter. By state association rules, the basketball mercy rule was put into effect. That mercy rule changed the clock from its traditional start/stop for fouls and violations to a soccer-like running clock (except for timeouts). That was the most embarrasing moment of all. Basketball’s fluid structure can be a beautiful game. That “Michigan mercy rule” hurt my teammates and myself more than losing by that wide margin. How, you may ask? In a timed-sport, you know that you need to give it your all. Sure, we were getting annihilated on the court, yet we were doing the best we could. We traveled 70+ miles to play that game, but the “adults” said that we couldn’t handle it. We were still trying to block shots, steal passes and score ourselves. That year, we didn’t play 20 full games, we only played 19.5. What did that teach us in life?
The brightest and most unexpected side of that sports year, was that when baseball season rolled around, we beat every single one of those teams, eventually winning the Cherryland Conference baseball title and a good run in the state tournament, although we were cut way short by one bad regional championship game.
So, the biggest sports and life lesson from that 4-16 basketball season is summed up with this sentence: Give it your best in all that you do; it is through this process that you may find what it is you were meant to do.
January 26th, 2011 | 11:42 am
I disagree with you, Joe. A couple of years ago in Dallas, the high school girls basketball team of a Christian school beat its hapless opponents by 100 points. It was a humiliation for the losing team. Parents of the winning team were in the stands screaming bloody murder, egging on their girls to beat the crap out of the losers, to run the score up to 100 points. In the aftermath, there was a lot of community outrage at the Christian school for exhibiting “winning is everything” mercilessness. It was a public relations nightmare — admittedly, one that wouldn’t have been so bad had the winners not been from a Christian school. The winning coach said publicly he didn’t see a thing wrong with the blowout, as long as his team didn’t cheat (and nobody accused them of doing so). Ultimately he was fired, and the Christian school forfeited that game, considering the victory under such circumstances a shameful thing.
A friend of mine is the headmaster at that school, and took a lot of public abuse for the way his coach and the parents behaved. I think in the end, he and the school’s leadership did the right thing. I don’t think there is anything to be proud of, beating opponents so mercilessly. If this were college ball, or professional ball, that’d be a different thing. But these were high school kids from small schools. Winning isn’t everything; winning honorably is more important. “Winning honorably” doesn’t mean simply “winning without cheating,” not in my view. A 100-point blowout is not sporting, no matter how you look at it.
January 26th, 2011 | 11:54 am
Uh…you do realize that the rival school is one for troubled kids, right? It’s nowhere near a varsity program. It’s creepy, actually:
“While at the Academy, your child will live in a cottage with mentoring adults. Each student is placed in a nurturing home where trained home parents will provide an atmosphere of learning and accountability. Our model, utilizing home parents and an unmarried live-in who make up the home staff, is meant to partially resemble the family environment of home.”
From their philosophy at http://westridgeacademy.com/philosophy.aspx
I’m wondering why this school is even competing in varsity sports in the first place. Considering that each kid has a therapist who is the main liason to their parents, and students literally have to be taught how to make and keep agreements, this makes all your words a bit flat.
January 26th, 2011 | 11:57 am
While, generally speaking, I’m with Joe on this, the coach sure didn’t show a lot of imagination on how to compete without overtly humiliating the other team. Instead of just passing the ball around, he could have required his players to shoot layups with their weak hands only or from a certain distance. There are ways to challenge your players without just stalling the game out. When I coached soccer, if I ran into this situation, I would require that the players only attempt to score off of crosses, which is difficult for young players — it allowed us to maintain an attempt to score while working on our own skills.
Also, I had a team that was, at the beginning of the season, victim of a 5-0 beatdown where we hardly crossed the halfway line — and they took it easy on us. At the end of the season we played that team again and almost beat them, losing 2-3 in a nailbiter. The team that had beaten us so easily came into the game super cocky and were surprised at how much we had improved, and at the end of the game, even though we we lost, my players knew how much their hard work had paid off — they weren’t happy with the result, but they were proud of how much they had improved. So sometimes a good beatdown can be helpful.
January 26th, 2011 | 12:06 pm
Let us not fall into the mistake of raising nerf kids. The world does not come with foam rubber padding, and in the real world, your adversaries don’t let up when you are down, they pound you twice as hard.
And what applies to individuals applies in spades to organizations right up to nation states. I used to say that everything you need to know about international relations you can learn on the playground by fourth grade. No longer true on American playgrounds, which goes far to explaining why we get played for suckers so often in the international arena.
When our enemies play sports, they definitely don’t have a “mercy rule”.
January 26th, 2011 | 12:10 pm
It was a humiliation for the losing team.
I don’t understand why, assuming a team played their best, that it would be a humiliation to lose by 100 points.
Parents of the winning team were in the stands screaming bloody murder, egging on their girls to beat the crap out of the losers, to run the score up to 100 points.
If the parents acted poorly, then that is an issue that should be considered separately from the ethics of the gameplay.
In the aftermath, there was a lot of community outrage at the Christian school for exhibiting “winning is everything” mercilessness.
That’s not surprising. Even though people mock the everybody-gets-a-trophy, let’s-not-keep-score mentality, they display the same attitude once a team displays true excellence on the sports field.
Winning isn’t everything, of course, but if you play in a way that panders to the other team, that displays poor sportsmanship.
The winning coach said publicly he didn’t see a thing wrong with the blowout, as long as his team didn’t cheat (and nobody accused them of doing so).
The outraged should have been reserved for the losing coach. If begin blown out was such a big deal, then he should have foresighted the game himself.
Ultimately he was fired, and the Christian school forfeited that game, considering the victory under such circumstances a shameful thing.
If they are going to subvert the entire reason for teaching athletics, they should just shut down their entire athletic program. To forfeit the victory is a slap in the face to the students that did their best and played their hardest.
January 26th, 2011 | 12:22 pm
Dblade – very much an important point. Special schools may require special approaches. Not always. But it is wise to know the territory.
Running up the score is less problematic the older the children are. It is contemptible at elementary school level, but by high school varsity, I see no problem. It is miserable to go through it at the time, but every child should have the opportunity at some point to play for a team that doesn’t win anything. Diving after loose balls when you are down 80 points has a certain nobility about it that is useful for the adult character. I’ve been on the bad end of blowouts as both a player and a parent.
January 26th, 2011 | 12:46 pm
I don’t remember there being an “everybody gets a trophy” mentality when I grew up, but I still learned that playing one’s best included “sportsmanlike conduct”. That included the idea that, once a game was a foregone conclusion, there was no purpose to pushing oneself. You aren’t “playing your best” when you’ve so demoralized the other team that they’re basically handing you the ball, then standing around to watch you shoot another field goal. You’d do better to save the effort for your next practice. Indeed, you might be doing your players some harm: risking injury for no apparent reason, and giving them an inflated sense of their abilities.
As a totally cheap shot, I’ll remark that the score discrepancy demonstrates why basketball is such a boring sport. Any game where it’s simultaneously so easy to score more than a hundred points, and so hard to score even one, has fundamental flaws.
January 26th, 2011 | 12:55 pm
It’s not a given that a residential treatment facility can’t have competitive varsity athletics. It’s not uncommon for that to be the case. There’s such a facility for boys in our athletic district that holds its own — they’re never the champs, but they win events in various sports. They’re not 0 and whatever in everything.
And I’m not sure what’s creepy about house-parents and live-in aids in a cottage setting, but maybe I’m missing something.
And those who insist this was wrong no matter what — what alternative do you offer the coach, that does not involve the condescending humiliation of telling his own players not to try? Calling the game — which implies that the losing opponent isn’t even worth playing? There’s nothing that can be done that doesn’t reflect badly on the losing team — the best of a bad situation seems to be to play the game fairly with an honest effort on both sides.
January 26th, 2011 | 1:23 pm
there was a recent episode in high school football where two teams colluded to allow one of the players who had down syndrome to run 50 yards and score a touchdown. it was the last play of the last game of the season.
i thought it was the most condescending thing i had ever seen. my co-workers thought it was the nicest thing they had ever seen.
so i agree with joe. assuming the player with down syndrome wants to compete and be an athlete, the best way to honor him is to treat him like a football player. and tackle him.
January 26th, 2011 | 1:26 pm
I tened to agree with Joe until this comment, “you do realize that the rival school is one for troubled kids, right? It’s nowhere near a varsity program?”
I assume the Christian coach scouted the opposition and could estimate the relative strengths of the schools and predict the likely outcome.
The question is, “Do Christian coaches and schools approach sports differently than non-Christian schools? Doss being Christian mean anything?”
One Christian Texas football coach faced with
this situation thought so. His powerhouse school was scheduled to play a school that hadn’t won a game in years. The school was the state juvenile delinquency prison. They didn’t get the best coaches, equipment or booster and apparent support. It was expected that the Christian school would blow out the overmatched, and uncared for juvenile prisoners.
