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I was more than pleasantly surprised to find in my electric mailbox last week a lengthy essay from USA Today, “Cheating in sports: Michigan football the latest scandal. Why is playing by rules so hard?” The essay is the first in a series of ten by Dan Wolken which will appear in USA Today over the next few weeks. The essay had come to me via a longtime Catholic friend and fellow parishioner who has combined an outstanding business career with years of lay counsel to Church administrators locally and nationally. As cited above, the essay’s calling card is an invitation to explore the ethics of competition—how and when does cheating pervert the philosophical meaning of sports itself—the drive to excel, to prove oneself the best, to set new goals of excellence.
My credentials to tackle the subject? I did earn a master’s degree in theology with a specialty in morality [learned, if not always lived.] On the sports angle, as a high school and collegian seminarian, I tried out for every major varsity sport available in the seminary league and failed to earn a position in any. When I did play pickup football, I would play offensive or blocking guard because I was roly-poly and defensive players grew exhausted running around me to the quarterback. At college, my locker room friends consoled me with the reality that while I would never be an athlete, I was certainly an enthusiastic athletic supporter. And that much is true…at 75 I spent fifteen minutes last Sunday morning reading the gambling line analyses on the Buffalo Bills—Dallas Cowboys game. [Buffalo posted at -2, incidentally, and the o/u at 50. Final score proved to be Buffalo 31-Dallas 10.] Let me get down to business here. Philosophically, I have just one problem with Wolken’s project. He addresses the subject of sports cheating as if athletics is exempt from the world of humanity, which sad to say is corrupt to the heart. If you do not believe me, then let us gather at the river and pray for enlightenment, turning our Bibles to texts that never get much Catholic attention. In the immediate centuries before Christ, a serious pessimism settled over Israel which expressed itself in Biblical texts you rarely or never hear at Mass. For these writings dare to state what most of us privately believe and/or actively suppress: that each of us is sorely imperfect, differing only in degree; that sin mars every human and institutional transaction in an infinite number of ways, and that life after death is a matter of faith, not scientific or philosophical certainty. The Coming of Christ is the coming of unsullied goodness. But until I embrace the Gospel in full stride, I do not know God. Pope Francis gets into plenty of hot water when he reminds us of these hard truths. The Biblical texts I am referring to include the second creation account [Genesis 2:3ff], written in 400-500 B.C. by a religious thinker attempting to explain, in a brilliant narrative, the source of human sin and misery. The message is clear enough: even in the perfect circumstances of the Garden of Eden, humanity fumbled the opening kickoff. And where does this root evil come from? When we were kids, we learned that the talking snake was really the devil—an intruder from another universe, you might say. But alas, this is not the case. The second creation account tells us that “the serpent was the most cunning of all the creatures God had made.” That is unnerving, as if to say that sin and evil are baked into the cake. The creation author here has no answer to that dilemma, but he/she attempts to explain the origins of mankind’s miseries--such as the pain and danger of childbirth and the relentless need to toil under the hot sun to eat and survive—as the byproducts of the imperfect species we are. Other works of this later Israelite era include Qoheleth [or Ecclesiastes]. Written in the 200’s B.C., this work famously begins and ends with “Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity!” But the most famous writing in this schema is Job. The USCCB commentary puts this book at between 400 and 600 B.C. though it strikes me as a later book. I read Job in depth a few years ago; with age I experienced a greater sensitivity to the pain of this work. The theme is unjust suffering. God and the devil get into a fictional discussion about human behavior, the devil’s contention being that men behave well only when all is going well. The two protagonists decide to answer this question by inflicting one tribulation upon another upon a just human, Job, to see if he breaks his trust in the goodness of God and God’s creation. The USCCB or the U.S. Bishops’ Biblical commentary on Job notes that “the Book of Job does not definitively answer the problem of the suffering of the innocent, but challenges readers to come to their own understanding.” One more point needs to be made, this one from the mental health community. There are no identical people. Each human