There was a blurb in this weeks TMQ regarding testing the moral reasoning
skills of athletes and the relationship of moral reasoning to sports ethics. The study is conducted at the University of Idaho by Sharon K. Stoll, Ph.D. On the 20 Year Review page of the study, ten interesting themes of the study results were cited. The two that I found most interesting are:
- The longer one is in athletics, the more affected is one’s moral reasoning.
- Females scores are dropping and we predict they will converge with men’s scores in 5 years.
Easterbrook terms the second point the, race-to-the-bottom theory of gender equality.
He writes:
As the sexes equalize, rather than men becoming more fair and kind like women, women become more aggressive and cold-blooded like men.
TMQ
The second point is strongly supported by the first. I would speculate that additional athletic participation, revenue opportunities for women athletes, and the increased profile of collegiate sports programs have produced several generations of female athletes who have spent additional time in athletic competition. Declining scores are a disappointing statement regarding progress
for woman’s sports, however, shame on the men for setting the bar horribly low. As anecdotal evidence of the changes in womans athletics, sometime around 1992 the first generation of women in the state of Iowa who had played five on five basketball through their entire career graduated from college. Before that generation, womans basketball in the state of Iowa was played six on six. Surprisingly, the last six on six champion was crowned in 1993. I’ve included some links to six on six information at the end of this post.
Easterbrook also points out that, enforcing the rules is the official’s job, and officiating error should be randomly distributed.
Sportsmanship, it seems, suffers at the hands of the Free Rider problem which can be described in simple terms as, actors who take more than their fair share of the benefits or do not shoulder their fair share of the costs of their use of a resource
or as Easterbrook states, you [are] penalized for honesty.
I was planning to throw in some personal anecdotes about ethics in competition, but I’ve decided to spare people of that morass. These days I have no personal reason to press for advantage. My competitive endeavors are mostly focused on personal goals which do not suffer due to the success of others, and any team oriented sports are all friendly in nature. Although I would still hate to be pressed into choosing between sportsmanship and team success as truly I hate to fail others.
On a somewhat related note, there was another interesting article published by Sports Illustrated recently. The piece was titled,
Diminishing returns, McGrady says he’s lost a step … at ripe old age of 27and it looks at the situation of players who entered the NBA directly from high school. At issue is the long term viability of players with ten seasons of NBA basketball experience who are still considered
in their primerelative to age. Several players in this category have achieved personal success but little team success. McGrady, in particular, was thought to be a selfish,
me firstplayer earlier in his career. However, as he ages and his skills begin to diminish, it seems the team concept gains priority.It would be interesting to compare the ethics of the sixteen year old McGrady to the present day to see if ethics and mentality (or emphasis) has any correlation.
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