The story is told in the book, “Remember Why You Play.” The Christian coach organized his parents so half sat on the opposing team’s side. Those half were to cheer for the opposing players during the game. One fence was decorated in the opposing team’s colors and snacks were provided to the opposing team’s players.
Noen of this changed the on-field result. The Christian powerhouse won handily, but each first down, each gain, each sack or stop by the prison team was treated by its temporary Christian supporters as a victory. The players were overwhelmed by the support they got and scheduled a return game the next year. This event made national news and the next year, the NFL commissioner attended the game.
That’s hat happens when a Christian coach and team think as “Christian” first and sports participants second.
106-3 wasn’t unsportsmanlike–it was not Christ-like. Rod’s point is well taken-too. That would have been a firing offense at a Christian school.
January 26th, 2011 | 1:32 pm
And those who insist this was wrong no matter what — what alternative do you offer the coach, that does not involve the condescending humiliation of telling his own players not to try?
This compulsion to raise a false dichotomy between “not trying” and “running up the score” reflects, in my opinion, an impoverished view of sportsmanship.
On the other had, those who insist on the dichotomy say that we who disagree have an impoverished view of sportsmanship.
Perhaps we ought to define the term first.
January 26th, 2011 | 1:33 pm
It’s creepy to shuttle a kid off to replacement parents in a forced therapeutical situation. Yeah, it may be unavoidable in cases of substance abuse, which is part of what that school deals with, but I keep thinking about boot camp approaches when I think of that.
Pentamom, the point is that the school shouldn’t have a varsity program. This isn’t an isolated example-the school lost 70-0 against another school. I’d argue that losing that bad does not teach good sportsmanship-it teaches you that you probably shouldn’t be playing basketball against other school teams.
As for the winning team, its probably humiliating to face off against someone who can’t play. You just want to get it over with as fast as possible if you are forced to it.
January 26th, 2011 | 1:40 pm
That’s hat happens when a Christian coach and team think as “Christian” first and sports participants second.
Why in the world is it considered “Christian” to condescend to people? Cheering on a losing opponent because they come from a disadvantaged background is insulting and there is nothing God-honoring about insulting people so that we can feel good about “loving our neighbors.”
106-3 wasn’t unsportsmanlike–it was not Christ-like.
Oh good grief. Though I disagree, I can respect the view that it may be unsportsmanlike. But to say it is “not Christ-like” is absurd. Christ says that we should treat others the way we want to be treated. Do we want other people to condescend to us and act as if we are so fragile that losing a game will damage our psyches? If not, then let’s not treat others that way either.
January 26th, 2011 | 2:11 pm
Also, on the point about Christ-like, I think we should consider, “What would Jesus do?”
I suspect that if I were playing Jesus in a game of one-on-one that he would run the score up on me. He’d probably also dunk on me every change he got. ; )
January 26th, 2011 | 2:40 pm
Joe Carter, it is not condescending to stop fighting a defeated foe.
At some point, fair battle becomes massacre. I do not know exactly where that point is, but I do know that there’s a reason why we start to get uncomfortable when we see the margin between two opponents get too huge.
It has to do with the idea that there is something hideous and unfair about battle between two foes seriously outmatched: that in such a case the stronger foe should use only the force necessary to win – but should skip the demonstrations of dominance because unnecessary humiliation is cruel.
This is only sports, not a “battle”, but I still think it would be appropriate (at least if students are involved) to set a point where the game is declared over if one team gets so far ahead of the other that there is no reasonable way for the other to catch up. For one thing, the victorious players are going to be criticized no matter which way their coach calls it – for lacking mercy or for not playing to win. For another, it’s uncomfortable for the spectators to have to watch a ,massacre.
January 26th, 2011 | 2:42 pm
Who scheduled this game? The problem lies not in the behavior of the winning coach and players, but in the match-up.
I see no problem in the winning school running their offense and playing their best until the end of the game.
Joe McFaul wrote: 106-3 wasn’t unsportsmanlike–it was not Christ-like. Rod’s point is well taken-too. That would have been a firing offense at a Christian school.
How then, shall we be Christ-like in athletics? Do we arrange our own humiliation and scourging and then call the defeat a victory? What if we meet a Christian on the athletic field? Does the victory go to the more humiliated of the two teams?
Winning is a firing offense? Perhaps there was fireable off-court behavior, but the original article is about on-court behavior.
Rod Dreher wrote: “If this were college ball, or professional ball, that’d be a different thing. But these were high school kids from small schools. ”
I disagree, Rod, and you’re underestimating these kids.
Jack Perry wrote: Any game where it’s simultaneously so easy to score more than a hundred points, and so hard to score even one, has fundamental flaws.
His problem, again, is not with the game, but with the disparity in the matchup.
Joe Carter, Thanks, I enjoyed your article.
January 26th, 2011 | 2:43 pm
“Pentamom, the point is that the school shouldn’t have a varsity program. ”
Do you mean this school shouldn’t, because there’s reason to think that the students aren’t up to it because of their other issues? That may be a fair assessment, although I don’t think either of us know enough about the situation to know that. But I hope you don’t mean that a treatment facility per se shouldn’t have a varsity team — many do, successfully, and it can be a benefit to the kids.
Some of these kids are “shuttled off” not because the parents want it that way, but because the kids are court-ordered because of juvenile violations; because the parents genuinely *are* far less fit (substance abuse being only one among many possible reasons) than the “substitutes,” or because the parents themselves are abusive. While the situation is no doubt sad, in a fallen world the word “creepy” just seems an odd way to describe something that is genuinely aimed at helping kids who’d be in worse circumstances without it.
Jack, I’m not being contentious here — what’s the middle ground between not trying, and not continuing to score when you’re playing a game and the other team isn’t successfully defending its goal? Joe pointed out that there was no full-court press the whole game, so it’s not like they were continually shoving the ball down the other girls’ throats. I’m not being sarcastic. Call it a lack of imagination if you will, but I need help seeing what that would look like.
January 26th, 2011 | 3:01 pm
Rod Dreher +1
Running up the score that much reflects poorly on the winning team. It shows a lack of humility, compassion, and above all, class.
The goal should be to win, not humiliate.
January 26th, 2011 | 3:03 pm
Blake Joe Carter, it is not condescending to stop fighting a defeated foe.
If battle if you stop fighting, you have not defeated them. It is wrong, however, to keep fighting a foe that has surrendered.
Which brings us back to the question of why, if this is such a horrid situation, that the losing coach didn’t forfeit. Why is it the obligation of the winning team to play as if the other team has forfeited when they have not?
On Friday Night Lights—the greatest show on television—there was a situation similar to this. The coach forfeited the game because his players were getting stomped (and actually getting hurt). The player were furious. They were trying their hardest and doing what their coach had told them to do—play to the best of their ability. But the coach looked at the scoreboard rather than to the hearts of his players to determine what to do. He later realized he made the wrong choice.
If the kids have the heart to keep playing, then the coach should not stop the game even if the team was losing by 200 points. But if his players were so fragile that losing by such a margin would affect their self-esteem, then he should forfeit the game—and quit coaching since he would obviously be doing a lousy job in instilling character in his players.
January 26th, 2011 | 3:06 pm
The goal should be to win, not humiliate.
Can someone please explain to me what is humiliating about losing? I’m completely serious. I don’t understand the connection.
I’ve lost a lot of games, some by a wide margin (I’m bad at sports). Yet I’ve never felt “humiliated” for doing my best and playing hard. If the other team trounced me then I’d shake their hand and tell them “good game.”
There is no shame in losing—even by a considerable margin. But I think there is something wrong when we teach kids that it is a humiliation for them to lose so badly.
January 26th, 2011 | 3:52 pm
Curious. I don’t understand half the comments. I can understand voluntary forfeits. I can understand winning margins rules. Both need to be in the rules before the game begins. That coach who decided to forfeit rather than let his team get beaten more badly (grammar?) should have asked his players.
Most definitely, this is not war. If the enemy is still fighting, you keep going no matter how badly you’re beating them. We tried body-counts during ‘Nam. They don’t work.
I still wonder why the winning school only had nine benchers for both varsity and junior varsity. My son’s high school swim team is open to everyone. Some improve. Others do not. But the 50 yard is crowded with beginning swimmers learning what it means to compete. Some schools they play have two or three wunderkinder and very little after that. The wunderkinder graduate and nobody cares anymore.
January 26th, 2011 | 4:06 pm
There is winning and there is intentional public humiliation. The latter is not sportsmanship.
January 26th, 2011 | 4:11 pm
I think the question of humiliation brings to bear the difference between Joe’s post and the situation Rod referred to. In the former, the coach had the choice of either overtly trying not to score (which can be taken as condescending or humiliating) or of playing their game, but without the intention of running up the score. In the case Rod mentions, it appeared that there was an intentional effort to run up the score and to try and reach a certain number (and the parents cheering them on).
