Sports: Violation of Pure Competion

When I was five years old I saw The Karate Kid, and I vividly remember the final fight between Daniel-san and Johnny during the martial arts tournament. The Sensei for the Cobra Kai has one of his pupils perform an illegal move on Daniel’s leg that gets the pupil ejected and almost ends Daniel’s bid for the trophy. Later, the Sensei tells a bloody-nosed Johnny to “sweep the leg”, a move that would result in Johnny losing a point in the match. Johnny obeys, re-injuring Daniel’s leg and nearly putting him out of commission for good.

I always thought Johnny was a jerk and a coward for attacking Daniel’s injured leg; it was low, dirty and dishonorable, not to mention illegal. I used to think that all good people in the free world would agree with me, but recently I have discovered that is not the case.

It seems that in the sporting arena, such an act is not perceived as wicked, but rather as gamesman-like and smart. If a sport commentator today were to be watching that fateful match, I believe he would say something like this:

“I can’t believe it! Johnny has just swept the leg from under Daniel—the same leg that was injured earlier! Daniel is down and it looks like he could be out of this fight for good. John Crease, the Sensei of the Cobra Kai, is looking on with a grim smile. This aggressive and illegal move will cost Johnny a point, but if Daniel can’t continue then Johnny wins by default. It’s smart play-calling on Crease’s part. He weighed the pros and cons and went with the call that would be most likely to net him a win. …What a gamesman!”

That might sound ludicrous, but the same perversion has poisoned the minds of sports commentators and fans alike. The line between good and bad is being rubbed out for the sake of justifying a victory. Phrases like “Winning isn’t everything” and “May the best man win” are being replaced with “A win is a win” and “Do whatever it takes to get the job done”. “Just do your best” has become a cliché that no one really seems to believe anymore. People no longer compete to see who is better, they compete to win. Despite what you might think, the two goals are far from similar.

I watched a football game the other night between the Steelers and the Dolphins. On one play, the Steelers busted out with an 82-yard pass play that gave them a touchdown and put them in the lead. The only problem was the Steelers’ receiver stepped out of bounds. The refs didn’t catch it, but the coach of the Dolphins did. He threw the red flag to challenge the play but the refs didn’t see that either. The coach for the Steelers knew what was about to happen so he had his kicking crew hurry out on the field and get the extra point over with so that the red flag would become a moot point. He succeeded.

Some people say that was smart football. Some people say that he made the right call, the call that any coach would make. The truth is, he was a coward and showed none of the qualities of a true competitor. He knew the rules had been broken, that his receiver had stepped out of bounds and that the play should have been blown dead. He knew the touchdown was illegitimate and yet he did everything he could to make sure he would get away with it anyway. It was sneaky and underhanded and not at all within the scope of the game of football. He was playing for the “W”, not to prove that his Steelers were better than the Dolphins.

The purpose of competition is not simply to declare a victor, nor does a true competitor simply compete to win. A true competitor wants to pit his best against someone else’s best and see how he matches up. He wants to take all his skills, abilities, talents, experiences and knowledge, and see if he is better than his peers. A competitor plays to compete, not to win.

Wars are fought to win. Nations at war do not want to compete to see who is better; they want to preserve their borders, their way of life, or their freedom. All is fair in war because there can be no rules. After all it’s hard to make rules when killing someone is not only allowed, it’s the whole point! Human life becomes secondary to the cause for which the soldiers are fighting, and when that happens there is nothing that is forbidden. Victory is not achieved by reaching a certain amount of kills, nor is it defined within a certain amount of time. Victory comes only when the enemy can no longer oppose you and must surrender or become extinct. Casualties and destruction mean nothing because winning means everything.

Sports are not wars. The absolute and extreme measures that are taken in war to secure victory cannot and should not be allowed in competition. If you cannot beat a team within the rules and regulations laid out by the sport, then you do not deserve to win.

I always found it peculiar that people would say, “May the best man win” until I realized that the best man does not always win. The heart of a true competitor wants the best to win, regardless of who it is. Why? Well, if he is the best, he wants to be able to claim victory, not have it ripped out of his hands by the devious devices of his opponents. On the other hand, if he is not the best, he doesn’t want to take what is not his. Pure competition is designed to praise the achievements and efforts of a superior competitor, not someone who was able to manipulate and sneak more points on the scoreboard.

People who break the rules or knowingly commit fouls only prove that they are inferior to their opponents. It shows that they cannot win on their own merits—they are not the better athletes. In order to win, or to give the illusion that they are better, they must step outside the parameters set by the sport to give themselves an advantage. The Steelers might well have been better than the Dolphins, but the fact that the coach would exploit a missed call shows that he did not have confidence that his team could win, or even to make another big play like that. If he did, if he truly believed his team was better, he would have acknowledged the foul and then marched down the field on the next play.

