The NCAA News - News and Features

Because no national clearinghouse keeps track of the number of assaults each year, NASO representatives must rely on anecdotal evidence -- and the increasing number of assaults that are being reported to them -- to track the trend.

Lack of respect?

"While it's difficult to say precisely how much assaults are on the rise," Mano said, "I haven't found anybody yet who's said we're more civil to each other. We all seem to have less tolerance and less patience.

"I see behaviors, not just assaults, that aren't being taken care of by coaches. I hear players telling a coach to go get (deleted), and the coach does nothing about that comment.

"It all seems so much more volatile today than it used to. People are so ready to go off on each other. You see players going down the court, and they just bump into each other accidentally, and you see this look in their eyes. We really have to get a grip on ourselves."

Mano said sports is simply "life with the volume turned up" and that we're becoming less civil as a society.

"It makes sense that the decline in sportsmanship and the assault on officials reflect what's going on on the street with road rage, and in the schools and with other aspects of society," Mano said.

"I'm just astonished to see people yelling at each other over nothing. We've lost our ability to take a bad call, if you will, and get over it."

NASO's public relations manager, Bob Still, agreed. "There have always been bad sports, but there seems to be more of them now and we see more poor sportsmanship. It's getting a lot worse."

"There's a lack of respect for authority," Still said. "It's at schools, with the police force, the fire department, teachers, coaches. We see a lack of respect toward authority in society being mirrored on the playing field. You see Roberto Alomar spit at an umpire and within two weeks, we had three similar incidents reported. The kids are seeing it happening at the professional level, and it's coming down to them."

Mano agreed that a lack of respect was part of the issue. "We've been taught that we can challenge anything," he said. "This lack of respect for authority in society is something that translates into poor sportsmanship."

Still also pointed out that the lack of respect extends to the sport itself. "Today's kids don't have a respect for the game," he said. "They look at the game as a way to get a scholarship for college, as a way to get into the pros and make money. And they're thinking about it at younger ages and at lower levels."

Part of this lack of respect, Still said, is a lack of perspective on the part of the parent as well as on the part of the athlete. "The perspective that parents are bringing into sports is what causes a problem with sportsmanship," he said. "Everybody thinks their kid should play at the same level as George Brett. They don't take into account that the kid is learning the game. And, at that level, the official is learning the game too."

And the lack of respect is not just at the high-school and youth level. College official John Clougherty told the Raleigh, North Carolina, News and Observer that he thought fan behavior now is simply awful. "Students, you can almost accept," he said. "But the alumni, the donors, they go to the games and they're irate. They scream and holler, and you look at them and they're booing. In some cases, they throw stuff.

"Game management ought to do a better job in some cases. But we've got fans who curse you, scream at you, and their little kid is sitting right next to them. These are guys who are doctors, dentists, whatever. It just amazes me."

And it's not just the fans. In game four of the Miami Heat's NBA playoff series with New York, Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson -- two players whose combined contracts are worth nearly $200 million -- made like boxers and were both tossed out of the game.

Mourning appeared on the "Tonight Show" to joke about the incident with Jay Leno, drawing chuckles when he referred to New York coach Jeff Van Gundy's attempts to grab his leg and restrain him. "You know what it's like when you have a piece of gum on your shoe?" Mourning asked Leno.

Seattle Times' sports columnist Steve Kelley, referring to the incident and Mourning's subsequent joking about it, thinks the fans are tired of such behavior. "I bet the fans who paid $100 and more for Miami Heat playoff tickets weren't laughing," Kelley wrote.

"Considering the bad manners displayed by players this season, you would expect more players on 'Jerry Springer' than on Leno. Too many of the NBA's millionaire men are behaving badly, and we're getting tired of it," Kelley concluded.

Surveys indicate declining sportsmanship

Last November, ESPN examined the issue of sportsmanship on its cable network and its website, ESPN SportsZone. In one of ESPN's surveys, more than 81 percent of respondents said they believed sportsmanship had declined in the last decade and that most pro and major college athletes care only about winning.

Greg Garber wrote one of the many SportsZone columns on the issue. "Welcome to the 1990s, where good sportsmanship will soon become an oxymoron," Garber wrote. "In the world of today's professional and major college sports, sportsmanship is nothing more than an abstract, moral concept. Taunting and trash talking are up. Respect and decorum are down."

