do change, all the time, in sports as in other aspects of life. I argue that the values underpinning sport have already changed; in most cases, we just have to realize it and deal with the consequences.
One episode in the history of US college football helps to illustrate how we tailor rules to our values, and how both values and rules can change over time. The 1960s and 1970s saw periods of racial tension in US society, and, as often occurs, societal tensions were reflected in sport. The spirit of sport meant one thing for a long time, but then values changed, and with it, so too did the spirit of sport. In the episode described below, the change to the spirit of sport was motivated by no less an authority than God himself.
In 1969, fourteen African-American football players in the highly successful program at the University of Wyoming wanted to protest the treatment of blacks in the United States.44 The Brigham Young University (BYU) football team was coming to Laramie that week, providing Wyoming students with an opportunity to protest the policy of the Mormon Church (BYU is a bastion of Mormonism) to exclude blacks from the Mormon clergy. Such protests involving athletes were not uncommon; the year before, two American sprinters had famously raised black-gloved fists on the medal stand at the Mexico City Olympic Games. The Wyoming football coach’s reaction to the protest by his fourteen players was quick—he kicked them off the team before the game.
At the BYU football game, some Wyoming students displayed a Confederate flag, perhaps to emphasize their belief that African Americans needed to be careful about kicking up a fuss. Sports Illustrated weighed in, perhaps a bit tongue in cheek: “Good riddance, and never mind a lot of talk about civil rights, because this is Wyoming, and out here we do things our way. Like Coach [Lloyd] Eaton told those athletes: Boys, if you don’t like the way we run things around here then you better go play at Grambling or Morgan State.”e The issue quickly rose to national prominence. A lawsuit was filed by some of the athletes.
Over time, tensions subsided. Many of the fourteen players transferred to other institutions, the lawsuit fizzled out, and Eaton allowed three of the players to return to play football for him the following year. Several went on to play in the NFL, with one, Joe Williams, winning a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys. Eaton was “promoted” into administration, and later left to take a minor position in the NFL.45 The controversy had lasting effects, however. Wyoming “was marked as a racist institution” and suffered consequences in recruiting, securing only one winning season in the 1970s and losing twenty-six of thirty-eight games following the dismissal of the players.46 The more lasting consequence, however, was to draw national attention to the discriminatory policies of the Mormon Church.
In the years that followed, pressure built. The University of Arizona opened an investigation of BYU to determine if it was a racist institution.47 Upon arriving in Tucson for a college football game, the BYU squad faced protesters. Not long after, Stanford and San Jose State decide to boycott BYU in every sport. Pressure on BYU had been amplified by the “Wyoming Fourteen” and had reached a crisis point for BYU. Tom Hudspeth, BYU head football coach in 1969, “was ‘made aware’ that [Mormon] Church leadership wanted him to add African-Americans to his team, and fast.”48 And he did, but it wasn’t enough.
That is when God stepped in. In June 1978, the president of the Mormon Church revealed that God had “heard our prayers, and by revelation has confirmed that the long-promised day has come [in which] all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color.”49 In the ten years prior to the revelation from God, BYU had won 57 out of 110 football games; in the ten years after, 103 out of 127.50 Changing perceptions of the values espoused by BYU enabled it to draw from a larger pool of athletes, helping to improve the team on the field. BYU was at the center of changing social values, which in turn helped to change the fortunes of BYU football. As Michael Oriard writes, “fourteen young black football players at the University of Wyoming helped change Mormon theology.”51 In 2002, the University of Wyoming erected a statue to the Wyoming Fourteen.
This episode shows that values shape sport and that sport, in turn, shapes values. There was a time when racism and segregation were part of the spirit of sport in the United States. As values and practices changed, sport had to change also. As in the case of the Wyoming Fourteen, sport played a role in ushering along changes in both sport and society.
The central conclusion of this book is that sport and those charged with developing and enforcing the rules that govern it need to recognize a new set of values as the basis for its governance in the twenty-first century. These new values are professionalism, pragmatism, accountability, and transparency.
Professionalism is not actually a new value; it has been emerging within sport for decades, if not longer. Accountability and transparency have become more important in sport with each new revelation of a failure in sports governance—and those revelations are growing more numerous and more shocking. Pragmatism has always been a defining feature of how we govern sport, and it’s time to recognize and embrace that reality more fully.
We can change and improve the rules that define sport because sport is what we make it. If values have changed, or need to change, then sport should change accordingly. Defining the spirit of sport in the twenty-first century does not require an act of God. It does, however, require that we openly discuss and debate sport, what it is, why we value it, and how we wish it to be governed. Such discussions will benefit from a vocabulary that permits nuance and differences of opinions to be clearly identified. And a vocabulary for talking about the edge is where we turn next.
a In 2015, the NFL gave up its nonprofit status, which it was granted in 1942; Drew Harwell and Will Hobson, “The NFL Is Dropping Its Tax-Exempt Status. Why That Ends Up Helping Them Out,” Washington Post, April 28, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/04/28/the-nfl-is-dropping-its-tax-exempt-status-why-that-ends-up-helping-them-out/. The NBA and NASCAR are not nonprofits. The PGA and the NHL are nonprofits.
b The English second division, the Championship, had 2013 revenue of about US $560 million, making it larger in economic terms than the US Major League Soccer (MLS); Deloitte Sports Business Group Articles, “Annual Review of Football Finance 2015-Revolution,” http://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/sports-business-group/articles/annual-review-of-football-finance.html.
c Ah, but it is more complicated than this. They ran on different surfaces, used different equipment, and were timed with different technology. Even in the simplest of competitions, the 100-meter race, things are not as simple as they might appear.
d The pattern is much the same for the 200 meters, which is not shown here but can be seen here: The Least Thing, “More on Justin Gatlin’s Age-Defying Times,” July 8, 2015, http://leastthing.blogspot.com/2015/07/more-on-justin-gatlins-age-defying-times.html.
e It is not clear to me whether Sports Illustrated was mocking the folks in Wyoming or agreeing with them. The writing is inscrutable enough to permit both interpretations: Pat Putnam, “No Defeats, Loads of Trouble,” Sports Illustrated, November 3, 1969, http://www.si.com/vault/1969/11/03/611044/no-defeats-loads-of-trouble.
Cheating, Gamesmanship, and Going over the Edge
In discussions of sport, the word cheating