Written by In trying to define the focus of Culture in Sports, and what we should be writing about on this site, the Led Zeppelin song title, What Is and What Should Never Be, comes to mind.
Making a Led Zeppelin reference threatens to reveal both my age, (decidedly, middle) and my hipness (tragically, un-hip). The British rockers from the 70s, who successfully melded the blues, metal, and progressive elements, singing about subjects as diverse as sex, Vikings, hobbits, and citrus (The Lemon Song or Tangerine if you doubt this last one) are an unusual choice to explain why ethics in sports matter.
Closing the loop on the song reference, What Is and What Should Never Be, speaks of “what is” and “what should never be,” as the only obstacles preventing the singer from whisking a fair maiden to faraway castle where they will join together as one. For the record, it is a sex song, but one that tries to balance what could be awesome against what may also be wrong.
Culture in Sports as a public forum was created to celebrate what is awesome in sports. We correctly explore what makes sports significant in business, physical, cultural, social, and ethical terms. But we also have a duty to highlight where and why certain things are wrong and explore in detail how to right those wrongs.
Jeremy Piasecki wrote on Saturday, in “Doing the Right Thing is Still Only Reactional,” raising a question as to why sports organizations only seem to do the right thing when confronted with significant reaction or backlash.
So why do leading sports organizations and figures always seem to wait to do the right thing? This is despite it being both easier, more ethical, and far more expedient for sports organizations- whether we are talking about leagues, franchises, clubs, or coaches- to operate and lead with care and transparency and fix mistakes as they happen. But too often they don’t. There are several reasons for this. Victory, success, fame, and money, tend to obscure that the right thing isn’t just the preference of powerful (it is not) and reinforce a belief that success equates to morality or goodness (it does not). Success and power also breed arrogance and intransigence two things sports organizations are also frequently accused of being.
So whether, we are talking about the hiring of a coach with a negative past, allegations of sexual harassment, abusive coaching, or broad organizational malfeasance: all issues authors have addressed here on Culture in Sports in the last few weeks, the key common denominator is that they are all issues that are too often ignored, minimized or distanced in sports and far too rarely tackled, head on with full candor. This is to the detriment of all, since the cover up is almost always worse than the crime, but it hurts the sport most of all.
If we in sports can do a better job of differentiating between what is and what should never be and take on the latter, in the first instance without allowing it to fester, all of sports will be richer. If sports organizations can develop consistent processes to recognize and take steps to deal with their blind spots, the right thing won’t always take so long. Then, we will be able to restore our focus on what makes sports awesome and not always be on the look out for what should never be in them.