life is enormously complicated. There are one billion cells in the average human brain, each with the capacity to exchange neurotransmitters with a thousand other neurons—that is over a trillion variables possible where thought, feeling, and action are involved. Sadly, the biology of human behavior is enormously understudied; I have read dozens of Catholic morality books over the years. I have yet to see one which integrates the biology of the brain—where most depression begins, for example--into ethical conscience formation, altruism, or religious motivation. Returning to Wolken’s discussion of cheating in sports, we never know exactly why people do what they do. The author is not exactly treading new water here, either. The ancient Greeks have left records of cheating in chariot races [and all these years I blamed Messala in “Ben Hur.”] In the 1936 Munich Olympics, the U.S. Olympic Committee stepped in and demoted two starting U.S. sprinters in the 4x100-yard relay, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, because of their Jewish faith, in an effort not to offend Adolf Hitler. In this case justice eventually prevailed, however, because Glickman was replaced by Jesse Owens, who thoroughly embarrassed dictator and diplomats alike by winning four gold medals [and Glickman became one of America’s beloved sportscasters till his death in 2001.] In 2019 Major League Baseball sanctioned the Houston Astros, winners of the 2017 World Series, for employing a hidden camera in the outfield to capture the opposing catcher’s pitch signals. Baseball is still recovering from the Houston Astros high/low technology scandal of signal stealing involving a hidden video camera and a trash can. And if Pete Rose had bet exclusively on horses, he would be in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Dan Wolken’s USA Today essay focuses as its lead-in an investigation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA] of the University of Michigan’s varsity football program. A paid assistant coach arranged for and paid the expenses of scouts to attend the games of Michigan’s future opponents and video the visual signs coming from coaches on the sidelines. I have to say, when I heard this on the news very recently, I thought that was legal! However, as it turns out, there are grades of espionage, some acceptable, some not. [We naughty Catholics who enjoy the comedy of the late parish school educated George Carlin understand the hierarchy of evil very well; George proved, in a memorable sketch, that you could commit seven mortal sins with just one weak moment with Mary Ellen at “second base.”] The fuss that Wolken alludes to has much to do with Michigan’s winning a spot in college football’s final four tournament next week as well as the reputation of UM’s head coach, Jim Harbaugh, who was suspended from his team’s sideline for three games late in this current season for the road spying gambit. The tournament itself is under something of a cloud for another problem—the failure of the tournament selection committee to include Florida State University, an undefeated conference champion, into the final four. The State of Florida’s Attorney General, Ashly Moody, is seeking access to “all communications regarding deliberations from the selection committee” of thirteen members from across the country. Next year the playoffs expand to twelve teams! I agree with the author that every sport has its forms of cheating at every level—individuals, teams, conferences, and ancillary businesses, such as television networks, team apparel marketers, and of late the major gambling houses. In some sports the policing and safety is getting better, or at least an effort is being made. We did not have “concussion protocols” in the NFL until recently, nor rule changes to make baseball games shorter. NASCAR, one of “my” sports, has developed new safety policies for cars and tracks, but only after the death of its superstar Dale Earnhardt, Senior, at the 2001 Daytona 500, several hundred feet from where my wife and I were sitting on that grim February day. We can never know exactly what goes through a man’s mind, morally speaking, but we can speculate on the things that should be running through our minds in human interactions. Wikipedia’s lengthy and excellently researched entry on the Houston Astros scandal includes this: “[Baseball Commissioner Rob] Manfred had cleared [Jim] Crane of wrongdoing at the beginning of his report, saying that Crane was "extraordinarily troubled and upset" by the revelations and had fully cooperated.” Crane happens to be the owner of the Astros. Given that gossip about Houston spying spread throughout the league for several years, I must scratch my head at the thought that an owner knows nothing about his multi-billion-dollar investment. In the 1950’s the New York Yankees regularly hired investigators to monitor the late-night activities of Billy Martin. You know what you want to know and ignore the