In both cases you have teams score a high number of points relative to their opponents, so the act is the same. What is different, it appears to me, is the intention between the two. In Joe’s case there appears to be no intention to humiliate, while in Rod’s case there is. And, as Joe continues to point out, we are assuming that losing big equals humiliation. If the athletes are not talking trash, are going about their business, and perhaps even say things like “good play” then there is nothing unsporting about it.
I was recently on the losing side in an intramural soccer game, where the mercy rule went into effect at 5-0. Even though I knew we were going to lose, my job was to still compete on every single play. In fact, I wanted to play past the mercy rule, so I was motivated to do everything I could to keep them out of the goal at 4-0, so I could play. The point of competition is to compete the whole time, to do your best, even if you are overmatched. (Thus General McAuliffe’s reply to the Nazi demand for surrender at the Battle of the Bulge, “Nuts”, was a rejection of the mercy rule.)
I’ve also been on the wrong end of a 10-1 loss, but it was against an excellent team. I wasn’t humiliated, in fact, I was just sad we couldn’t give an excellent team more competition, as I am sure they were a bit bored — but why would I begrudge them their excellence?
Also, as a coach, when you are faced with inferior opposition you run the risk of your players picking up bad habits that may not hurt the team in that particular game, but would hurt you against a better team. In one sense it makes more sense to demand of your players extra special attention to detail and to avoiding sloppy play. I’ve always taken the point of competition to be to challenge me to reach my own level of excellence, something that is more likely if I compete against really good players, but even an inferior opponent can offer up a different set of challenges. And, as I said earlier, I think the coach showed a certain lack of imagination in how to do this without bringing attention to it.
January 26th, 2011 | 4:20 pm
I think we would all agree that there’s something perverse in watching, say, the Pittsburgh Steelers take the field against the East Bumfrack Tigers. Why? Because it wouldn’t be sporting. There would be something dishonorable about enjoying watching the Steelers roll over the high school team. I know, I know, this is a silly hypothetical, but isn’t this the same principle present in the 100-point blowout? That at some point, a sporting contest can become the equivalent of bear-baiting. If my kid had been on the winning team in that match, and had played fair and square, I still would have felt pretty bad about it. “Letter of the law vs. spirit of the law” has something to do with it, I think.
This discussion reminds me of that high school football video that was going around the net a while back — the one in which some high school team made a touchdown by pulling some clever, sneaky, but entirely legal move. Some people said, “What’s wrong with that? They didn’t break any rules.” Others (like me) acknowledged that what was done was legal, but still unsporting, and nothing to be proud of.
It is true, admittedly, that there’s no way for the winners in such a contest to come out looking good. If they ended up letting the other team catch up, they’d be criticized for condescending to their opponents, or distorting the meaning of competition. If they blow the other team out, it looks cruel and even sadistic. Maybe the thing to do when dealing with high school athletes and younger is to have built into the rules a scoring discrepancy threshold that, if reached, automatically ends the game. That way the decision is out of the hands of the coaches, and everybody gets to save some face.
January 26th, 2011 | 4:32 pm
Joe, I agree with the several “lack of imagination” arguments above. This is really a silly dispute. Slow the game down, take additional time on offense, put in second stringers (to the extent possible), stop pressuring the ball on defense, play a less aggressive zone. It’s not hard to avoid scoring 100 points in a game. (Anyone who watched ND beat Pitt on Monday night would know this–particularly this Pitt alum).
January 26th, 2011 | 4:36 pm
And, Rod, we miss you.
January 26th, 2011 | 4:37 pm
Joe,
It’s not condescending to treat a valiant opponent with Christian love. It also wasn’t Jesus who said, “Winning isn’t everything –it’s the only thing.”
I can’t fit all the reasons you are wrong in the comments box.
All I can say is read the book:
“Remember Why You Play”
http://www.amazon.com/Remember-Why-You-Play-Football/dp/1414337272
January 26th, 2011 | 4:50 pm
It’s not condescending to treat a valiant opponent with Christian love.
We both agree, Joe, that sports opponents (like all opponents) should be treated with Christian love. Where we disagree is on what that means.
And for the general crowd: After thinking about this issue some more, I think I’m starting to see why their is a difference of views on this issue. It appears (though I could be wrong) that the side that thinks that running up the score is wrong believes that there is something innately wrong when there is a significant disparity in talent between two teams.
That is why I think that side feels there is an obligation by the superior team to play below the true level of their talent, and to do otherwise is unsporting. The believe that disparities in talent require equalization in order to prevent the other team from feeling inferior (hence, humiliated).
The other side (my side) believes that as long as the teams are reasonably matched (e.g., they are all high school students and no team includes ringers from the WNBA), disparities in talent should not be hidden for the sake of a sense of faux-equality. For this side, the difference between losing by 2 points or 100 points is irrelevant. What matters is that both teams play fairly and to their full potential in order to have an honest game (it’s not honest if you are holding back).
Does that seem like a fair representation of each side?
January 26th, 2011 | 5:02 pm
baconboy speaks wisdom. There are ways of challenging your own team without running up the score. The memory of the game, remember, is not only what happens that day but how it appears in the paper and in the yearbook. The fact that some people don’t consider it a humiliation to lose by a large score doesn’t mean everyone sees it that way. To insist that they should see it your way, insisting that it’s really the only right way to look at this, doesn’t impress me as an argument. (“But I’m right, darnit! Everyone should see losing and humiliation my way!”)
Joe, I think you have this false dichotomy that says “either you get every point or you are being so condescending that it’s a worse humiliation.” I don’t think those are the only two choices.
I will note again the possibility that this residential school may have special considerations has been mostly unaddressed. I don’t consider the claim that some residential schools do just fine in athletics to be an adequate response. If a coach is caught by surprise and finds himself up 56-3 at halftime, yeah, he should talk to the other coach, get some idea whether the other guys are up for it and know the consequences, or are you beating on kids who never read Frank Merriwell and Chip Hilton and do feel entirely humiliated. The coaches may decide wrongly, but the attempt is fair. And the extreme of that situation is the following:
Andrew – if the boy with Down’s Syndrome didn’t feel humiliated, why are you feeling humiliated on his behalf? Is he supposed to get the complex social cues that tells him that “well, in the eyes of a small minority of people watching who believe they know best about competition and sports, letting you score would be a humiliation… humiliation, son, is a word that means being embarrassed…well, embarrassed is like when you feel really bad…”
I think people are responding to some idea of the sport being insulted, or competition being insulted. How the actual people are responding is a far bigger issue.
January 26th, 2011 | 5:23 pm
“I think we would all agree that there’s something perverse in watching, say, the Pittsburgh Steelers take the field against the East Bumfrack Tigers.”
What Rod does not realize is playing against the Pittsburgh Steelers–even if they get battered up and down the field, and half of them wind up in the hospital–will likely be one of the highest points in the life of every East Bumfrack Tiger.
Rod also needs to remember that life isn’t T-Ball, and if we teach our kids to go into the real world expecting some mercy rule to kick in whenever they go up against someone better than they are, our kids are going to be sorely disappointed.
January 26th, 2011 | 5:26 pm
Joe, I think you have this false dichotomy that says “either you get every point or you are being so condescending that it’s a worse humiliation.” I don’t think those are the only two choices.Joe, I think you have this false dichotomy that says “either you get every point or you are being so condescending that it’s a worse humiliation.” I don’t think those are the only two choices.
Let me clarify my position. I think that the teams should play to the utmost of their abilities. In basketball, that means scoring baskets. If a team is playing to the best of their abilities and is not scoring baskets, that is fine. If a team is playing to the best of their abilities and is scoring baskets, that’s fine too. The point of the game is not necessarily to “get every point” possible, but to do their best. If doing their best means they score over a hundred points, then they did nothing wrong.
If want we want is the illusion of equality rather than the attempt and excellence, then we should tell that to our kids. We should tell them that we don’t want them to do their best, just good enough to win the game and make it appear that the two teams are balanced talent-wise. We need to stop sending them mixed signals, telling them that on one hand we want them to give 100% effort but, on the other hand, to do less-than-their best if it will cause the other team to have hurt feelings.
Personally, I think we should try to change the culture. If there is a perception that losing by a 100 points is cause for humiliation and that winning by that margin is unsportsmanlike (as many people here seem to think), then we need to work on that issue. The scoreboard reflects effort and talent. If what we want is for each team to think that they are all equally talented, then we should just stop keeping score altogether.
January 26th, 2011 | 5:46 pm
The losing coach should not have forfeited: it would be a legitimate grounds for criticism if he’d had the kids “quit half-way”.
The winning coach should not have forfeited: it would be a legitimate grounds for criticism if he’d had the kids throw a game they’d won fair and square.