The most fun I ever had playing basketball was with a very competitive friend of mine from high school. We were almost even in terms of skill, so our games were not only close but they were extremely intense. There was a certain amount of pride on the line as to who had improved more since the last time we played, and who would be one-up the next time we played. But what really made the competition work was the honesty we had. I remember one play in particular where I was on defense and I had managed to back him into a corner. He couldn’t dribble and he had no open shot. He took a step back and launched a prayer right over my hands that swished through the net. I got the rebound and tossed him the ball. He tossed it back and said, “My foot was out of bounds”.

He wanted to win, but it was more important to him that he won fairly with his own abilities. That foot out of bounds had given him the space he needed to foil my defense, but it was a foot he shouldn’t have had. I didn’t notice, but he knew. He went on to win that game, and he left the court a true winner. We each had played our best, and he had proven the better man fair and square. Had he kept quiet and taken the point, he wouldn’t have known if he really could have beaten me that game. I don’t know how anyone can walk off a court or field with any kind of pride knowing that they won because they got away with something illegal, or because they were able to manipulate the system.

If the roles in The Karate Kid had been reversed for the final bout, would we still have been able to root for Daniel? Despite the fact that he was the underdog and a good kid in general, would we have been okay with him fighting dirty to win?

There are three kinds of rules in sports. The first kind of rules establish the technical aspects of the game: field size, objectives, point system, etc.., The second kind of rules are created to protect the health or well-being of the players with safety in mind. The third set of rules make sure that all factors outside the competitors are as equal as possible so that they can truly test their abilities against each other.

A receiver needs to be able to run a good route, have great speed, agility, dexterity, and field-awareness. He must have endurance and stamina to run several plays in a row at full speed, and he needs to have good hands and presence of mind. The same list of qualities is needed by his direct nemesis, the cornerback. The rules are designed to make sure those qualities are tested, and that the speed, agility, etc.., of each player are pitted against the other.

For example, a cornerback cannot make contact with a receiver after five yards. Why? Because if a cornerback could wrestle, bump, and grapple with the receiver, it wouldn’t be a match of speed and agility but of upper body strength; they would essentially become lineman.

A lineman cannot hold his opponent. Why? Because the battle on the line is a match of balance, power, and strength. The offensive lineman wants to hit low, hard, and fast to knock the defender off-balance and take control of the battle. There is technique involved in blocking and pass-rushing that would be completely discarded if all the lineman had to do was tackle his opponent or cling desperately onto his jersey until the play was over.

When a lineman holds, it shows that he was beaten. For whatever reason, his opponent was able to gain the upper hand and the only way the lineman can compensate is to cheat. Again, the competition is over and the other man was better. But if the lineman can get away with the hold, he might very well buy his quarterback enough time to get the pass off and score a touchdown; the end result therefore was not an accurate depiction of which team was the more skilled on that particular play.

The rules create the necessary grounds of competition. They set the parameters of what skills and talents someone must have to be good at any given position. Just like the rules define what it takes to be a good sprinter or swimmer in the Olympics, so too do they define what makes a superior lineman or receiver. When the rules are broken, the guidelines are destroyed and the value of competition is gone. If all you have to do is be able to get away with holding, then any scrub of any size and skill could be a lineman—all he’d have to do is get hold of his opponent in a way the ref couldn’t see and hold on for dear life.

Rules are also designed as checks and balances to make sure no one has an advantage going into the match-up. There are reasons the offensive line cannot move prior to the snap but the defensive line can. The rules are not random requisites thrown out there by the creators of the sport just to make things difficult. There is a reason for each one of them, and they have to be specific because there has to be as little subjectivity as possible. A toe out of bounds might not really give a receiver that much of an advantage, but how else would you enforce the boundaries with any consistency other than to say both feet must be completely in bounds?

Once general rules define how the game is played, it is absolutely necessary to make sure that the definition of the game is followed faithfully so that it can birth a competitive atmosphere. If kicking was allowed in basketball, the sport would not only be chaotic, but it would become difficult to determine who really had more skill and in what areas. Offense would be nearly impossible, and defense would be far too easy. It would be a mismatch almost all the time and no one could really claim to have a better mastery of the sport. Once dribbling was established as the only way to move with the ball, there had to be rules that put boundaries on what the defense could and couldn’t do to interfere with that movement. Those rules defined what it took to be a great defender as well as what made a good dribbler. Any time those rules are violated, the definitions of the positions and skills become void and there is no way to compare one team or individual to the other.

The biggest problem today is not so much understanding what role the rules play as much as it is understanding where fouls and penalties belong in relation to sports. The answer is that they do not have any place in the sport whatsoever.

