Athletics
Are Not Brutal, Life Is
To
the Editors:
Two
weeks ago, Channing Joseph made the suggestions that sports are
violent, brutal, and that the world may be better off without athletes.
I dont view athletes or athletics as brutal, but yet a humane
form of competition evolving from its more brutal form, war. In
war, death is the objective. In sports, there is an alternative
objective, to win in accordance with the rules. The brutal acts
the writer mentioned occurred outside of the rules set by the different
sport. Sports likely became a part of our life when people started
realizing that it wasnt great to have loved ones killed in
battle. Someone probably came up with the modern idea that an athletic
competition could settle an argument and rules would prevent individuals
from death. Individuals still died, but in far lesser numbers than
in war.
What is brutal is a competition involving mismatched opponents.
Not often seen in organized competition, this most often occurs
when an athlete competes with a lesser athlete, or, in numerical
mismatches. Even still, the brutality of such a situation is lessened
in athletics where rules and referees govern competition close at
hand. In all my days of sports I have never witnessed anything as
brutal as a street fight between an athlete and a lesser athlete.
I have never witnessed a guy getting his head split open on concrete
in a boxing match. The rules and referee prevent such a thing. An
equally brutal situation occurs when there is a numbers mismatch.
In the notorious Rodney King beating this is what happened. There
were five guys (referees) with weapons vs. one without weapons.
King was brutally beaten by the referees. That is brutality.
Sports may be violent. Depending on the definition of violent one
chooses, all sports would qualify in one way or another. However,
to suggest that brutality is related with all sport, especially
boxing, is quite difficult for me to accept. Organized competition
is not brutal, it is humane. It is not sport that leads to brutality,
yet it is the lack of enforcement of our human laws that lead people
to believe that they can get away with acts of brutality.
Furthermore, a world without athletes is not possible. We are all
athletes. Athletics are born of competition. We all have a drive
to compete. We compete against those we think we are better than
or equal to. If you take away the best physical specimens on the
earth today, you create a vacuum in which lesser physical specimens
will soon occupy. They then become the athletes. The world will
never be without athletes.
Rob
Oldham
Lacrosse and Assistant Football Coach
|