Just in time for the start of basketball season, panelists at the Kenan Institute for Ethics’ “Bending the Rules: Gamesmanship in Sports” event discussed how high-stakes competition can encourage winning at all costs.
The panel included Joe Heath, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, Jan Boxill, director of the Parr Center for Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Greg Dale, director of sports psychology and leadership programs for Duke Athletics. The group spoke in front of approximately 15 faculty members and a couple of students in the West Duke Building about the tendency of athletes to circumnavigate rules intended to ensure fair play in order to win.
“Most of ethics has a general purpose of getting people to behave more cooperatively,” Heath said. “But competition is the opposite of that. Rather than using various instruments of social control, we allow people to act in a non-cooperative fashion—and we even encourage it.”
He noted that athletes are rewarded for their relative achievement and not their absolute achievement. Athletes’ success does not depend on how well they play, but instead on how much better they are at their sport than competitors. Heath called this tendency “socially mandated, non-cooperative behavior.”
Boxill said sports have moral significance for both society and the individual that contribute to the character and culture of America. Having conducted research on detriments to the integrity of sports, she mentioned performance enhancing drugs and cheating as prevalent issues.
“Forty percent of [interviewed athletes] admitted to cheating and even more admitted they knew multiple people who cheat,” Boxill said, adding that she believes these statistics are a byproduct of the “winning at all costs” mentality.
Rules maintain difficulty, competition and a safe athletic environment, but when they are violated the game is no longer fair.
Boxill defined “gamesmanship” as the idea that players can find new, risky ways of playing the game to gain an advantage and cites it as the root cause for the manipulation of rules in sports.
Dale shared his hands-on experience with athletes and recognized the influence of coaches, noting that professional players often say they were taught gamesmanship and how to bend the rules from a young age. He said he believes it to be an integral part of sports because players compete to win.
“[Humans] value winning over everything else,” Dale said. “It’s rewarded.”
Boxill also spoke about the inherent respect that players should—and often do—show for each other.
“It is about decency,” Boxill said. “We all have the desire to win but, that doesn’t mean... we must win at all costs.”
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