Blowouts and Sportsmanship

I played enough recreational slopitch this summer to have come out on either end of a blowout (extremely lopsided score), which got me thinking about the various codes of behaviour (sportsmanship) that govern how athletes interact.



Conventional wisdom is as follows. If you are the team or player in the lead by a significant amount, such that the other team or player has no chance of catching up, you are supposed to reign in your competitive drive and ease off your scoring opportunities. In sports where there are substitutes, then a coach is supposed to replace the starting players with the backups, who are presumably less talented and less likely to score at will. In sports where there are no substitutes, then the players are supposed to play as if the game is a hard practice (try formations or positions that they are less familiar with). Under no circumstances is the superior team allowed to run trick plays or to start goofing around, as this is poor sportsmanship no matter what the circumstances (except at a relaxed practice like a shootaround)!

Why?

For younger players (who generally don't even know the score of the game), it's supposed to keep the game fun and prevent them from getting bored or frustrated. Losing is part of life, but losing by a lot is just humiliating and likely to push the less talented athletes out of the sport.

For older athletes, the reasoning behind conventional wisdom is that a team or player who is being humilitated by what they see as poor sportsmanship (running up the score) will resort to poor sportsmanship of their own. Since they obviously can't compete athletically, this means they have to resort to goonery and thugism. Where coaches can remove their better players this prevents them from being exposed to unsportsmanlike retaliation and also gives them a chance to rest. For professional athletes, a loss is usually motivation to win the next time you see the same team or player, an especially humilitating loss requires a glorifying win as atonement.

But let's consider a related point of sportsmanship. If a team doesn't play up to its potential in a close game then they immediately come under scrutiny. Best case scenario is that they are merely poor sportsman in their ability to be competitive when it matters; worst case, they have accepted a bribe to lose on pupose.

In other words, to be a good sportsman, an athlete is expected to compete to the best of his or her abilities until s/he gets out to an insurmountable lead and then s/he is supposed to compete at 50-75% of his or her abilities so as not to humiliate her or his opponent.

But what if we don't add the clause? What if the definition of sportsmanship includes competing to the best of your abilities for the entire game no matter what the score? Is it really more humiliating to lose 100-0 than it is to lose 10-0 and to play half the game against a team that isn't even trying?

I think most of us, on the losing end, are thoroughly annoyed regardless of the final score, and it is entirely an introspective frustration that we didn't play better that we may want to externalize on the jerks that beat us. It's the quest for a moral victory, when real victory is impossible and quiting is even less sportsmanlike than finishing a pointless game.

On the winning end, it's just embarassing to see a team that can't compete. You feel bad for them. You humiliate them and you pity them. You try not to remind the losers than moral victories are a dime a dozen ...