What Is Sport For?
Photo: Chrissie Vogel/Framework BJJ
From the mainstream to the fringe, sport is a major part of our cultural fabric. As it inspires great passion, it inspires great controversy, and leaves us with many questions: How should we feel about performance enhancing drugs? How should we expect professional sporting organizations to deal with members who engage in criminal behavior? How should we treat transgender people with regard to their participation in sport? Should we be opposed to metagaming?
All of these questions, and many more like them, are important, given the role sport plays in the lives of so many. Unfortunately, they are largely unanswerable without first answering the question: what is sport for?
Without a clear understanding of why we engage in sport, and why we consider it to be a valuable exercise, it is impossible to answer questions like the ones above. To take one as an example – how should we feel about the use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs)?
The answer to this question changes quite drastically depending on what we perceive the purpose of sport to be. If sport is about learning to follow rules, and the rules disallow PEDs, then it seems we should be opposed to their use. But what if the rules didn’t disallow PEDs? Should we still have a problem with their use? Are they morally condemnable in and of themselves?
To be a highly successful businessperson, some bending of the rules is often required, and the financial rewards are often remarkable . If we think the purpose of sport is to prepare young people for success in their future careers, perhaps we should endorse the use of PEDs by young athletes, so that they can learn to bend the rules as a means of professional development?
The purpose of sport is little discussed, even by those who are intimately involved in it – coaches, athletes, avid fans. Treated as ubiquitously understood, it seems clear that our understandings often differ greatly. If we wish to have meaningful discussions about issues such as these, we must come to some agreement on the topic.
I will not aim to foster that agreement here. Instead, I will sketch out some possible purposes of sport – some plausible, some less so – which seem to be relatively common positions held, if implicitly, by the people who discuss the matter. For the most part, I do not believe that these purposes are mutually exclusive, and it is likely that the conceptions most of us hold are some amalgamation of the positions discussed. This outline is not meant to be comprehensive or present any particular argument – it's just a semi-organized presentation of some of my thoughts on the subject.
Sport as a Career Path
First and quickest. Although there is a small contingent of the population who view participation in sport as a viable career path, mostly made up of parents who are unwilling to accept the overwhelming odds that Little Johnny isn’t really that great a pitcher, the idea of sport as professional development seems incongruous with the way most of us think about it.
Although some parents really do think their kids are destined for the majors, the majority seem not to harbor that illusion, and still think that participation in sport is valuable for their children. Further, few people seem opposed to the idea of adults participating in recreational sports.
I felt compelled to include the possibility of viewing sport as a career path because so much of what we do is viewed in this way. So many of the decisions we make are framed with regard to their influence on our career prospects, that it seems to me that we must at least entertain the notion of sport as professional development. However, given the way most of us seem to actually view sport, this position seems to be the most implausible.
Sport as a Means to Physical Health
If we consider the health of individuals to be important, then it is certainly reasonable to value sport as a means to physical health. The participation in sport, given the right conditions and instruction, can help young people build habits which will improve their health over a lifetime. Sport can be a far more engaging way to exercise than non-sport modalities, which may help engage sedentary adults.
If, however, we wish to view health as the purpose of sport, our actual approach to sport is in need of a serious overhaul. Although I am of the position that any exercise is better than none so long as it promotes improved health, there is room to ask if the way we treat athletes, in particular young athletes, is in fact health promoting.
To take the most obvious examples, contact and collision sports have the potential to be very dangerous, sometimes to the point of being life threatening. Football in particular has a heinous record with regard to bodily injury, inclusive of likelihood of brain injury ranging from an arguably tolerable risk at the high school level to the near certainty of the NFL. Most other contact or collision sports carry moderate-to-high risk of musculoskeletal injury, so this must be taken into consideration when viewing sport as a means towards physical health.
Generally speaking, I do not hold the position that most sports are sufficiently destructive of physical health, at least not to the extent that I would consider them too risky compared to a sedentary lifestyle. However, we must at least consider the ousting of some sports from inclusion based on this outlook.
Sport as Moral Instruction
The idea of participation in sport as a form of moral instruction, again particularly for young persons, is particularly common. Although this seems an attractive position, I’m skeptical of the utility of sport in playing such a role, both in theory and in practice.
Perhaps the most major roadblock is that we don’t all agree about moral values, and as such the use of sport to instill particular morals, at least in a public institution, seems problematic. If a particular coach holds ethical positions contrary to those of the players (or the players parents in the case of minors), it seems unfair to expect the players to adhere to those values for the sake of inclusion in sport.
Some of the values often touted by proponents of this position are uncontroversial. Just about everyone agrees that things like a sound work ethic and a sense of fair play are moral goods. But often, attitudes reflected by coaches may conflict with very reasonable ethical positions. For example, many coaches will engage in practices meant, in their perception, to build toughness and weed out weakness. Implicit in these practices are claims that toughness is desirable and weakness is undesirable, and it doesn’t take much of a logical leap to interpret this as presuming toughness to be moral and weakness as immoral.