The correct solution is for a correction to the system itself: a mechanism that sets upper limits on just how much humiliation any one team should have to endure.
Having the game called because your team is whupped is humiliation enough to prevent concerns about “nerfed kids”, without forcing all parties involved (winners, losers, and spectators) to sit through the agonizing second half.
January 26th, 2011 | 6:11 pm
“The correct solution is for a correction to the system itself: a mechanism that sets upper limits on just how much humiliation any one team should have to endure.”
As much as it has to. Life doesn’t have a mercy clause, and games have rules. A basketball game lasts so many minutes, and the object is to score as many baskets as possible within that time. If your team is unable to score many baskets against the opposition, that may mean that the other team is very good, or that your team is very bad. Learning to discern between these two conditions is an important lesson of life, and getting creamed is the only way to learn it.
January 26th, 2011 | 6:20 pm
Jack, I’m not being contentious here — what’s the middle ground between not trying, and not continuing to score when you’re playing a game and the other team isn’t successfully defending its goal?
Oh, come on. There’s a whole range of numbers between 0% and 110% (or whatever the fashionable exhortation is these days), and even some of the very high ones include letting the other team take the ball down the court once in a while and shoot.
Some may call it condescending; I would call it trying to have some fun. There’s no fun in stealing the ball each time the outmatched opponent gets it, scoring pretty quickly, then repeating for, what, over an hour? There are people who enjoy that? I hope I never cross paths with them. I’d much rather take the time to let my opponent play a little, try and improve, maybe even give some pointers.
The fact that one team only scored 3 points doesn’t mean they didn’t try. It doesn’t mean the other team tried harder. It means one team was far, far more skilled than the other in pretty much every aspect of the game. There’s no purpose in beating that dead horse beyond the first fifteen minutes.
Many of you are concerned about the culture of self-esteem diminishing genuine achievement that you’re forgetting that sport ought to be fun for everyone involved. Learning to lose does not mean learning to have your face ground into the dust.
January 26th, 2011 | 6:52 pm
Losing to a superior opponent can be a very helpful learning experience. (Speaking as a fencer who has had many such experiences!)
By continuing to do what works to score, the stronger team was actually giving the weaker team the opportunity to really SEE the problems in their game. If the stronger team changed to worse tactics, then the weaker team is deprived of the opportunity to recognize and respond (eventually) to that one important successful tactic.
The value of the experience depends on what the weaker team’s coach is doing. If he’s just frustrated, that’s no good. But if he’s telling his team to try different things, to do their best and see how it works against a real opponent, then he’s helping to create a good experience.
I would much rather have a stronger opponent just crush me if they can. Then, if I actually do manage to score a point, I know I earned it. That satisfaction isn’t real if I think my opponent was going easy on me. Winning isn’t everything – but in order for the experience to be valuable, both sides need to do their best to win.
The one area where I would say there’s room for critique is whether these teams should have been playing each other in the first place. I’ve seen instances in which someone enters a sports event that’s at a much lower level, just to enjoy the easy win. I think that’s wrong.
So there might be some grounds for considering that one or the other of these teams is playing in a league that’s either much too easy, or much too hard. (But if this just happened to be the matchup between the top and bottom teams, with a lot of range in the middle, I’d say that’s fine and a good learning experience.)
January 26th, 2011 | 6:59 pm
“… the side that thinks that running up the score is wrong believes that there is something innately wrong when there is a significant disparity in talent between two teams.”
No there’s not something wrong in winning big when there is a significant disparity between the two teams.
As some have pointed out, there is a way to compete and not run up the score. The “cross” example in soccer was a good example. In basketball, it could be “run the shot clock down and three passes before a shot.” Subbing in the second and third string is also to be commended.
I have no inherent problem against a wipeout. I play tennis. The worst score is 6-0, 6-0, 6-0. I’ve been on both ends of that score often.
I see nothing wrong with a 75-25 basketball score. I do see something wrong with a 108-3 score.
“The other side (my side) believes that as long as the teams are reasonably matched (e.g., they are all high school students and no team includes ringers from the WNBA), disparities in talent should not be hidden for the sake of a sense of faux-equality.”
“life isn’t T-Ball”
I agree with both thoughts, generally.
“For this side, the difference between losing by 2 points or 100 points is irrelevant.”
I disagree with this.
It’s also interesting to me that an apparently unimportant issue has so many comments with many valid perspectives. I think there are deeper issues at play.
January 26th, 2011 | 8:08 pm
“Losing to a superior opponent can be a very helpful learning experience. (Speaking as a fencer who has had many such experiences!)”
You, too, eh? I remember my first epee match, a painful experience and exercise in humility.
“By continuing to do what works to score, the stronger team was actually giving the weaker team the opportunity to really SEE the problems in their game. If the stronger team changed to worse tactics, then the weaker team is deprived of the opportunity to recognize and respond (eventually) to that one important successful tactic.”
Absolutely concur.
January 26th, 2011 | 8:09 pm
“Learning to lose does not mean learning to have your face ground into the dust.”
Except when it does.
January 26th, 2011 | 8:23 pm
Stuart, the point where we are over-emphasizing competition is when we are willing to sacrifice other, equally important qualities.
I went to high school with two young men who made the decision to kill themselves because competition was emphasized to the point where it was taken too far. One of the boys lived; the other did not.
When the pain of failure is excessive or gratuitous, it stops being useful as a teaching tool.
January 26th, 2011 | 9:31 pm
“I went to high school with two young men who made the decision to kill themselves because competition was emphasized to the point where it was taken too far. One of the boys lived; the other did not.”
A totally different sort of competition, one with which I am also extremely familiar. In such instances, “failure” is a relative matter. The most susceptible are actually children who most others would see as eminently successful, particularly in academics. Their failure then, is a failure to live up to an unrealistic set of expectations, one set either in their own minds, or imposed upon them by their parents. It’s not a matter of getting blown out in a basketball game or other sporting event. It’s a different phenomenon entirely.
“When the pain of failure is excessive or gratuitous, it stops being useful as a teaching tool.”
I agree, except I don’t see failure in a particular sport to be either excessive or gratuitous. In the case of the kind of over-achieving, overly competitive teens I have known, something like this might have been a valuable experience, something to put the rest of their life in its proper perspective.
January 26th, 2011 | 10:02 pm
Thanks to all for a fascinating and civil discussion on a truly confounding topic.
I played sports in my school days, and also experienced both sides of blowouts, although not one quite as bad as the game in question.
It’s hard to remember how I felt as a player so many years ago, but I seem to recall mixed reactions to being on the wrong end of a blowout score. It was not fun being out there and being trounced. But on the other hand, I would have been infuriated if at some point in the game the opposing team or its coach had decided it was time to take the foot off the gas and start working on complex offensive pattern execution with my team as a foil. (I’m a devoted AVI reader, and agree with him generally, but here’s a point on which we differ.)
Now that I’m a father, it’s even harder to sort out. My daughter has inherited the House of Tall’s severe lack of raw foot speed. At her school’s sports day last year (intramural competition only; she’s 8), she entered the 100 meter dash, which allowed for enough time for her to fall many, many meters behind the next-slowest girls. Those 15 (or was it 20?) seconds were interminable for me. But would I have wanted the other girls to cruise to the line (while maintaining their places, of course) just so Daughter Tall felt better? Of course not.
My daughter and I also play a lot of table tennis. I’m still better than her by quite a margin, so I return her serves and volleys more softly than I often could, so that she can get in more repetitions and thereby gradually improve her game. But would I want a much-superior opponent in a competitive match to treat my daughter in the same way? No, I’d want her to play her best, and hopefully get the mismatch over with as quickly as possible.
And here’s another issue: sports that are timed (basketball and football) have the potential to produce much more painful mismatches than individual up-to-a-score-to-win racquet sports in which mismatches can simply end fast — i.e. the superior opponent’s most efficient and ruthless play is in fact the best tonic.
So although there’s no perfect solution to our basketball conundrum, that’s why I think simply adopting the keep-the-clock-running option once a threshold score is reached is the best option. Play hard, but get it over with.
One final note: my favorite sport, baseball, has the potential to be the absolute worst for mismatches, since it has neither a timer nor a threshold score. The 10-run rule does seem sensible to me here; otherwise, young kids will play games that go on and on and on, and may end up hurting themselves in their exhaustion and frustration.
January 27th, 2011 | 9:03 am
This grows irritating. I was not one who had much objection to blowout scores in many contexts, but the defense of it, after the initial good points, has been so shallow that it causes me to rethink my original position.
Simplest terms. We get it. You think competition is good and can make people do better, and sometimes life is hard, but learn to suck it up. I think that’s generally true. But your (collective) stance at present is that it is therefore defensible to run up the score in all circumstances. Is that your final answer?
