Lesson 5- Reading #1

The Problem of Fair Play

Athletics is about a contest between one individual or one team against another individual or another team.  The two contest - or struggle - is  to secure a prize, usually a win, or maybe a ribbon, or a trophy, or points toward another goal and so forth.  The contest itself occurs inside a competitive experience where strategies are used to outwit, out fox, or outsmart the opponent.  The contestant trains, prepares, and improves skill and strategies to the point where the contest is almost determined and guaranteed ahead of time - we out train, we out strategize, we out prepare the opponent. 

It is at this point that the notion of fairplay is most strained.  It is the constant immersion in this competitive environment in which ideal notions of fair play often become mired in "gaining advantage".    Gaining advantage is what we do in sport and athletes, however, it can in many situations be an unhealthy place to be - because gaining advantage and getting the win or obtaining the prize begins to drive the motive, intention, and action of competition to the point that we soon lose sight of what we are trying to do.

And what is it we are trying to do?  The idealists argue that as competitors we know that what we seek is not necessarily the final outcome - it is not all reducible to winning along, but rather what we are seeking is playing well, given our own potential and preparation.  We want to play against competitors who are worthy of us and we worthy of them.  We want to be satisfied in our victory and know that it is warranted by the fact that we played well and our opponent also.

But the ideal is often shadowed by the hungry realist of winning - "Did you win?" is the common question that fans ask?  or "How did you do?"  We have learned that the outcome does matter and it matters very much to most everyone around us.  Thus it is that we seek ways to gain advantage and in seeking advantage is where we often wonder down the road of "doing what we have to do" to win.

It is at this point that we become "calloused" to who we are as competitors.  It is at this point that we forget why we are competing - and about the ideal notion of worthy opponents.  Instead, we begin to rationalize our own behaviors.   We try to gain advantage by bending the rules and we say, "everyone else is doing it."  We argue that breaking a rule is common practice and "it's just a part of the game."  We learn to watch where the referee is and commit an intentional foul and say, "It you don't get caught, it isn't wrong."  We develop our own strategies of how to get around a rule by saying, "If I don't do this, someone else will, and I'll be left out."

Pretty soon, bending, breaking, and using rules to our advantage is such common practice that we do not consider the practice of gaining advantage anything other than what is expected of us.  Thus fair play becomes the ugly stepsister to "gaining advantage".