Often, and particularly for cisgendered males, engagement in sport is accompanied by the ingraining and moral valuing of heteronormative roles. Hazing, both formal and informal, is a common practice on sports teams, and athletes who do not fit the heteronormative mold are common targets. The use of language which degrades non-heteronormative persons or behaviors is alarmingly normalized in sport environments. Behavior of this type is frequently ignored and sometimes encouraged by coaches.
Membership on a sporting team can also be exclusionary and accompanied by an elevated social status which lends athletes certain types of power and immunity which non-athletes may not have. In a youth environment such as a high school, this may allow athletes to behave in immoral ways towards others with little or no consequence for their actions.
At the highest levels of sport, blatantly immoral conduct is often ignored by organizations where the coaches or athletes involved are successful in the realm of competition. Are boxing organizations establishing a laudable moral framework by allowing Floyd Mayweather to continue competing? The same question for the NFL. What about questions of exploitation of NCAA student-athletes? If sport is to be viewed as morally instructive, it seems reasonable to expect the largest and most influential sporting organizations to conduct themselves ethically.
Although participation in sport likely includes the instruction of some relatively uncontroversial moral values, it seems that, in the way it is actually practiced, there are at least as many moral harms being perpetuated. There are likely many ways of instilling the same uncontroversial values without mixing the moral signal with so much immoral noise. But more importantly, I suspect that the intractable task of getting enough people to agree to the same values and the same way of teaching them makes the implementation of sport as a tool for moral instruction seem implausible.
Sport as Development of Life Skills
Related to the idea of sport as moral instruction, sport is sometimes considered to be a valuable tool for the development of life skills. The ability to deal with adversity, commitment to a plan, following rules, leadership, and teamwork are all touted benefits of participation in sports.
However, this position seems considerably more plausible than sport as moral instruction, at least to me. In fact, it seems so plausible that I have relatively little to say about it. The distinction is that the idea of developing skills which may be applicable outside of the sporting arena is not accompanied by any value claim. Skills, in and of themselves, are amoral.
As such, I think the important questions are of implementation. Does sport actually impart skills such as those outlined above, or merely appear to impart them? Does it impart them as or more effectively than other means?
It seems to be the case that the development of various life skills associated with participation in sport is contingent, perhaps unsurprisingly, on the sport being conducted in a suitable environment and with the right kind of social connections (see here). In general, the outcomes seem to be positive (see here.) It is possible, however, that these positive outcomes are result of a selection bias of one type or another, wherein the people attracted to sports are already predisposed towards the development of certain social and life skills (see here).
I am admittedly unqualified to perform a really effective analysis of the results of the studies linked above. Assuming, I think reasonably, that they are not too far off base, the idea of sport as a developer of life skills seems quite plausible.
Sport as Self-Actualization
Participation in a sport is not often treated as a path to self-actualization, but it seems to me that it is often the implicit goal, particularly among adults who engage in sport recreationally.
This is probably the view towards which I am most sympathetic. Sport is primarily a self-actualizing endeavor for me, and in my coaching practice, I generally take on athletes based on my sense that they are somehow in pursuit of the same thing, and will contribute to the self-actualization of others in our community, rather than judging them by their competitive prospects.
In general, we tend to view artistic endeavors as self-actualizing. Music, painting, poetry, sculpture, and other mediums are considered forms of expression which can lead to actualization in not only the creator, but at times the observer. By contrast, sports may seem crude and lacking in meaning, a purely physical endeavor. One thought is that competition may have a corrupting influence on sport which precludes it from being a self-actualizing process.
An interesting bridge between the two exists in dance. Although there are dance competitions, the endeavor itself is considered an artistic one, and the fact of there being competitive elements in some cases does nothing to detract from this. There seems to be no obvious connection between the mere existence of competition and the removal of whatever self-actualizing processes take place in the creation of the art. I see no reason that this should not be the same with regard to sport. Further, I see no reason to assume that the self-actualizing processes present in the creation of art are not present in the practice of sport, assuming (in the cases of both art and sport) that the appropriate environment and motivations are present.
The self-actualizing elements of the creation of art seem to include, but are not limited to, skill development, self-expression, self-challenge, process orientation, and self-discipline. These elements are, or at least can be, present in the practice of sport, and there seems to be no obvious elements which would counteract these in a way such as to reduce their potential for self-actualization.
So, what is sport for?
It remains unclear. In sketching above a few possible positions on this question, I aimed to clarify my own thought and begin creating the underpinnings of a coherent position. I think it likely that physical health, development of useful life skills, and self-actualization are good and feasible purposes for sport, and I am skeptical that the pursuit of sport as a career path or as moral instruction is helpful or viable in most circumstances. There is much more to be said on the topic, with more clarity and greater nuance than I have provided here. I think it would be to the benefit of all participants in sport – athletes, coaches, and spectators – to engage in such thought, so that we can more thoughtfully answer questions about this obviously important part of our lives.