1) Make some effort to understand and address the points that have been raised, rather than repeating your original argument. There’s a lot still out there – and more I can think of. 2) Identifying possible good outcomes – even ones that sometimes occur – does not cover the waterfront.
mr. tall’s comment brings out where this could have gone. A superior team working on more difficult stuff against an inferior team could be even more humiliating, yes – it would depend on the attitude. But I don’t think it would necessarily be so.
January 27th, 2011 | 9:36 am
I step back somewhat from the above. The discussion pretty quickly got into territory of defending against those who feel it is never acceptable to run up the score. Deeper discussion was unlikely to develop at that point, and it was not fair of me to lay that to the account of only those defending Joe’s original premise.
January 27th, 2011 | 10:52 am
Blowouts are good for letting your starters or bench players run plays and formations, like how you would do it in practice (except with cones as defenders instead of a varsity b-ball team).
Tell your players that they need to execute properly if they are to take a shot; they may not dribble past hapless defenders–they must pick-pass-pass-pick-pass-jump shot.
In short, institute a “no dribbling around people” rule for your team. It helps them learn how to execute plays, gets your 3rd-string players some time, and keeps it from being quite as much a blowout.
January 27th, 2011 | 11:07 am
As has already been mentioned, I’m thankful at least see Rod Dreher back in the blog world to some degree.
I tend to side with Joe Carter, particularly as we discuss the game of basketball. It’s a game where you have two options – score or toss the ball around in a game of patronizing keep away. What else can you do? Not much, other than for the winning team to let the shot clock wind down to five or so before making a shot. Don’t press on defense and stay in a zone as best you can. That’s about it.
Football? If you’re winning big, put in the scrubs and run draw plays. If the other team has no heart and can’t stop that, then it is not your problem. And taking a knee is just insulting. Maybe you don’t blitz or play a zone defense? Hard to have this discussion without getting down to the nuts and bolts of the game.
January 27th, 2011 | 11:33 am
What worries me is how Joe has internalized a secular mindset: meritocracy and the need to let the winner be unrestrained and the loser to shut up and, well, lose. You can argue that, but it is in no way a Christian view.
That’s my main objection to it, apart from the fact that the school in the first place shouldn’t be playing other high schools.
January 27th, 2011 | 11:44 am
What worries me is how Joe has internalized a secular mindset: meritocracy and the need to let the winner be unrestrained and the loser to shut up and, well, lose. You can argue that, but it is in no way a Christian view.
Ironically, I find it is the other side that has internalized the secular mindset. What you call meritocracy, I call recognizing God-given talents. And “letting the winner be unrestrained” sounds to me like trying to make everyone as close to equal in abilities as possible, which defies God’s natural order.
Of course, maybe this just goes to show that we all should be a little slower in deciding which side of this controversy is the “Christian” one.
I’ve asked this before, but since no one has answered, I’ll try again: Is there something shameful in losing? If not, why does it matter how many points a team has lost by?
While it may be unintentional, I think the message being sent to both sides is that losing is humiliating, therefore good sportsman try not to score too many points so that their opponents won’t be excessively humiliated.
Also, I’m glad to see that we can have a heated debate on a topic that doesn’t involve abortion, atheists, or Sarah Palin. ; )
January 27th, 2011 | 12:18 pm
I’d like to take a shot at answering Joe’s question: Why is losing big shameful or humiliating?
I believe it is because other people saw fit to place the losing team in the same class as an opposition that was far superior. (By class, I just mean an arbitrary categorization made by reasoned human choice). This placement indicates a certain faith in the losing team’s abilities. An abject failure by that team disappoints that faith. People feel shame for having been the cause of that disappointment and are thus humiliated. The actual error that caused the disappointment could be either on the part of the classifiers or on the players, but many personalities will take a default position of blaming themselves first (others, obviously, will not). I doubt this line of reasoning is consciously going on in the heads of the players, and I doubt it acts alone, but I suspect that this describes the implicit psychology driving feelings of humiliation in such circumstances. Our feelings don’t always (or even often) result from lines of conscious reasoning.
However, I would like to ask a related and equally important question: Why should we be humiliated at having been condescended to? The answer to this one, I think is false pride. Condescension means moving from a higher class to a lower for the benefit of the lower. Of course, our offense at this is selective, and so it isn’t condescension as such that humiliates us. If Michael Jordan condescended to teach me how to play a better game of basketball, I would not be offended because he quite obviously really IS in a higher class than me (or alternatively explained, I am quite satisfied with the reasoned choice to so distinguish the two of us). Typically, condescension only causes humiliation when there is disagreement about the respective rankings of those involved. In some cases of disagreement, it’s just a matter of people using different classifications according to different lines of reasoning–this is mere miscommunication that makes people think they are involved in the other type of situation that actually causes humiliation: disagreement over classification using the same system. For example, I would be humiliated if my friend Pete condescended towards me in basketball because I think we’re not that different skill-wise. This could be due to one of two possibilities: he thinks he’s far better than he actually is or I think I’m far better than I actually am. Either of these would be correctly labeled as false pride.
So should the losing team have been offended at being condescended to by the winners? I’d say that by halftime, it should have been obvious that anybody on the losing team answering yes has a severe problem with their pride–the disparity was clear to all involved. At this point, the other team should have condescended in a way that was genuinely helpful. This is where creativity and good judgment come in. The shallow sentimentalist will think that letting the other team score some points (as such) would be genuinely helpful. A shallow meritocrat will think that repeatedly banging one’s head against an utterly impossible opposition will necessarily lead to improved playing. A more thoughtful person would look for other ways of helping the other team become better. Exactly how this should play out is a judgment call that can’t be analyzed by a simple rubric, but good judgment should consider all the reasons for which the game is played in the first place. If the purpose of having a contest of skill was satisfied early on, then the other reasons should begin to take precedence.
January 27th, 2011 | 1:56 pm
Stuart, I don’t see how it’s a “totally different sort of competition”.
How do you know how it feels to be one of the young athletes forced to spend that time on the floor being humiliated, and then humiliated, and then humiliated some more?
What is the purpose of it? There is no purpose.
When it’s clear there’s no way the losing side can win, there is no good reason to run up the score. It does not teach more of a lesson than calling the game – or, at least, if it does, the lessons being taught are not lessons good people would want their children learning.
January 27th, 2011 | 2:22 pm
I get it. The rule is “always kick a man when he is down, as many times and as hard as you can.”
January 27th, 2011 | 3:41 pm
“How do you know how it feels to be one of the young athletes forced to spend that time on the floor being humiliated, and then humiliated, and then humiliated some more?”
Been there, done that. You have not been listening to the people who have actually played sports. Unanimously, they have all said it is far worse to have the game terminated than to let it continue to its gory end. You see, there is nothing more humiliating than having someone say you aren’t even worth playing against.
“When it’s clear there’s no way the losing side can win, there is no good reason to run up the score. ”
As I said, it does give the winning team’s second and third string an opportunity to play–and that’s important to them. If they happen to be so good as to be able to score against the other team’s first string, that’s not their fault.
“It does not teach more of a lesson than calling the game – or, at least, if it does, the lessons being taught are not lessons good people would want their children learning.”
It teaches them how to bear up under adversity and take it like men (or women).
January 27th, 2011 | 3:42 pm
“I get it. The rule is “always kick a man when he is down, as many times and as hard as you can.””
That’s hardly what is happening here, but I do admit it is an excellent rule for warfare, one which American generals seem to ignore too often. Perhaps they have a “mercy rule” at West Point?
January 27th, 2011 | 4:05 pm
“I believe it is because other people saw fit to place the losing team in the same class as an opposition that was far superior.”
Bad seeding or bad scheduling is a fact of life. A lot of times the athletic directors of low-ranked schools go out of their way to get games with elite schools against which they know their teams don’t stand a chance. They do so because (a) it generates attention for their team; and (b) it is something of an honor for their players–even though they know they are going to get creamed, they got to play UNC or Georgetown or UCLA, or whomever.
Bad seeding is, in my opinion, far worse. Ideally, you spread all the good teams out among the qualifying games or heats, so that, when the finals come around, you are left with the best of the best. Too often, though, the top ranked teams go head to head in early heats, which means when the finals come around, it’s one very good team against one or more bad or mediocre ones.
Worse than that is gaming the system so that one’s team has an unfair advantage over the competition. My examples come from crew, a sport in which my daughter competed at the high school level, winning several state championships and participating in Nationals four years running.
Crew is, in many ways, an ideal sport for nerds. It doesn’t require much in the way of hand-eye coordination, nor does it require one to be a fast runner. It does require a lot of attention to technique, plus a high degree of stamina and commitment. My daughter went to one of the premier nerd schools (every one in her boat had passed calculus), and crew was by far the most popular sport there (about a 10-15% participation rate among the student body). And they were very, very good.