Garber noted that flagrant fouls in the NBA went from 76 in 1994 to 117 in 1995 and to 134 in 1996.

There may be a few other ways to measure sportsmanship. The Institute for International Sport recently released a survey of college basketball players that indicated that 43.8 percent of male players were willing to accept trash talking as a way of life in college basketball. Only 24.8 percent of female players agreed.

The Institute's poll also revealed that 46 percent of male players would follow directions by their coach that would result in an advantage, even if those methods were against the rules.

In an earlier study by the Institute for International Sport, as many as 76.5 percent of the members of the media who were surveyed said that they believe there is an increased level of serious game misbehavior involving professional athletes.

Also, 78.8 percent of the media members surveyed said sportsmanship in professional sports is at an all-time low, while 72.9 percent said sportsmanship at the college level is at an all-time low.

What is sportsmanship?

It is easy to see that assaulting an official or slugging an opponent in a softball game is poor behavior, but what exactly is sportsmanship?

When ESPN asked athletes and coaches for their definition of sportsmanship, most of them could offer only examples of actions they perceived to be sportsmanlike, such as shaking hands.

But tennis player Jim Courier offered a definition that ESPN SportsZone users agreed with the most. He said: "Sportsmanship for me is when a guy walks off the court and you can't tell whether he's won or lost. It's going out and giving your best and honoring your opponent by giving your best all the way through, and shaking his hand at the end of the battle and saying, 'That was good warfare, but we can still go have a beer afterwards.' "

SportsZone columnist Tom Farrey says the definition of good sportsmanship may depend on many factors. "In today's diverse world, there is no longer any single definition of 'sportsmanship' that applies in the world of sports -- but rather many definitions, each shaped by the nature of the sport, the relative pressure to win, the personality of the individual and even the culture that the person springs from," Farrey wrote.

Farrey also pointed out that the standards are different for different sports. "What flies for a creative goal-scoring celebration in soccer, for instance, will get (your team penalized in) a college football game," he wrote. "Punch an opponent in hockey and you might get five minutes in the penalty box; do it in the NBA, and you're out multiple games and lots of salary. However, fail to shake hands with the other team after it knocked you out of the playoffs and you're far more of a jerk in hockey than you are in basketball."

It seems clear that part of the analysis of sportsmanship must include a continued discussion about what is sportsmanlike and what is not. Is cheating ever sportsmanlike? Is celebrating with your team unsportsmanlike?

Can you be an aggressive competitor who is focused on winning and still be a good sport? Is there a line separating pushing your way through a screen and "clotheslining" an opponent with your elbow?

Sportsmanship and ethics

Apart from the obvious desire to ensure that officials and other participants remain healthy and safe, why do we care about sportsmanship? If sportsmanship is indeed declining, why should we care? Should we care as part of the intercollegiate athletics community? Should we care as a society?

Perhaps we should care because, as some would suggest, sports mean nothing if you don't play by the rules.

Russell Gough, author of "Character is Everything: Promoting Ethical Excellence in Sports" and a professor at Pepperdine University, points out that ethics and sportsmanship are really two sides of the same coin.

"Sportsmanship is a big deal because ethics is a big deal. If ethics isn't a big deal, sportsmanship isn't a big deal," Gough wrote. "As with ethics, when we talk about 'sportsmanship,' we are talking about someone's character and actions, but specifically in the context of sports."

Gough defines sportsmanship as "a matter of being good (character) and doing right (action) in sports."

Gough also points out that the majority of acts that are considered unsportsmanlike -- acts that are unfair, dishonest, disrespectful or against the rules -- are unsportsmanlike because they are unethical. Being sportsmanlike is like being ethical in sports.

"We can also better appreciate why there is no concept or value more important to sports than sportsmanship. It's our foundation, our starting point. It gives us our very best reason to play fairly, to show respect to opponents and officials, and to follow the rules -- because all that is the right thing to do, the ethical thing," Gough continued.

"With sportsmanship, we see that there's simply no escaping the ethical dimension of sports. Without it, the game's over."