I find basketball to be the biggest violator of this principle. If a man gets beat on defense and the offense is about to score an easy lay-up, it is expected and accepted for the defender to foul the potential scorer to avoid a score. It’s called a “good foul”, and proponents of it say “it’s part of the game.”

The fact of the matter is that it is not part of the game. If the rulebook says, “do not do this”, that means that action has no part in the game, it does not belong within the confines of the game and it is not to be done. Fouling someone, despite the reason, is a foul. In the game of basketball, there is to be no fouling. If you want to play the game the way it was meant to be played, you do not foul the other team.

As I said above, the rules are designed to foster a competitive environment, so violating the rules voids the competition. When that defender got beaten, he lost. The guy with the ball was too fast, too agile, or too skilled and was able to beat the defense and get an open look at the basket. In that brief bout of competition, the offense prevailed. Offense and defense square off, and either the ball falls into the hands of the defense, or the offense finds a way to get around the defense and score. Fouling someone at the last minute once you’ve been beaten is showing that you don’t have the courage or sportsmanship to acknowledge that you’ve been bested. The whole point of playing well on offense is to get the best possible opportunity to make a shot. If the offense plays well enough to get a lay-up, then that is their reward. Nowhere in the game of basketball does it say that once a defense has been beaten, they can restrain the offense illegally to save face. THAT IS NOT PART OF THE GAME!

When someone drives to the basket and the defense closes around him and blocks the lane, that means the defense was better than the offense for that play. The defense did its job, and the offense should have to regroup and try something else. But instead the beaten dribbler launches himself at the defense and throws the ball in the air. The refs call a foul and the loser—the offense—now gets rewarded. This is referred to as “drawing a foul”, which again, is not part of the game.

In the ideal game of basketball, there are no fouls. The game is meant to be played, designed to be played, so that there isn’t a need or cause for fouls. Fouls spoil the game—they are problems. Fouls are violations of the rules, intrusions on the game that must be dealt with so that the game can continue. A foul is a fly in the ointment. It isn’t a part of the ointment; it is something that does not belong there. Trying to make someone foul you because you do not have the skill to beat them within the parameters established by the sport is pathetic. A pump-fake is designed to throw the defense off guard and give the guy with the ball an open shot at the basket—the goal of playing good offense. But some people use the pump-fake to draw a foul—throwing themselves into the airborne defender to purposefully maim their own shot! The very technique sounds cowardly!

I cannot emphasize it enough: fouls are not part of the game. Making someone commit a foul who doesn’t want to foul has no competitive merit. It is against the rules to contaminate the game with a foul, whether you cause it or force someone else to on purpose. As I said before, fouling someone is evidence that you are not able to compete with him on your own merits and on the skills called upon by the nature of the game.

Some would argue that fouls and penalties are part of the game because you can get away with them. A basketball player is allowed six fouls before he is thrown from the game, and football players can foul as much as they want. But you notice no one who commits a foul in football is praised. A cornerback who tackles a receiver while the ball is still in the air isn’t applauded for pass interference. They are applauded when they get away with it, but not if they get caught. Pass interference, offsides…they aren’t considered part of the game. So why is the opposite true in basketball?

The only reason there are six penalties allowed in basketball is because humans make mistakes. We can’t always control what we do and accidents happen. If players were ejected for committing one foul, teams would run out of players very quickly and those who played would do so with excessive caution that would be boring to watch. The belief is that people can and will control purposeful fouls, so when fouls are committed they are most likely by accident and shouldn’t be severely punished. Unfortunately that belief is wrong, as is demonstrated by the current state of basketball in this country.

I won’t even discuss the acting involved in both sports to make it seem like a mild foul was greater than it was, or that a foul that never happened actually did. That is not part of the game either. Bluffing is essential to poker, it is not a skill that makes for a competitive basketball player.

In the past few years, I have found my interest in playing and watching sports has diminished greatly. I don’t want to play basketball because people who are inferior to me feel it is their right, and indeed that it is good basketball, to foul me when they fail to be competitive in a legal way. Many people see winning as proof that they are better, regardless of how poorly they played or how unfair the teams were. Outplaying someone is secondary to creating the most uneven playing field possible.

Watching isn’t any more fun either. I don’t want to see some hapless stooge throw his body into a defensive mass because he didn’t have the skill to get a clean shot any other way. I’m tired of seeing NFL teams squeak by with questionable calls. If a player is a true competitor, he should be able to acknowledge when he’s broken the rules. If there is a fumble and someone recovers it, there shouldn’t be a swarm of other players trying to pry the ball loose. If the man’s knees are down and he has possession of the ball then the play is dead. In the game of football, there is no allowance for an attempt to get the ball away once the play is dead, therefore players who make such an attempt are no longer playing football.