But they were also handicapped by several factors. First, for public schools, it’s a part time sport, one that starts in March and ends in May, while many private schools row all year round (weather permitting). So, in terms of water time, they began behind the 8-ball.
Second, her school did not field “lightweight” boats; i.e., boats in which the upper weight of the rowers and coxwain were limited. This was a deliberate decision, because it was felt that too many lightweight rowers resorted to unhealthy practices to maintain weight. Now, everyone in my daughter’s boat would have qualified as a lightweight without difficulty, but because the school did not field lightweights, they had to row against other schools’ varsity boats, whose rowers typically had twenty pounds and six inches on hers.
Finally, a lot of schools that could not compete at the varsity level fielded “junior” boats, consisting of the best rowers in 11th grade. Her school did not–it’s varsity boat consisted of the best rowers regardless of grade, while the JV boat was the second best rowers. When my daughter was in the JV boat, she had to compete against Junior boats that represented the best rowers in the competing schools.
Despite these handicaps, which included a lot of heartbreaking losses, I never heard my daughter or any of her team mates complain or feel dejected. They were glad when they won, and gracious when they lost, and I was more proud of their deportment on losing than almost anything else.
I will also say that crew taught me a lot about grit. I worked as a finish line coordinator, so I got to see the end of every race of every regatta. The quality of schools was very uneven, with some boats barely able to stay on the course. Normally, eight boats ran in a race, with the winners coming over the line in about 4 minutes. But, invariably, there would be boats way back there, catching crabs, trying to stay in lane, and finally struggling across the line in six or even seven minutes. Despite that, when they did cross the line, they received cheers and applause almost as much as the first three boats.
To paraphrase Chrysostom, “He rewardeth the effort even as the deed”.
Applying the logic of the “mercy rule”, once the first three boats crossed the finish line, we should have called the race. After all, to finish two or three minutes behind the winners must be frustrating, embarrassing, even a little humiliating. But it would have been far more humiliating, I think, to tell them their effort was unworthy of notice, their pain and suffering (and I’ve rowed, so I use the words literally) futile.
Is that the lesson you want to tell your kids? Not me.
January 27th, 2011 | 4:24 pm
I don’t think this premise holds up when you get into the specifics of the game itself. Every game that has a clock has a milk the clock strategy. Even my 7th grade basketball team had one. You might be up seven points with under a minute to play and you want to limit the opponant to as few attempts as possible yet still put up a low risk shot yourself. In soccer and hockey a team will score one goal and then focus on defense the rest of the game. It would not have been extremely creative by the basketball coach in this story to milk the clock the whole second half.
In baseball a game may not end if a run limit rule or compassion is not exercised.
January 27th, 2011 | 4:31 pm
Stuart, you are correct in that my sympathies are not with those who excel at sports.
My sympathies are with the kids who are forced into a mismatch.
Losing at sports is only beneficial to a certain point. Beyond that point, a student is not goaded into becoming a better player. He is only goaded into quitting the game altogether.
When I was six, I was routinely forced to play blackjack and Monopoly with older kids. Did it make me a better player? I don’t know; the last time a friend tried to coax me into playing a board game, I had a physiological reaction that felt either like a panic attack or something that ought to have ended in a heart attack. In what way am I a better person for being forced into a mismatch and held there, even after it was obvious that the match was not “sporting”?
There is nothing sportsmanlike about taking on an opponent who hasn’t got a chance. That is why we have handicapping in horse racing, and why we divide sports into leagues. If a team is in the wrong league, the people who were supposed to be making sure that the teams were evenly matched should correct the mistake.
And as far as kicking a man when he’s down, again and again and again, that’s not such great advice either. Nothing would be better today if we had treated Germany the way we treated Dixie. Salted fields and “total war” are still hurting America. Excessive force is never without cost.
January 27th, 2011 | 4:54 pm
The coach in this case seemed like he did the right thing, though he should have spoken to the other coach at halftime – how hard would that have been? But lots of these cases that get into the media involve teams that run the full-court press for the whole game, even when they’re ahead by an ungodly number of points. In those cases, shaming in the media is appropriate, but it’s true that that seems to be misapplied here.
There should be a ‘mercy’ rule in basketball at this level. Stuart Koehl’s invocation of crew is not analogous here. A sport in which teams are all competing against the clock is different – they are still competing to do their best time, whether they are in the front or twenty minutes back. Track, cross-country – the situation is entirely different when the clock is the opponent – the ones who finish way back usually get rounds of applause from the others. In a scoring offense-defense game like basketball, there’s nothing analogous to that – imagine a situation in crew where the good teams could also go back after finishing and ram their slower opponents’ shells! There’s very little good coming out of the second half of a game that was 56-3 at the half. Sure, if you were in that situation as a coach, you would try to show the kids how to respond appropriately and get something out of that – that doesn’t mean a mercy rule would be a bad idea.
As for learning lessons, I’m pretty sure most kids know that losing a game by mercy rule means you’re not as good as the ones who beat you! I can see opting not to have a mercy rule, but it’s ludicrous to think that kids will be deceived into believing they’re just as good as the team that whupped them so bad the game had to be called. Please.
More generally, it’s obvious that there’s a difference between actively running up the score and simply continuing to play the game. Compare the situation in football – throwing the long ball is part of playing excellent football, but should you do that when you’re up by 70 points in the fourth quarter? Or should you go for two with time expiring and a lead of 100 points? That makes no sense. In most games there is a way to keep playing without rubbing it in – when that’s not possible, mercy rules are appropriate, though perhaps not necessary.
January 27th, 2011 | 5:02 pm
What is objectionable about Joe Carter’s position here is the idea that you should keep “doing your best,” come what may. Doing one’s best in many sports involves trying to physically dominate the opponent – boxing them out as hard as you can when going for a rebound, for example. I’m guessing in a game like this that would mean a lot of knocking smaller, weaker kids to the court when you’ve already outscored them by a factor of fifty or so. Really? That’s really what they should have done?
I guess you should write this coach an angry letter asking why he didn’t run the full-court press, since doing so very well is part of “doing your best.” Why? Because limiting the opponent’s scores is part of excellent basketball – how come they scored any points at all? Presumably they could have shut them out by pressing – by your position they should have done so. That doesn’t pass the smell test.
January 27th, 2011 | 5:19 pm
Joe Carter: “Is there something shameful in losing? If not, why does it matter how many points a team has lost by?”
Maybe the reason few answered this is that the question sidesteps everything interesting about the topic. The shame is on the winning team that runs up the score, so the question misses the point. There is nothing shameful in losing as such. Moreover, there is no force to the “if not” part of the next question. Losing itself is not shameful, but that has no implications one way or the other for whether it is shameful to lose by lots and lots of points. There is nothing logical about the relation between those two questions.
But this is trivial – it’s obvious that it is embarrassing to have to drag out a game in which there is no competition at all. (The question of whether it is really a competition or not is more important than the number of points.) It has long since become obvious to everyone that one team does not even belong on the same floor as the other, as far as competitiveness in the sport goes. I say “embarrassing,” not “shameful” – the shame in running up the score is on the winners, not the losers. Why? It is shameful to intentionally embarrass someone when there is no reason to do so. That’s why running up the score intentionally isn’t the right thing to do – because it’s not the act of a sportsman (or sportswoman) to cause embarrassment with no cause.
[That said, it is also embarrassing to lose by mercy rule - this is a question of prudence, I think. Is there more needless embarrassment going on with a mercy rule, or is the drawn-out and meaningless second half more to be avoided? Could go either way on that one, but notice that it's not at all the same argument as the one that says we should play to our utmost at all times.]
It’s ridiculous to think that we are teaching them that everyone is equal here – are you kidding when you say that? By hypothesis, we are talking about games where everybody – emphatically including the kids who are losing – knows that there is no competition going on. That is, there is no connection between the excellence of the leading team and their competition with the losing team – the latter are not a remotely appropriate measure of their excellence. That’s what’s so obtuse about this “doing your best” answer.
As to “God-given abilities” – a mercy rule doesn’t at all deny inequality. You and Stuart turn around and admit that point when you acknowledge how embarrassing it is to lose by mercy rule. The object of such a rule, and the object of not running up the score, is to avoid causing embarrassment without cause.
Ok, someone answered your question, Mr. Carter. Your thoughts?
January 27th, 2011 | 5:21 pm
“As for learning lessons, I’m pretty sure most kids know that losing a game by mercy rule means you’re not as good as the ones who beat you! I can see opting not to have a mercy rule, but it’s ludicrous to think that kids will be deceived into believing they’re just as good as the team that whupped them so bad the game had to be called. Please.”
Hey, I have a great idea! Why not ask the kids, instead of assuming you know what’s best for them? Ain’t that a novel proposition?
January 27th, 2011 | 6:34 pm
The shame is on the winning team that runs up the score, so the question misses the point. There is nothing shameful in losing as such.
