Baller 21

Cultivating Sports Culture // Defining Reality

by Chris Harvey on 02/10/09

Continuing on from the Introduction to Cultivating Sports Culture, let’s take a moment to define reality.

During the 2008 Final Four, the N.B.A. and N.C.A.A announced that they would be joining forces in an effort to reform pre-collegiate, youth basketball systems. Both groups are in the process of creating a unified organization that will oversee youth basketball development through educating athletes, supporting coaches and officials, and providing national event competition.

The goal is to improve the youth basketball system on the grass roots level, the beginning stages of influence, for the advancement of the game.

However, there is a question that still lingers, that must be asked: How did we arrive at the current state of our athletic systems?

Has not the N.B.A., N.C.A.A., AAU, footwear and apparel companies, to name a few, had an impact on the state of the game, for better and worse? Has the current state of athletics derived overnight or on a slippery slope, slowly creeping in from years of social influences?

One does not need a degree in sociology to identify that sports can produce an imbalance.

Problem areas include, but not limited to, the type of pursuit in winning; children sports moving from peer control to adult agendas; youth and adult athletic programs only for the elite; big-time college sports that are dominated by money; gender and race inequalities in participation and leadership; and public return for private professional team subsidies (Noted by D. Stanley Eitzen, in Fair and Foul).

D. Stanley Eitzen paraphrases (Claude S. Fischer, in Inequality by Design) an important point: “Sport, as it is practiced in the United States, is not fated by nature or even by the “invisible hand” of the market; it is a social construction, the result of historical actions and choices. Americans have created the organization of sport that now exists, and Americans maintain it.”

Eitzen goes on to say, “This means, then, that because sport is created by people, it can be changed by them as well.”

While this momentous collaboration, between the N.B.A. and the N.C.A.A., may be a step in the right direction, it will take additional support by youth and adult sports organizations, business affiliates, coaches, players, and families to see change through.

Again, it would not benefit the cause of change to simply critique a system without offering an alternative.

First, there is a need to refine current athletic systems. An athletic organization can promote their core values and objectives that boast of athletic and academic excellence, sportsmanship, and moral development all they want, but what the system actually produces is telling.

What would it take to produce a generation of well-balanced athletes, students, and citizens?

An alternative system can be found in the balance of cultivating athletic and academic excellence, redeeming competition, generating social change, and encouraging life development.

By redeeming competition, I suggest, that we educate and support play that is grounded in promoting character, respecting the game, and in losing well. What I am not implying, however, is that we shouldn’t endorse athletic development and quality sports events.

Balance in our pursuit of winning and how we conduct ourselves in competition are crucial. The pursuit of athletic excellence and growth are good things, that some would even say spiritual things (Michael Novak, in The Joy of Sports). But we must educate and protect against the notion of win-at-all-costs.

I must confess, from personal experience as a ball player, that the desire to win and to do so in a manner that screams nothing of integrity, that doesn’t respect the game, is a constant struggle and even a mystery within the human soul.

When we end up in raging brawls over a call or an outcome of a game, we don’t respect the game.
When we intentionally raise up youth solely to be the next great athlete and rob them of the many other important dimensions in life, we don’t respect the game.
When we focus only on the development of the elite athlete, we don’t respect the game.
When we pursue economic success, at any cost or despite the consequences, we don’t respect the game.
When we compromise on rules and standards in order to win, we don’t respect the game.

By losing well, I advocate, playing with all one’s might, and if the effort is not good enough on a particular day, then concede defeat with class.
This is crazy talk, in our day in age, I know. But the fact is, we all lose.
John Wooden’s UCLA Bruin’s and Red Aurebach’s Boston Celtics dynasties even lost games, however rare that was.

Is it not possible to develop a system that endorses players to play hard and be the best they can be, and if they lose, to do so honorably?

The actions of Roy Williams, the University of North Carolina head basketball coach, after a defeat in the 2008 national semifinal game, set a good example of losing well. Instead of storming out of town to endure the pain of defeat, Williams appeared in the stands for the final game with a Kansas Jayhawks shirt on to show support for his former team.

Next post, we will finish up by looking at generating social change and encouraging life development, and how these elements fit into this alternative system of Cultivating Sports Culture.

C.Harv