rest. Sad to say, some of the more famous sports scandals, such as the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” fix of the World Series, bear uncomfortable resemblance to Catholic clergy scandals of later in the century. As the young Boston Globe reporter wailed in the film Spotlight, “They knew…and they let it happen!” What I propose to do for the rest of this essay is provide an overview of some moral issues and/or incidents affecting American sport, to stimulate conversation. Just call them “my concerns.” Human safety and wellbeing: This is a very personal issue for me as I witnessed Earnhardt’s death up close at the 2001 Daytona 500; in fact, Margaret bought me a Dale Earnhardt Sr. cap at a souvenir stand under the track at Daytona for my birthday before the race began. I still have the cap next to my desk. Earnhardt’s death—and the fact that fourteen other drivers had been killed at the Daytona track alone over the years—led NASCAR to overhaul many aspects of safety, efforts which continue to this day. All the same, I gradually disengaged from the sport in the early 2000’s on the grounds that Catholic teaching has, for centuries, interpreted the prohibitions of the Fifth Commandment to include the unnecessary risking of human life. And by no stretch can auto racing be considered a safe sport. In looking at the starting lineups for last weekend’s National Football League games, I was taken with the number of excellent players at every position who were not available to their teams, either on that weekend or for the balance of the season. Some years ago, I heard John Madden observe: “If you participate in one play in the NFL, your body is never the same.” Many players take painful or disabling injuries into their middle age and beyond. What is most troubling is the substantial risk of lasting head injury. Consider this release from the NFL’s news service in 2013: “The NFL has reached a tentative $765 million settlement over concussion-related brain injuries among its 18,000 retired players, agreeing to compensate victims, pay for medical exams and underwrite research…More than 4,500 former athletes -- some suffering from dementia, depression or Alzheimer's that they blamed on blows to the head -- had sued the league, accusing it of concealing the dangers of concussions and rushing injured players back onto the field while glorifying and profiting from the kind of bone-jarring hits that make for spectacular highlight-reel footage. “The NFL long has denied any wrongdoing and insisted that safety always has been a top priority. But the NFL said Thursday that Commissioner Roger Goodell told pro football's lawyers to "do the right thing for the game and the men who played it." The plaintiffs included Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett, Super Bowl-winning quarterback Jim McMahon and the family of Pro Bowl linebacker Junior Seau, who committed suicide last year [2012]. “Under the settlement, individual awards would be capped at $5 million for men with Alzheimer's disease; $4 million for those diagnosed after their deaths with a brain condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy; and $3 million for players with dementia, said lead plaintiffs' lawyer Christopher Seeger.” Football, at its heart, is a game of physical dominance, where the “sacking of a quarterback” gets nearly as much cheer as a touchdown. Is it morally justifiable? For the good of the student: Just a year or two ago UCLA and USC, two schools with Los Angeles zip codes, announced that their sports programs were transferring from the Pacific Coast Conference or PAC-10 to the Big 10, whose teams spread from Iowa to New Jersey. [If you do not follow sports, every year the best football team in the PAC-10 has played the best team in the Big 10 in the New Year’s Day Rose Bowl game for about a century.] When USC and UCLA switched conferences, six other PAC schools followed suit. Only two teams remain in the west coast league, the “PAC-2” as my friends call it now. While college football analysts went into overdrive imagining the intriguing new arrangement of next year’s college games, the mental health and education communities looked at another angle of college football realignment, a forgotten population: the college student. College football conferences exist for multiple reasons including economics and the wear and tear of travel for teams--matriculating students who must maintain a certain grade to retain scholarships and eligible to play. I checked Southern Cal’s road schedule for autumn 2024, and its player-students will travel to Baton Rouge, LA [LSU], State College, PA [Penn State], Lincoln, NE [Nebraska], New Brunswick, NJ [Rutgers] and Seattle, WA [Washington]. Each of these games is a separate trip at two-week intervals; on the alternating weeks, the team plays games on its home field. All I can conjure in my mind is exhausted students cramming for Monday exams in the friendly skies over the Continental