Sportsmanship Gone Awry
Sportsmanship in American sport stinks! The concept is a myth. An outdated term for outdated people.
Yet the governing body for collegiate athletics, the NCAA, places more and more supposed emphasis on appropriate sportsmanship than ever and human/student behavior in this area keeps slipping out of site.
Why is this?
I’ve often wondered what drives a person to shout obscenities and degrading remarks at people in the sporting area. And I’m talking about all levels of the sport. From kids sports, high school, college, and professional levels the amount of verbal slim a participant must wade through is staggering.
Of course some of the participants contribute a fair share to poor sportsmanship but I’m talking about the fans and spectators.
It’s very difficult, disturbing, irritating, and many other adjectives I can’t use here, to deal with some of the spiteful comments that fly out of the student sections of college athletic contests.
Many college and university administrative types like to place their obnoxious student bodies immediately behind the visitors’ bench. This arrangement is to, supposedly, allow the students the opportunity to harass the opposition in a “good natured” way which will in turn provide a home crowd advantage.
Sounds good enough. Except many of the harassing comments aren’t good natured. They’re disgustingly inappropriate and if it wasn’t for the barrier separating players from spectators there would be a lot more deaths at sporting events. Particularly in the student section.
A few infamous situations that I seriously take exception to include:
1. “Hey #67, you’re nothing but a f#%&*ng pussy!” This was repeatedly shouted by a drunken student from a host institution who was no more than 30 feet from the table I was examining one of my football kids who just sustained a season ending ACL injury. Needless to say I had to fend off the urge to bait him out of the stands and inflict forceful blows about his head and shoulders (”Who’s the pussy now, dude?”). That would have gotten the attention of the administrators (and a few lawyers) that advocate having the student body sit directly on top of the visitors sidelines and scream shamelessly degrading remarks at injured kids.
2. “FU!, Go Home You Piece of S*%t!” This was repeatedly screamed at our kids following a defeat (on the field mind you!) by the host institutions’ student body. Note I said following the game! This same institution won the conference sportsmanship award that year. Nice touch, don’t you think?
3. During a wrestling dual I attended to a kid that had hurt his knee during a match. The host institution decided to seat their highly successful football team immediately at mat side, literally touching the edge of the mat. As I was assessing this injury one of these football guys shouted out, “He’s just a pussy! Throw him a tampon!” The rest of the goons rejoiced in this remark which was repeated in a later match. When our coach requested that these guys seat themselves in the stands and away from being directly on the mat he was relentlessly chastised. Like he was the cause of the problem.
Conference commissioners need to crack down hard on some of this and hard line policies and procedures for dealing with this nonsense need to be drawn up and enforced. Athletic directors need to be held accountable to insure such conduct will not be tolerated and will be dealt with swiftly and decisively.
Currently all I hear from the collegiate brass hierarchy is lip service given to the subject of sportsmanship. Poor sportsmanship is something “the other guy is guilty of. Not me!” Therein lies the problem.
So why don’t these college administrators do something about such conduct? I’ll tell you why!
There are far too many administrative types in the American work force, not just in athletics and education, that refuse to stand up, be accountable, make hard decisions, and stand by them. They would rather allow the heat and turmoil to fall on the backs of those they are hired to serve. In the case of athletics, the student athletes and coaches. It’s far easier to pretend that it’s all in good fun. Too bad it bears no resemblance to good sportsmanship.
Help a kid display good sportsmanship today. It’s a Win, Win!
Ike
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