In athletic games, there is ultimately a goal of scoring. Our culture has turned the goal of the game from scoring to injuring. As we did the readings for March 12th, we saw where a line might be drawn between varying athletic games. While hockey may use fighting in order to save the players from more serious injury, football players have added a twist to the game. The Saints' defensive coordinator has orchestrated a program in which many of the players earned bonuses for inflicting excessive pain on the crucial players for their opponents.
This is certainly against moral ethics. Sports were created to promote fun and an organized way of competition. Many have put morals to shame by behaving the way they have in organized pro sports. Prosecution may be the way to teach a valuable lesson and bring players back to reality and the original objective of the sport in which they play.
Source: NY Times Article
Sammy,
ReplyDeleteComing from someone who played smarts as a child, I couldn't agree more with you in terms of the purpose of sports. "Sports were created to promote fun" and are an organized way to compete with one another. However, the two articles we read recently read in the NY Times attest to the increasing amount of violence woven into professional sports. In "Hockey's History: Woven With Violence" and the "NFL says Some Saints Paid Bounties," there is substantial evidence that supports your claim about the evolution of sports and what they've become. Evidently, professional hockey and football have changed their dynamic "of play." In today's leagues, they are more dangerous than ever.
Interestingly, "sports" is a term that, over the past half-century or so, has transcended the physical games with which we tend to associate the term even today. There are professional gaming leagues, also known as E-Sports, which, at least in my opinion, promote violence in the safest way imaginable. Games like Counter Strike and Halo focus almost exclusively on killing the enemy team, which many enjoy doing casually with their friends. Professional gamers just get paid lots of money to do it; people enjoy watching extremely good gamers as much as they enjoy watching extremely good baseball/basketball/you-name-it players. The only difference is the arena. We may very well see a meteoric rise in E-Sports in the future; Starcraft, a game by Blizzard Entertainment, is already a national sport in South Korea. Pros make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to dominate their opponents - but the only violence in these sports is in the virtual world.
ReplyDeleteSammy I agree with this post, I believe that the only way to stop this violence is by actually punishing those who commit it. I believe that a fine is not enough for these players and teams, rather they should lose something tangible like a game or the ability for a player to participate in a game that actually hurts the team instead of just a small amount of money (to these athletes who make so much). Richard spoke about Counter Strike and Halo and how the objective of these games is to hurt people, which is fine with me, as these games are not real life, while in sports actual people are getting hurt. It seems stupid to want to hurt people in order to succeed because believe it or not that is a type cheating. No where in any rules does is say that as long as it's a "clean" hit, but an intentional one to hurt someone that it's okay to win that way, or to make a player miss the season because of that. If no rules and repercussions are put into place sports players are going to just keep getting hurt and at a stronger magnitude then ever before. Not to mention these players are also losing sight of why they started playing these games in the first place!
ReplyDelete