Divide. As long as I have followed sports there has been conversation over the tension within the term “student-athlete.” But take a step further: there is a lot of money made in college sports, for everyone except the players. In 2021 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the trend a bit. In “NCAA versus Alston,” the Court ruled that a college student can make money on his or her “name, image, and likeness” or NIL. For the first time, a collegian could make football related dough by using his/her on-field exploits to sell Pepsi, Fritos, or Bran Flakes on TV without interference from his school or the NCAA. However, the NIL policy is hardly an across-the-board windfall; the few outstanding [read “marketable’] college players from big name schools have done well financially. But I checked my hometown college football team, the Buffalo Bulls of the MAC, or Middle America Conferences [that plays some games on Tuesday nights], and the Bulls actually have a web page for individuals or businesses who wish to start a NIL sponsorship for any Bulls player. I need to tell my little brother, who has season tickets to Buffalo Bulls games. As he says, “I’m never doing anything on Tuesday nights anyway.” Government and Sports The magnitude of organized sports at every level means that federal, state, and local governments--our elected officials—will necessarily play roles in the affairs of sport—though the extent of involvement varies greatly. For a century, the granddaddy of government and sports interaction was [and remains] Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption, passed by Congress in the early 1920’s. According to the Sporting News, the exemption “resulted from a 1922 Supreme Court ruling that stated, somewhat incredulously, that the business of Major League Baseball did not constitute “interstate commerce,” thus making it exempt from the Sherman [Antitrust] Act, which prevents businesses from conspiring with one another in an effort to thwart competition.” There were—and are—egregious results of MLB’s antitrust exemption. When I was in college, a black St. Louis Cardinal all-star, Curt Flood, was traded from his team of longstanding to the Philadelphia Phillies over a $10,000 salary dispute. Philadelphia reportedly drew a virulently racist fan base at the time, and Flood refused to go there. He objected to the trade, arguing that under baseball’s existing rules he was essentially “owned” by management [in this case the Cardinals] like a slave, and if he failed to play for any owner who held his contract, he was effectively blackballed from all major league teams. Flood took his case to the Supreme Court, which ruled against him in 1972. However, the case brought into play a brilliant labor arbitrator, Marvin Miller, who raised new public consciousness of the limited rights of baseball players and strengthened the fledgling players association in its dealings with the pension, base pay, etc. Miller was recently voted into the Hall of Fame for strengthening the position of ball players in their dealings with ownership even as the antitrust exemption remains on the books. It is worth noting here that the National Basketball Association [NBA] and the National Football League [NFL] do not have antitrust protection from Congress. In recent years the Colin Kaepernick case in the NFL demonstrates that, hypothetically at least, players have more leverage to protect their rights. In 2016 Kaepernick famously began his protest gesture of not standing for the National Anthem, to bring attention to police brutality and racism. Wikipedia notes: “In November 2017, Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL and its owners, accusing them of collusion in keeping him out of the league. In August 2018, arbitrator Stephen B. Burbank rejected the NFL’s request to dismiss the case. Kaepernick withdrew the grievance in February 2019 after reaching a confidential settlement with the NFL. His protests received renewed attention in 2020 amid the George Floyd protests against police brutality and racism, but he remains unsigned by any professional football team.” Another issue—close to the collective consciousness of Buffalo Bills football fans these days—is public funding of sports arenas. The new football stadium for the Bills is scheduled to open in 2026, 2027, or 2028 depending on your source, at a cost of $1.54 billion, already increased from the initial $1.4 announcement. Who pays? Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was opposed to state funding, but after his forced resignation surrounding personal scandal, his successor, Governor Kathy Hochul—from the Buffalo area--lobbied vigorously for state support. It probably did not hurt that the NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, lives in the Buffalo TV market. It is maddening to nail down precise numbers and facts about Buffalo’s proposed new stadium, but it is clear that until a few months ago the Bills would be receiving the highest public contribution for its football facility in the NFL, $800 million from the state and more from Erie County. The Tennessee Titans may exceed New York State and Erie County with their newly announced $2.1 billion stadium on the board. In both cases, however and many more—there is little public or religious discussion over the moral/ethical questions at hand, not to mention political unrest. In the first instance, is construction of a $2 billion stadium a defensible expense for ten dates of football per year? Have we passed the point of utility and progressed into the world of fetish? Do football stadiums improve the communities in which they are settled? [There was considerable talk in Buffalo of a downtown site for the new stadium before the suburban site was selected and with a dome, which was eventually ruled out.] Do new stadiums make the cost of family attendance prohibitive? And would these public funding grants be better spent on infrastructure, education, housing, health care, etc.? Buffalo, incidentally, is the 78th largest city in the United States, behind Chula Vista, California, and Jersey City, New Jersey. There are forty-two larger cities than Buffalo without NFL teams, many that would like to host one. The shelf-life of new stadiums is becoming shorter and shorter. Forbes reports that, in terms of market value, the Buffalo Bills are worth $3.7 billion, or 30th of the 32 NFL teams. Only Detroit and Cincinnati are lower in worth. Dallas is first, but even the Cowboys are rated at less than $10 billion in corporate value. The NFL is increasing its overseas exposure in South America and Europe, with hopes of establishing permanent teams in Mexico, Brazil, and several European sites. The “Christian Banker” within me worries about the viability of the smaller football markets in the United States and the moral questions surrounding the investment of wholesale public monies into situations with uncertain futures. COACHING: I am focused here on the attitudes and styles of coaches of younger athletes up to and including their college years. Having worked in colleges and followed my favorite schools, I was always puzzled—troubled, really—by the manner of coaches’ interactions with players. It has been my understanding—perhaps in error—that coaches are faculty members or administrators or employees of the school. Consequently, I never understood why so many coaches seem to get a pass on the decorum and respect that we classroom teachers were expected to show our students. I am aware, to be sure, that many professors play God and treat their students with contempt; we had a saying, “Once you close your classroom door, you are God.” I resigned from teaching at Daytona College in 2002, reluctantly, due to my opening a private practice/business. I suspect teacher-student interactions today are somewhat different from my time, from what I read in the papers, but human nature being what it is… If athletic competition is a school for life—particularly in institutions with a religious mission, e.g., Catholic colleges]—then what do we want our students to experience and learn from their time on the school gridiron or baseball diamond? Several things come to mind. Sports is an excellent classroom for students to develop respect, openness, and communication with authority figures, and to adapt to differing philosophies of strategies and life. The reverse is also true. True coaches recognize the distinct personalities of their charges, the distinctive gifts of each, and the best ways to communicate and correct with the varieties of young people still finding themselves. It is often forgotten that Larry Bird began his collegiate career at the University of Indiana under coach Bobby Knight. Bird, an immensely insecure country boy who arrived with few clothes into a Big Ten environment, was so overwhelmed he walked out to the highway and hitchhiked a ride home to French Lick. [Later he enrolled at Indiana State and became the Larry Bird of collegiate and NBA lore.] IN CONCLUSION… Sports are not immune to the problems and controversies of the day. In the past week I have seen in public media mostly anonymous allegations that professional football referees pace their penalty flags to help the teams with the highest TV interest. Others believe that eventually all NFL games will be streamed on pay-per-view at considerable price. Sports are inherently sinful…in the same way we are inherently sinful from the encounter with the talking snake. Within reason, sports are here for us to enjoy and to marvel at both the athletic and the academic marvels of players and coaches. The closer that school sports, professional franchises, and league officials protect the norm of the common good, the more we will enjoy both our viewing and our participating in sports. Morally speaking:
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MORALITYArchives
June 2024
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