The reason for what I believe to be the escalation of cowardly play is simple: money. More and more people are betting on games now, and a win means money. You need your team to win, so you don’t care what they have to do to achieve victory. Your team could be the worst team out there, but if they somehow manage to finagle a string of wins then you won’t complain. The same goes with the teams themselves. Good players aren’t paid as much as players who win. Winning is good for the franchise, it’s good for business. You get a bonus for winning, not for playing your best.

There is no gray area here. To hear an ESPN radio commentator say that what the Steelers’ quarterback did was good gamesmanship is nauseating. The man knowingly took points for something he did not deserve. In the game of football, the play was dead. Hearing fans say “a win is a win” is the same as saying that what Johnny did to Daniel was the right thing to do. “We’ll take it.”

We shouldn’t. Fans and honest players deserve better than to watch a bunch of gutless crooks prostituting good wholesome competition for a win that will net them more money. People need to start looking at how their precious teams are winning and see if they are as good as their record shows. If you are truly good, you don’t need to foul and you don’t need to try and get away with violations.

I’m not sure how long the perversions of competition have been around. All I know is that many of the athletes playing professional sports today do not have the character, integrity, or security to play their absolute best and see how well they stack up against others. They would be just as happy if the other team forfeited than if they actually had to play them for the win. As long as they have that “W”, it doesn’t matter how it gets there. That’s not the competitive spirit. Too often we take aggression and the willingness to do anything to win as a sign of a competitor when in reality it is evidence of a coward who is afraid to lose and doesn’t believe he can win.

People who play to win are people who have a perverted perception of the game. As I said before, war is one of the only arenas where it is okay to have winning as the end-all. The path to victory doesn’t matter because achieving victory itself is absolutely paramount. By dropping two atomic bombs on the Japanese, we didn’t prove we had better fighting skills or more spirit, but we did achieve victory.

In sports, however, the goal is competition. Think about blowouts. The only people who enjoy blowouts are the fans and players of the team who is winning. The purpose of a sport is to see who is better, and as long as both teams stay within the defining rules of the sport, the better team will win. The rules are designed to make sure that better play is rewarded with victory.

When a team plays to win, by definition it means that illegal plays and fouls are not out of the question. In fact, to watch NBA games now, you see that fouls have actually become a part of a teams’ strategy! Does that make it part of the game? No it doesn’t, because fouls are still not permitted in the game of basketball. If Joe steals a car in Virginia so he can make a roadtrip to Florida he will go to jail. Stealing is not allowed. But would you say that because Joe is still alive and because the punishment is only temporary that it was okay for him to steal the car? He got what he wanted, he paid a price for it and life goes on. What’s wrong with that?

In stark contrast to those who play to win, competitors who play to be the best must adhere to the rules and structure of the game. To be the best at a sport means you play the sport the way it was designed to be played and you prevail against others who are also playing the sport as it was meant to be played. There is no other way to determine who is better. Was the Steelers’ receiver a better football player when he caught that pass? No, because the game of football is played within the white lines. The cornerback was playing football, but he cannot compete fairly with someone who is given a slightly wider field in which to run.

For those who continue to insist the fouls are part of the game, I ask where the line should be drawn. In the movie Rocky IV, Rocky is a severe underdog. His reach is about a foot shorter than his opponents’, he’s well past his prime, and he suffers from past injuries. His opponent, the Russian, is uninjured, young, and full of steroids. Would you be in favor of Rocky shooting up during his training sessions? Would he have been the better boxer? Would he have shown he had more heart, perseverance, and skills if he was using something outside the sport to give him the victory? Absolutely not. Remember, this is not a man who fought to win. When he battled Apollo, he said he wanted to go the distance, to do his best. He could have easily justified turning to steroids, but that would have been fighting to win instead of fighting to the best of his abilities.

I fail to see how anyone can frown at the use of steroids but applaud illegal scores or plays. Steroids are just as much a part of the game as any foul is. According to the rules, neither one belongs on the court or on the field, but both can be used to give one team the edge. If you get caught using steroids, you get a fine and a warning. You get three warnings before you get removed from the league, so doesn’t that make it part of the game? You have three warnings to use just like you have six fouls in basketball. That must mean it’s okay.

Just because a sport has been played a certain way by so many teams doesn’t mean it’s okay. Watching people commit or draw fouls in any sport takes away from the purity of the game and shows that those people have no right to be where they are. They aren’t competing to see who truly is the best, they are waging a war that requires victory by any means necessary. Soldiers deserve respect in a time of war, not during an athletic competition.

There is no honor or applause to be given to someone who goes beyond the sport in order to make himself a winner.