But why is it shameful to run up the score? The answer that everyone (including you) seem to return to is that is it humiliating/embarrassing to lose by such a wide margin. If it were not, then it would make no sense to complain about running up the score.
But this is trivial – it’s obvious that it is embarrassing to have to drag out a game in which there is no competition at all.
Indeed, it is not so obvious because that is what I’m arguing against. The only reason it would be embarrassing is if the primary concern is winning.
Consider the old saying, “It’s not whether you win or lose, its how you play the game.” That is my position. But you are saying that how the game is played is secondary to how competitive the game
Personally, I would rather watch two teams that were unequally matched but were giving their all, than two equally matched teams that were only giving half effort.
I say “embarrassing,” not “shameful” – the shame in running up the score is on the winners, not the losers. Why? It is shameful to intentionally embarrass someone when there is no reason to do so.
You seem to be wanting to have it both ways. You are saying that it is embarrassing to lose by a wide margin. I’m not sure there is a relevant distinction between shameful and embarrassing. Why, after all, should a team that played hard be embarrassed of their effort?
It’s ridiculous to think that we are teaching them that everyone is equal here – are you kidding when you say that?
No, I’m not kidding, because that is what is being implied. I’m not saying that the two sides think they are perfectly equally matched. But the adults seem to want to flatten the differences to keep the kids from realizing just how far their own talents diverge from the other team. Why else would we need to keep the score artificially low?
You and Stuart turn around and admit that point when you acknowledge how embarrassing it is to lose by mercy rule.
What is shameful about the mercy rule (I’d use that word rather than embarrassing) is that is it saying that the losing team’s efforts are irrelevant. The rule implies that it doesn’t matter if you are giving your best, that you are being shamed by losing and someone needs to put a stop to it to save you from further embarrassment. That’s sending the wrong message. It’s saying that what matters most is what is on the scoreboard rather than what is reflected on the playing field.
January 27th, 2011 | 7:16 pm
Stuart, I’m not assuming I know what’s best for them on that question. That’s why I said it was a judgment of prudence. [But neither do I assume that children always know what's best for themselves - and the whole context of this discussion assumes otherwise.] Anyway, what I was saying in the quoted part was that whether they want a mercy rule or don’t want one, they will know if they are getting thoroughly outclassed – a mercy rule is certainly not going to deceive them into thinking they’re just as good. So I don’t see that your remark has anything to do with the part you quoted.
Joe Carter: There are several questions here. I think I see your main point better. [First off, I agree that what's on the scoreboard is not really what's at issue here, and that even if a mercy rule is sometimes appropriate, it's a blunt instrument. More centrally,] I take this to be your point: Kids who can take a drawn-out, completely one-sided, non-competitive beating without being embarrassed are more firm in certain character traits than those who cannot. Nonetheless I think it is uncontroversial that many kids will in fact be embarrassed by this, and that it is natural to have that tendency. It is salutary to get them to learn to get past that, but it’s a question of prudence as to whether that’s the best way to go about it. In just the same way, kids should obey their parents without being coddled, bribed, or threatened into doing it, but that doesn’t mean that the best way of getting them to that point is completely devoid of rewards and punishments. Also, ideally we should act rightly because we love God, not because we fear Hell, but that doesn’t make it bad to meditate on the four last things.
So maybe some distinctions are in order: for someone of perfect character, is getting blown out by a factor of fifty an embarrassing experience? No. For a young kid of average character, is it an embarrassing experience? Yes. Should we try to change their character? Yes. Is putting them through the embarrassing experience the best way to change it positively? Maybe, but their you’ve got to use prudence. There isn’t one answer for all cases. It depends on the age of the kids, for one thing.
But as for the equality business, that still seems ridiculous to me, with all respect. You ask what other reason there could be for a mercy rule or for not “doing one’s best,” other than minimizing the recognition of inequality. That begs the question, since I’ve already given an alternative answer – minimizing the unnecessary infliction of embarrassment. And the fact that someone of completely formed character wouldn’t be embarrassed is not determinative here, as I’ve argued above. So I repeat: it’s bizarre to think of “you shouldn’t run up the score” as a rule designed to make everyone feel equal.
I think lots of the points you make are solid, but I think you go wrong in taking “always play to 100% of your ability” to be some kind of exceptionless norm. As a rule of thumb it’s great. Here’s where it’s not always the right rule of action: when it is clear to everybody that your ability so far exceeds your opponents that there is no competition going on, and playing to 100% of your ability will result in repeatedly embarrassing your opponent for no purpose (other than the purpose of always playing to 100% of your ability, which is what’s in question here), and there is some way to mitigate the embarrassment without insulting them more. I think “always play to 100% of your ability” is a great guideline, but not an exceptionless rule – it’s something that sportsmanship usually follows, but to which sportsmanship cannot be reduced. (This is not uncommon when you’re talking about rules and virtues, by the way. Sportsmanship, like prudence, is not a matter of following exceptionless rules.)
Re: shameful vs. embarrassing. There’s a big difference. It’s embarrassing to have your pants fall down in public, but it’s not shameful. It’s shameful to purposefully case someone pain without cause, but it’s not necessarily embarrassing.
January 27th, 2011 | 7:35 pm
“What is shameful about the mercy rule (I’d use that word rather than embarrassing) is that is it saying that the losing team’s efforts are irrelevant.”
I so concur with this. I hope Joe will thus cut me some slack next time he and I disagree with each other.
January 27th, 2011 | 7:58 pm
When discussions have gone this long, it is often best to start over. I am going to be posting on this myself. There are just too many points and refutations to make for a comment thread.
I feel obliged to say, however…
No. There’s no quick way.
January 27th, 2011 | 10:28 pm
I understand the desire to protect kids’ feelings, I do. But you see, when I was a kid myself, I was precisely the kind of lousy athlete that adults want to shield from reality.
But the truth is, bad athletes and bad teams KNOW they’re bad. And there’s nothing you can do to hide it from them. My 7 year old son played in a soccer league where nobody keeps score during games- but guess what? EVERY kid on both sides knew exactly what the score was in every game.
Even if you imposed rules to prevent blowouts, the kids on the losing side wouldn’t feel any better. Sure, you could declare the game over when one side got, say, a 50 point lead. But the losers would still KNOW that “They’d have beaten us by 100 if the game continued.” You could force the better team to bench the starters and put in the scrubs after gaining a big lead, but the losers would KNOW they were being patronized.
January 27th, 2011 | 10:47 pm
I realize there’s a crucial distinction between kids’ sports and big time college or pro sports. Still, I remembered this piece from sportswriter Rick Telander, who played football at Northwestern in the late Sixties and early Seventies.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1004662/2/index.htm
Key passage: “You’re thinking that this is coming from someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to be caught under a steamroller. Not true. In 1969 the Northwestern team on which I played lost to Southern Cal 48-6. I didn’t like it, but I accepted it; USC was about 42 points better than we were. The next year Northwestern beat Illinois 48-0. Were we 48 points better than the Illini? On that day, yes. At any rate, both games were better than phony ‘gentle’ wins, and as far as I know, everybody on the teams involved survived the experience.”
January 28th, 2011 | 8:54 am
~~~The rule is “always kick a man when he is down, as many times and as hard as you can.””
That’s hardly what is happening here, but I do admit it is an excellent rule for warfare~~~
Fact is, it’s a bad rule in both sports and warfare. Nothing like treating Germany like crap after WWI to bring on WWII.
I’m with Rod, Blake, and Joe McFaul here. Purposely turning a legitimate victory into a massacre is sub-Christian, whether in sports or in war. It’s got more of Hobbes in it than of holiness. Alas, some conservatives are perfectly happy with Hobbes, at least as far as the notion of competition goes.
January 28th, 2011 | 9:29 am
“Fact is, it’s a bad rule in both sports and warfare. Nothing like treating Germany like crap after WWI to bring on WWII.”
Actually, World War II happened in large part because it ended with an armistice–the military equivalent of the mercy rule–rather than with a capitulation. The Allies in World War II understood this, and made unconditional surrender of Germany their primary war aim.
Battles and wars in which the enemy is either annihilated or forced to surrender without condition tend to be decisive; those that end with negotiated settlements or cease fires are merely preludes to the next round of conflict.
” Purposely turning a legitimate victory into a massacre is sub-Christian, whether in sports or in war. It’s got more of Hobbes in it than of holiness. ”
So, at the end of days, St. Michael Archangel is going to put down his sword and tell Satan, “Nice game, no sense in running up the score, here”?
January 28th, 2011 | 9:49 am
Seems to me that the problem was not so much the armistice per se, but its terms. Demanding unconditional surrender, too, is sub-Christian.
~~So, at the end of days, St. Michael Archangel is going to put down his sword and tell Satan, “Nice game, no sense in running up the score, here”?~~
Satan, being utterly evil, needs to be utterly defeated. The local girls’ basketball team, not so much.
