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MHSAA Library
Ethics in Sports
(April 2005)

What does it mean to be ethical and responsible in sports?

I won't speak for the professional level, which has a commercial goal involving adults. I won't speak for the intercollegiate level, which has the same goal in some sports (for example, Division I basketball and football) and goals more akin to school sports at other levels or in other sports of Division I. I won't speak for Olympic sports which, in some sports, have stooped to become about as amateur in their ethics as professional and Division I football and basketball. And I can't speak for the purely recreational level of sports.

I can only speak for school sports, interscholastic athletics, what we call "educational athletics."

School sports have rules – lots of them. We believe participation alone is not enough; we believe participation with standards is required. It is not participation alone that has value, but the standards we require for the privilege of participation that infuse participation with value. We believe if we raise the standards of eligibility and conduct, we raise the value of participation; and we also believe if we lower the standards, we lower the value.
School sports can't afford teams of auditors and investigators to assure rules are being followed. In school sports, we adhere to the principle of self-governance where, in most cases, schools discover their own violations, report them to opponents and the MHSAA office, and assess the prescribed penalties. In nine out of ten violations, that's what occurs.

Sometimes, of course, dishonorable people hide violations. Sometimes, even honorable people seek relief from penalties because they don't feel the penalty is fair or because the violation wasn't their fault. These are some of the toughest days of my job.

Over my 19 years, the MHSAA has processed hundreds of cases of ineligible athletes participating in interscholastic athletic events. The vast majority of these cases have been self-discovered and self-reported, and the penalty of forfeiture was self-imposed. The MHSAA merely got a letter from the school indicating the error and providing a copy of the notices of forfeiture to opposing teams.

When the activity is at the varsity level, the stakes are higher than at the subvarsity level. When varsity football is involved, the stakes seem higher still because the cost of forfeiture might be loss of a place among the District qualifiers of the Football Playoffs.

The MHSAA has processed many cases involving varsity football over the years. They're virtually all self-discovered and self-reported violations. Sometimes, the penalty of forfeiture was appealed; and in all cases where the penalty of forfeiture was appealed, the penalty was upheld.

Usually the appeal was based on the fact that the violation was self-discovered, self-reported and committed by a player who made limited contributions in lopsided victories. And sometimes the people of the affected community argued that by not making an exception for their case, the MHSAA was (1) discouraging other schools from reporting their violations in the future; and (2) telling their kids that honesty doesn't pay. Let's examine these arguments.

By not making an exception, it was argued, the MHSAA was discouraging other schools from reporting their violations in the future; in other words, discouraging honesty. But it is the experience of the MHSAA's leadership that it is more likely, rather than less, that consistency of enforcement encourages self-reporting. That it promotes honesty.

It is more likely that I will report my violations and accept my forfeitures now if I know that you have reported your violations and received forfeitures in the past, and that you will report your violations and receive forfeitures in the future. In other words, if I know you will receive the same result I receive, without uncertainty, I will step forward. I don't know if that's ethical and responsible behavior, but that's a fact of human nature.

The second argument advanced is that by not making an exception, the MHSAA is telling kids that honesty doesn't pay. Of course, if the community involved allows that to be the lesson learned, it certainly will be learned. But these situations are ripe for better lessons: that honesty is its own reward; that it isn't really honesty if there is some prize; that the true test of honesty is what a person does when no one is watching; and the truer test still is when it takes courage to be honest, when there is a cost. Not a prize for being honest, but a penalty.

It doesn't take courage for administrators to report a violation when their team lost the game in which the ineligible student played, or it's on the subvarsity level, or even on the varsity level in most sports at most times. But it takes courage – and it's really ethical and responsible behavior – if the report will disqualify the team from the MHSAA tournament.

Ethical and responsible behavior sometimes comes with a prize. Just as often, ethical and responsible behavior comes at a price.

Fortunately, such controversies as these only happen a couple of times each year. But in school sports, the opportunity to demonstrate ethical and responsible behavior occurs in every school, every day, multiple times each day. At home weigh-ins in wrestling. In teaching ethical play in practice. In curtailing gamesmanship in games. In treating officials and opponents in a sportsmanlike way.

I believe that the quality of sportsmanship in our schools is linked to the quality of citizenship in our communities. Sportsmanship begins at home; we work on it in practice; it extends to the games; it reaches up into the crowd; it permeates the school halls and shopping malls; and it begins to infect society, for good or bad.

Ultimately, sportsmanship – ethical and responsible behavior – is the most important product of school sports. We are to teach it, preach it, practice it and promote it. We reward it a thousand times yearly at the MHSAA, and a thousand times daily it is quietly reinforced in our member schools, at least in the schools which realize what's at stake.

MHSAA Executive Director
John E. "Jack" Roberts

 

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