If Life Were a Sport We Might All Be Champions
As Americans we love sports and the sense of fair play and goodwill they inspire. But our sense of fair play and goodwill in sports isn’t often reflected in the way we relate to one another in daily life.
Take the concept of a level playing field. In sports, a level playing field means the field of play has no advantage for either team. In directional-play sports like football, teams switch positions at halftime to mitigate any advantage the field may give one team over the other. Golf does it differently. In golf, players employ a handicap to level the playing field between golfers of varying skill.
Though largely identified with sports, the term is often used in global trade in support of policies such as tax breaks and deregulation for American businesses; policies that, advocates maintain, level the playing field with trading partners who have an unfair advantage. As a remedy for competitive disadvantage, leveling the playing field is a concept that has broad support.
Except when the disadvantage results in social inequalities. Then, rather than seeing a level playing field as a win-win that removes unfair advantages to permit the same opportunity to everyone, we view it as a zero-sum, where if someone benefits, it must follow that someone else doesn’t.
In practice, people advocating for trade policies that level the playing field in global markets, often eschew domestic policies — like affirmative action, that attempt to level the playing field between advantaged and disadvantaged Americans. And while in golf, a handicap to achieve parity between golfers is universally accepted, applying a handicap to employment or college admissions to accomplish the same outcome is widely viewed as unfair.
It’s notable that as sport fans we root for the underdog and accept the notion that poor performing teams warrant preferential treatment to improve. Toward that end, in many professional sport leagues, teams with losing records are permitted to draft aspiring young players ahead of teams with winning records so the poor performers can improve sooner rather than later.
We accept failure and setback in sport with greater equanimity than often we do for the average American. In sports, it’s axiomatic that players have slumps and teams have losing streaks, yet still we believe athletes try their best to win. Every team except the one crowned champion fails to win the coveted championship, yet the teams that fall short aren’t disparaged for losing, nor their players for failing. We don’t vilify them for their bad choices, admonish them for being culturally lazy, nor demand they take responsibility for their losses. That would undermine our sense of loyalty. Besides, we understand that in sport, things happen without regard to our personal desires.
Sport fans aren’t unique to this point of view. Team owners and players share a similar sport-centered perspective of fairness and goodwill.
Among the 4 major sport leagues, revenue sharing is commonplace. In some cases teams pool their revenue and redistribute it from high grossing teams to low grossing ones. In other cases revenue is shared between teams and players. Outside the sport world income redistribution is criticized as punishing success and decried as socialism. But for the leagues, economic disparity gives an unfair advantage to teams with more money, and the imbalance is widely seen as unsustainable. Revenue sharing addresses the disparity by giving large and small market teams equal chance to succeed.
Those same leagues have salary minimums for players — a minimum wage, bargained for by player unions that are (begrudgingly perhaps) welcomed by team owners as vital to the sport.
What makes sport egalitarianism particularly noteworthy is that major sport leagues are for-profit enterprises headed of titans of free-market capitalism. Yet they operate their multi-million-dollar sport enterprises collaboratively for the common good of owners, players and fans.
Of course it hardly bears mentioning that sport and professional sport leagues are not without flaws. While women and minorities are crucial to the success of the industry as both players and fans, their number among the ranks of team owners, executives and top managers is an embarrassment, and warrants solution. Moreover, our achievement-obsessed culture has raised the level of competitiveness in youth sports to a point where some might argue, it borders on abuse, and threatens the very spirit of fun from which it sprung.
Still, despite these and other notable issues, throughout history sport has been at the forefront of social change. The National Football League integrated its league (1946) before the U.S. military desegregated its ranks (1948). Meanwhile both Major League Baseball (1947) and the National Basketball Association (1950) integrated ahead of the nation’s public schools (1955).
In addition to having a history of progressivism, sport is one of the few venues where differences are valued. There is a sport for every human shape, size and ability. In sport, effort matters more than result, and each contribution, no matter how small, can bring gratification to those who play and to those who watch. Sport brings out the best in American values.
So as our nation struggles to overcome injustice and inequality, as we debate the meaning of fairness and equality; we should not overlook a better way to a better America that plays out before us every day in sport.