The Ethics Sage Discusses Sport Ethics

My friend, Steven Mintz, the Ethics Sage, has an opinion piece on sport ethics. I have here a brief excerpt. As always, please go to his site and read the whole thing. An excerpt does not do it justice, and you would be wise to bookmark his site and follow his posts.

James Pilant

Sport Ethics – Ethics Sage

The abiding values of sport include fairness, integrity, responsibility, and respect. Fairness requires that each player and each team should have an equal chance to play up to their abilities. The taking of steroids by well-known baseball players such as Ryan Braun violates the fairness doctrine because it gave him a competitive advantage over those who played by the rules, which ban certain substances.

Integrity is related to fairness and the other values because it addresses the whole of the person. Does each individual playing the sport truly believe in and practice the core values of sport? That is the essence of integrity or principled behavior in sport. In football, faking an injury at the end of a game to stop the clock lacks integrity and the offending team may lose time off the clock. In basketball some would say ‘flopping’ to draw a foul lacks integrity.

Respect deals with how athletes and coaches relate to athletes, teammates, opponents, coaches, and officials. Rutgers University Mike Rice was fired on April 3, 2013, after the coach was caught on video hitting, kicking and taunting players with anti-gay slurs at practice.

Responsibility entails accepting the consequences of one’s actions on the field including one’s emotions. On a Thanksgiving game last year, Pittsburgh Steelers coach

via Sport Ethics – Ethics Sage.