The value of sport and values in sport have been controversial at least since the time of the ancient Greeks.
How can it be true that sport is at the same time the developer of moral and immoral character? The French
existentialist writer Albert Camus contended that
everything he knew about ethics he had learned from
sport, while the social historian Wray Vamplew has asserted that the qualities instilled in sport were precisely
those thought desirable in Nazi train drivers to Dachau.
To unravel this apparent paradox requires the drawing
of some distinctions.
Values and Valuing
Sport experts suggest that sports have all or some of
the following types of values: contributive, extrinsic,
inherent, instrumental, intrinsic, and relational.
It might be said that there are only two sources of
value in sport; sports persons (subjects) and sporting
practices (objects). The subject poses two types of
valuing: the value lies in the activity itself, or is intrinsic. A golfer may value her activity precisely because it
represents a particular type of activity in which certain powers of concentration and skills are required.
Another person may value the very same game because it is a way of making money, achieving social
status, or displaying her prowess. These factors are related to the activity but not part of it; this is extrinsic
value.
The nature of motivation and the nature of valuing
are also closely associated. Many coaches lament that
their athletes are motivated by external factors.What is
deeply problematic here is the contingency of the valuing and hence motivation. If what motivates the child
to engage in sports is the social status, or the medals, or
the glory, or the coach’s praise, or simply the winning,
what happens when the sport no longer achieves these
ends?
At the other end of the continuum, one can consider not the sportsperson’s own dispositions, but the
nature of sports themselves; whether and in what ways
they are valuable. Many claims of the value of sport are
“instrumental.” Sports are not necessarily valuable in
their own right but instrumental in achieving things
that are in themselves valuable. Similarly, to say that
sports are of contributive value is to say that they may
contribute to the achievement of an end external to
themselves.
Many different values are cited in the notion of
virtue, with sports seen as the means to this end. Politicians talk about the role of sports in group and national identity and the recognition of responsibility;
physicians praise sports for their health-related value.
Educators praise sports for their ability to achieve
group solidarity; physiologists note how sports can elevate basic functions, such as lung power and cardiac
output. Psychologists say that sports can be a useful
means for people to blow off steam in relatively harmless ways; militarists praise them for their capacity to
instill loyalty and obedience to authority. Religious
leaders praise sports that metaphorically engender the
will to fight the good fight and run the race to the finish; economists note how they can reduce lost work
days; marketing moguls praise them for the success in
promoting products; and so on. The sheer diversity of
ends that sports can achieve is almost bewildering. One
could be forgiven for thinking them to be a universal
panacea.
Yet at the same time, some of these same types of
people argue against sports—physicians because of
injuries, educators because they detract from academic
pursuits, and so on. Their counterassertions may lead
us to believe that the instrumental value of sport is
canceled out by the negatives it is instrumental in
bringing about.
The Inherent Value of Sports
To look only to these types of values ignores what is
valuable in sports in and of themselves. Inherent value
is most easily described negatively; it is easier to say
what it is not than what it is. In describing the instrumental value of sports, it is the external ends that are
really valued. If this is the case, then if another means
is more successful, effective, efficient, or simply more
economic in achieving those ends, then there is every
reason to engage in that activity and not sports. So if
sports are found to be poor at developing self-esteem,
then the psychologist may deny their value. If militarists find that brave footballers can be craven cowards in war, they cease to value sports.When politicians
decide that other curricular subjects are better at developing national identity, they no longer value them.
When people say they value sports for their own
sake, or in their own right, they say that the value is part
of the practices themselves. These characteristics may
vary from sport to sport according to their nature but
some common features are qualities such as skillful action, powers of anticipation, tactical imagination, speed,
strength, emotional intensity, and competitiveness.
Many academics in sport have tended to move
without qualification between the subject and object
and therefore ignore the distinction between intrinsic
and extrinsic valuing and instrumental and inherent.
However, a third, mediating category is conceivable.
Many theorists of sport have failed to recognize the
sometimes particular relationship between means and
ends in sport.
In arguing that sports are often seen as means to
external ends they fail to recognize that the relationship is not necessarily neutral. There is a strong tendency to isolate a particular end and to say that sport is
merely a means to achieve that end.Yet for complex activities at least, the means-end distinction is too crude.
Setting out the value of such activities in terms of
means and ends often involves focusing upon certain
aspects of an activity while losing the broader picture
that gives them sense. Sporting activities are better
conceived of as complex wholes of which the components are essentially inseparable. The satisfactions involved in activities like athletics, lacrosse, table tennis,
and surfing are commonly spread over a lifetime and
often involve dedication, commitment, imagination,
tolerance, self-sacrifice, the endurance of hardship, and
other factors. They are not merely neutral routes to the
securing of pleasure.When you wish to enjoy a game of
baseball you do not go to play a game of tennis. This is
because, again, of the differing nature of the sports and
the particular motivations to play this sport rather
than that. The pleasure derived in and through the performance is wedded uniquely to the form of action and
the participant. Sports under this description, both inherently and instrumentally, are valuable in that they
achieve the aims of the participant who values them relationally. This takes into account the sportsperson’s relationship to the activity and, secondly, it takes into account the inherent and instrumental value of the
activity that the athlete secures in his or her participation. Viewed in this light, sports become mixed goods;
they are valuable in their own right and as particular
means to potentially valuable ends.
Values, Sports, and Society
In further examining value in sports, new issues arise:
“What is the relationship between values in sport and
values in society?” And “which values ought to predominate in sports?” There can be no doubt that sports
can be played, taught, coached, refereed, and administered badly or well.
What is clear is that an exclusive concern with sport
as an instrumentally valuable means to external ends
constitutes a form of abuse. It is not clear how long they
would survive, let alone flourish, under such alien
forces. It is equally clear that, in elite sports at least, the
pressure of one external end, wealth accumulation, is
greatly undermining the integrity of sports as mutual
quests for excellent performances within the letter and
spirit of agreed rules. Capitalist and communist societies, for very similar reasons, have often reduced the
values of sport to one: winning. To do so is often to undermine the logic that gives sport both its sense and its
magic. Yet in contrast to this win-at-all-costs ethic, is
perhaps another less pernicious logic and lobby. The
noncompetitive sports movement, if not a contradiction
in terms, also seeks to undermine the contesting nature
of sports by exalting the process over and above the logical end. If everyone wins, no one wins, it can be said.
Sports, perhaps, are best thought to be valuable as
rituals. They derive their meaning from basic actions
that were once necessary for survival but are now
largely obsolete. We now throw, run, jump, and catch just because we can, and moreover strive to do them as
excellently as they can be done. Sports are felt to be
obligatory to those who come to love them; they can be
played well and badly; they have consequences though
they are not to be done merely for them. The value they
have is perhaps best thought of as their capacity to give
value to the life of people who are committed to them.
To paraphrase Chesterton,“if a thing is worth doing at
all, it is worth doing badly.” The vast majority of sportsmen and women enjoy the value sports have and give
despite their won-lost record, not because of it.
—M. J. MCNAMEE
Bibliography: Coakley, J. J. (1994) Sports in Society. St. Louis:
Mosby. Shields, D., and B. J. Bredemier. (1995) Character
Development and Physical Activity. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Simon, R. L. (1991) Fair Play; Sports, Values, and Society. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.