January 28th, 2011 | 10:39 am
Correction: I should have said “automatically demanding unconditional surrender, too, is sub-Christian.” I didn’t mean to imply that it was always and everywhere wrong.
January 28th, 2011 | 2:48 pm
“Correction: I should have said “automatically demanding unconditional surrender, too, is sub-Christian.” I didn’t mean to imply that it was always and everywhere wrong.”
We’ve been here before, Rob. Do you understand the meaning of “unconditional surrender”?
January 28th, 2011 | 3:56 pm
I take it to mean a surrender in which all its terms are delineated by the victor, and no assurances granted to the defeated party otherwise.
January 29th, 2011 | 8:50 am
Sometimes playing your best is showing sportsmanlike conduct. Passing it around the outside still proves you are good. There was absolutely no reason why they couldn’t have passed it 10 times before shooting. I had a losing basketball team this year, and many of the teams we played did just that. The most we ever lost by was 40- and that team wasn’t very generous. Usually the other team would pull back and pass it around, but they still played hard. They just gave my girls a chance to play. They also gave their bench a chance to play. What he did was unacceptable– and not Christlike at all. Jesus wouldn’t of handed the other team the ball, but he would have respected their abilities.
January 29th, 2011 | 9:30 am
I’ve seen so many comments about how the goal of the game is to score as many points as possible. Where does it say that in the rule book? The original rules state: “The side making the most points in that time is declared the winner.” Looking in the record books from Nebraska State High School Tournaments, teams have won championships with a score of 8-3. I can guarantee they didn’t score as many points as possible and they won the pinnacle of their sport in Nebraska, the state championship. While I think this game would have been extremely boring to watch, the winning team achieved the true goal of the game, to score more points than the opponent.
This being said, stalling for the entire second half would not have been sportsman-like, but it was also not very sportsman-like to keep up the 2-baskets-per-minute average. Someone said earlier to make them work on shooting layups with their non-dominate hand. They can practice passing and cutting. There are lots of things a team can do to play their best without scoring points. Many of these tasks may even help them in the future.
January 29th, 2011 | 1:12 pm
“I take it to mean a surrender in which all its terms are delineated by the victor, and no assurances granted to the defeated party otherwise.”
Close, but no cigar. The term dates to the Age of Reason, when warfare was mainly a matter of siege and maneuver. Typically, when a fortress was besieged, or an army maneuvered into a position from which there was no escape, the vanquished would sue for terms.
If the winner was feeling particularly magnanimous, or if the defeated had put up a really spirited defense, or if the winner wanted a quick resolution (because he had other things to do, or a relieving army was on its way), then he would offer full honors of war: the defeated march out with colors flying, bearing their arms, carrying away their cannon, playing a march from the victorious army, the officers and men paroled and sent back to their own territory.
There were various steps down from there, which could be negotiated: colors might be cased, a token number of guns brought out, the march would be from the loser’s army, etc.
Unconditional surrender meant–and still means–surrender at the discretion of the victor. It generally means all arms are laid down, and the officers and men become prisoners of war until paroled or exchanged. It does not mean the losers are massacred, but it does mean that those of the losing army who violated the laws of war might be tried and punished.
At the end of the day, the terms of surrender cannot be judged as either Christian or un-Christian, good or evil. They can only be judged by whether they terminate the conflict. At times it might be wise to offer terms short of unconditional, if, in fact, it is not possible to impose an unconditional surrender, or if trying to do so would cause the enemy to prolong his resistance or resort to tactics that would increase the bloodshed. Thus, Grant (who had demanded unconditional surrender at Ft. Donelson and Vicksburg) offered Lee very generous terms at Appomattox Court House because there was a very real risk the Confederates would simply scatter into the hills and begin guerrilla warfare.
But most of the time, unconditional surrender, which destroys the loser’s ability to continue to resist and which makes his defeat explicit and unmistakable, is the most effective way of ending the bloodshed quickly and permanently.
The two World Wars provide a good contrast: World War I, terminated by an armistice followed by a peace treaty, merely provided a pause in what must be considered a single 20th Century Germanic War. When the Armistice was signed, there was not a single Allied soldier on German soil, the German army was still in the field, and if weakened, was still undefeated; the ability of Germany to wage war was not crushed, and, as a result, the Germans were able to recover and try again.
World War II ended with the unconditional surrender of German forces; the Wehrmacht was crushed, German war industries destroyed, the will of the German people broken, the legitimacy of the Nazi regime erased. Significantly, there was no peace treaty, but then, there was no German revanchism, no possibility of a return to militarism. World War II ended German military power to the extent that Germany today is probably the most pacifistic country in Europe.
January 30th, 2011 | 12:46 am
A nice history lesson, Stuart, but not really germane. Unconditional surrender in war only loosely applies to sports. My point was that “kicking a man when he’s down” is not a particularly Christian policy, esp. as relates to charity. If doing it to an opponent in a war is dubious, it’s even more dubious when doing it in sports. There’s a reason why it’s illegal in boxing but tolerated in the savage gladatorial world of “universal fighting.” You seem to want to side with the gladiators.
“At the end of the day, the terms of surrender cannot be judged as either Christian or un-Christian, good or evil. They can only be judged by whether they terminate the conflict.”
This is one place we have been before, and you know I completely disagree. You have stated that the only thing one can do wrong in a war is lose. You are a consequentialist, I am not. Let’s leave it at that.
January 30th, 2011 | 9:20 am
“If doing it to an opponent in a war is dubious, it’s even more dubious when doing it in sports.”
I doubt it’s dubious in war, and in war it is always within the power of the loser to end the conflict. In sports, it is always within the power of the loser to end the game by walking away.
The mercy rule intends to spare the loser (and let’s be honest, sports is about winning and losing–we get this agonistic approach to life from the ancient Greeks, and even St. Paul saw fit to adapt it to Christian life) the humiliation of taking responsibility for capitulation by enshrining it in “the rules”–an abrogation of personal responsibility all too common in our society.
If the loser does not want to capitulate, then he has to stay and take his lumps, right to the bitter end.
As I and many of the others who have played competitive sports and been on the short side of a blowout have repeatedly told those of you who do not want to listen, getting whipped is bad, but having the came called because of it is infinitely worse–it simply rubs the futility of the loser’s effort in his face.
“You are a consequentialist, I am not.”
Because I believe in responsibility for things greater than myself.
January 30th, 2011 | 1:05 pm
~~The mercy rule intends to spare the loser…the humiliation of taking responsibility for capitulation by enshrining it in “the rules”–an abrogation of personal responsibility all too common in our society.~~
I’m not talking about a “mercy rule.” I’m talking about the idea that winners should be charitable in their winning. Just as one can be a “sore loser,” one can equally be a “bad winner.” I too have played competitive sports and, believe me, have seen both. Too often it seems that Christians are very quick to chuck the Sermon on the Mount when they walk onto the sports field (or the battlefield, for that matter).
“Because I believe in responsibility for things greater than myself.”
And the non-consequentialist doesn’t? That would be a big surprise to St. Thomas Aquinas, among others.
January 30th, 2011 | 7:08 pm
“I’m not talking about a “mercy rule.” I’m talking about the idea that winners should be charitable in their winning. Just as one can be a “sore loser,” one can equally be a “bad winner.” ”
I’ve seen my share of bad winners. Usually, the attitude manifests itself after, not during the game–and usually, it’s not after a blowout, but a close one.
“Too often it seems that Christians are very quick to chuck the Sermon on the Mount when they walk onto the sports field (or the battlefield, for that matter).”
As Ring Lardner said, “The race is not to the swift, nor the contest to the strong, but that’s the way to bet”. If you don’t play–or fight–to win, then don’t play or fight at all.
“nd the non-consequentialist doesn’t? That would be a big surprise to St. Thomas Aquinas, among others.”
Non-consequentialism sounds good in theory. In practice, it’s a cop out. Usually a tragic one, too.
After all, St. Thomas never had to put it to the test, did he?
January 31st, 2011 | 9:24 am
In other words, win at all costs? Or as Bobby Heenan used to put it, “Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat”?
January 31st, 2011 | 11:24 am
In sports, never cheat. In war, it’s not called “cheating”, it’s called strategic brilliance.
February 1st, 2011 | 9:48 am
~~~In war, it’s not called “cheating”, it’s called strategic brilliance.~~~
Just like innocent dead folks are called collateral damage?
February 2nd, 2011 | 10:12 am
[...] “Why You Should Always Run Up the Score” – First Things [...]
February 15th, 2011 | 11:03 pm
[...] Why You Should Always Run Up the Score Young athletes are often encouraged by their coaches to give 110 percent effort in every game. But what happens when they actually do their best and have a modicum of talent? They are chastised for exhibiting unsportsmanlike conduct. [...]
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact