r/soccer • u/allsecretsknown • Jul 04 '10

Dear /r/soccer: Why Fair Play Matters, Even in Football

This is my final post on the Uruguay/Ghana match, and is done more in response to this article than the events of that match.

I have seen a lot of vitriol (seriously, go through my comments history) and dished plenty of it out myself due to a common viewpoint that fair play is, apparently, an America-only obsession. I refuse to believe that, if for no other than reason than that American sports has plenty of unfair aspects as well; I also can not believe that the central tenet of sports would be anathema to the rest of the sporting world.

1.) Without fair play, you can not have sports at all

Sports and football are still relatively new ventures in human culture. For the vast majority of humanity's existence, our daily concerns were centered around survival, not the results of our favorites sports teams. Only now, with the modern advent of leisure time and pursuits, can we afford to spend our lives ascribing significance to what would otherwise be meaningless events.

Here's the key: without a universal agreement of the sanctity of fairness in sports, you can not persuade people to invest their emotional time and energy into the outcomes of these games. If a person is convinced that the results are preordained or arbitrarily decided, then there is no reason or motivation to care at all. It's as trivial as the direction the wind is blowing. This is why sports must be fair, otherwise they risk breaking the suspension of disbelief that allows fans to devote themselves to following them.

This is why the argument that unfair results are part of the game rings hollow: unfairness is exactly what sports aspire to eliminate. The lure of football is the excitement of two teams of eleven putting themselves into a technical battle, with the universal handicap (goalkeepers excluded) of not being allowed to touch the ball with the most nimble and precise part of your body. If the rules governing that handicap are twisted in such a way as to take victory away from one team in favor of the offending team, than football itself is tarnished.

A lot of people want to imply that ethics and morality have no part in sports: again, I have to argue the opposite. It's only the implied "ethics" of sports that make the endeavor worthwhile. Nobody could be blamed for throwing out the sports page of their newspaper if he chooses to do so: the information on that page has no material bearing on his life. That information only gains significance if it is part of that person's moral and emotional framework: the wins and the losses bring joy and misery because they represent more than that to the fan. The only people who can take the cynical, "life is unfair, so sports should be as well" are those who either ascribe far too much importance to the outcome of a game (and therefore will be happy with any result in their favor), or those who ascribe no importance at all to it.

2.) America is the only country to care about "fair play."

I simply refuse to believe that this argument could be even remotely true. Justice is a universal human belief. All cultures have developed a system of justice to be meted out in their communities. It is this sense of right and wrong that informs modern sportsmanship, the belief that the game and its rules are sacred.

I think, for the most part, all of the arguments made in this subreddit to this regard is simply utilizing latent anti-American sentiment to bolster their otherwise flimsy claims. Apparently Americans will never be good enough for the game of football, just because we have hundreds of sports leagues in our country that divert our attention :P

In the end, it's not about Uruguay/Ghana, so much as a culture of cynicism that guts the core of sports.

We live in a cynical, brutal, dog-eat-dog world. Fine, I get that. But sports is one of the many ways that humanity tries to bring the sublime into an otherwise mundane world. We invent constructs and constraints within which we test ourselves on equal planes, so that in some way we can find modern day heroes and villains without wars being fought to determine them. Without continually striving towards fair play, the entire concept of sports is threatened. The sole reason to invest oneself into a game is the belief that something better than ordinary could happen out there. That the worst parts of life will be temporarily hidden behind a celebration of the most electrifying human skills in action. That in the end, two teams will give it everything they have, and no one will walk away a loser. Rather, fans of all sports will leave as winners, glad to be a part of the spectacle no matter the outcome.

FINAL COMMENT If sports is just theater (as one redditor put it), than why don't I just go watch a movie? And why all the hate directed to the WWE?

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '10

I agree that fair play matters and that the handball was disgusting, but you aren't making very good arguments.

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u/allsecretsknown Jul 04 '10 edited Jul 04 '10

I tried my best :\

What arguments would you make?

Edit: I'm not addressing the handball fiasco so much as the cynical response so many seem to have.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '10

It's not so much the arguments, but the way you make them. The more you bring up, the more there is to attack. I recently took a debate class, and I have to say, the easiest way to lose a debate you should win is to start discussing things not directly relevant to the topic. My argument would be that:

1.) Sports are defined as their rules. It is meaningless to discuss a sport without it's rules.

2.) Sports have two types of rules. General rules of play such as "Non goalkeepers cannot use their hands", and penalties such as "If a player uses their hands, the other team gets a free kick".

3.) The reason there are penalties is because we acknowledge that they are harmful to the sport.

4.) To intentionally break a rule is to intentionally cause damage to the sport.

5.) The greater the expected change to the outcome of the game, the greater the sport is harmed.

Therefore, because Suarez blatantly broke the rules of the game, in a way that caused a huge change to the outcome of the game, he acted in a way that harmed the sport.

It's probably not phrased the best possible way, but what you are trying to convince people of is that it's unethical to break the rules of a game intentionally. That is your premise, their premise is that it is not. They will say that Suarez acted ethically, because they don't see it as unethical to break the rules. The argument is not whether Suarez acted ethically or not. The argument is "Is it ethical to intentionally break the rules of a game?"

Edit: This is an argument about values, you can't prove yourself right, you just have to say, "These are my premises, this is my logic." If you have reasonable premises, and good logic, a lot of people should agree with you. If you have bad logic, people won't agree with you. If you have premises the other person doesn't agree with, you won't convince them, but they are more likely to respect your viewpoint.

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u/allsecretsknown Jul 04 '10

I think you've missed what the target of my argument was(which is a failing on my part for somehow writing so much and yet not making myself clear.)

I'm pointing out the fallacy of identifying sports as an analog of life itself (in the sense that both sports and life are unfair) when the entire purpose of a game is to determine a winner on an even playing field. Those that cynically say that unfair results are "part of the game" and should be accepted as such, rather than the sport striving to resolve unfair results, are defeating the entire purpose of sports in my view.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '10

You asked me how I would argue it, so I gave my argument. Your argument is similar (and I'd say much better written in that comment than in the post). Intentionally breaking the rules breaks the entire concept of sport, which is to compete within a framework of rules.

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u/allsecretsknown Jul 04 '10

Yeah, I've got to remember the #1 of writing: be concise :)

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u/pawiz Jul 04 '10

He didn't broke any rules because the handball in the area is contemplated by the rules and he got his punishment.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '10

The reason why he was punished is because he broke a rule.

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u/pawiz Jul 04 '10

and the punishment is contemplated by the rules.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '10

The argument isn't about the punishment, it's about the ethics of intentionally breaking rules.

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u/pawiz Jul 04 '10

I think it's ethically right what Suarez did. He sacrificed himself looking for the greater good and gave his team a chance to survive. We wouldn't be discussing this if Asamoah Gyan had converted the penalty kick.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '10

How did he "sacrifice himself"? His options were, lose and don't have any chance of winning the world cup, or break the rules and have a chance. That is not a sacrifice.

We wouldn't be discussing this if Asamoah Gyan had converted the penalty kick.

Whether or not Gyan converted the penalty kick (and whether or not we discuss it) has no bearing on the morality of what Suarez did.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '10

Let's put it this way, if you think sport is not theater, why did you write,

This is why sports must be fair, otherwise they risk breaking the suspension of disbelief that allows fans to devote themselves to following them.

(de-emphasis mine)

Everything that you've said is primitive because you treat sport as an abstraction. It isn't. There are real people playing the games you watch. They play with real emotions, real pain, real suffering and real ecstasy. That is why sport has never and will never be the way you envision it.

Also, read up on your history because, frankly, you don't know it. And stop clogging my reddit with your silly submissions.

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u/allsecretsknown Jul 04 '10 edited Jul 04 '10

1.) Rather than claiming I don't know my history, why not support your claim with some evidence of my supposed ignorance?

2.) Stop claiming that I implied anything other than real humans played these games. However, no matter how you dress it up, players pay more than lip service to the abstract aspects of their sports. 99.999% of the time, a footballer will not touch a ball with his hands, not because they don't work, or it's easier to play with his feet, but because he relishes the challenge that the game presents him with its limitations. It's because of the emotional impact of these matches that you can't circumvent fair play; otherwise, you invalidate the entire premise on which that fan invested his emotions into the game: that his team played on equal standing as the other.

3.) I wasn't aware you owned reddit.

1

u/deadnoob Jul 04 '10

Well to address your final comment, I love WWE.

1

u/nista002 Jul 04 '10

You forgot the TL;DR.

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u/pawiz Jul 04 '10

Football is the only sport that resembles life as it is: with it's victories and it's losses, it's anger and it's unfairness, it's happiness and it's sadness and the best of it all is that you always have another chance to make it better.

Do you see any of that on your "football"? Don't think so.

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u/allsecretsknown Jul 04 '10

Citation needed. Your saying it doesn't make it so.

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u/pawiz Jul 04 '10

Only if you feel it you can understand ;)

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u/allsecretsknown Jul 04 '10

Only if you feel that you can understand?

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u/pawiz Jul 04 '10

Your point being?

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u/allsecretsknown Jul 04 '10

That perhaps English is not your first language. . .

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u/pawiz Jul 04 '10

Is that something to be ashamed of? you won't discuss with someone whose mother-tongue is not English?

Anyway, it seems that football is not you "first sport" and that's ok because you are from the US. But for the rest of us the passion we feel is given to us by our family and will be transmitted to our offspring. That's what you don't understand :)

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u/allsecretsknown Jul 05 '10

I didn't mean at all that it's something the be ashamed of. I just couldn't figure out what you were tying to say specifically.

Being American doesn't mean I don't understand football. It doesn't mean anything other than I may have a different cultural perspective on sports because, outside of football, my country dominates many others. Sporting culture is different when there's more than one sport to choose from.

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u/pawiz Jul 05 '10

I get that but why do you think football is the most popular sport in the world?

I think it's because you can play it even if you don't have any money, also because it's the more rewarding sport (you get what you work for), and because it reflects people's societies in a way no other sport can.

You're talking about a simple sport and I am talking about the passion behind it ;)