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Reclaiming the Integrity of Play
A Report by the Lake Placid Sport Forum
in association with the Aspen Institute
by David Bollier
On several occasions, as the Baltimore Orioles approached Yankee Stadium on their team bus, sports journalist Mark Hyman witnessed the following scene:
Players invariably felt silent, gazing out the window at boys and girls playing pick-up sports on the green fields ringing the major-league ballpark. In my memory, it happened each time the bus passed those sports fields. I’m not sure what the players were feeling – longing, perhaps. Maybe envy. It was unexpressed. Yet I felt it each time. Meanwhile, I imagine the kids on those fields feeling exactly the same things about the big-leaguers.
Across a field of green, two tribes of players gaze at each other. One is a tribe of professionals committed to highly competitive careers of “play” -- a commitment to perform athletic feats day after day in a highly regimented, very public environment. For them, play is a job. The other tribe is a ragged band of friends and acquaintances -- amateurs enjoying a little physical activity and camaraderie. Their play is spontaneous, casual and improvisational, which is precisely why it is so much fun.
In the chasm that separates the professionals and the kids there lies a story of what sports has become in America. It is a story of how play has been annexed by the entertainment industry, how children are prematurely groomed to become high-performance competitors, and how sportsmanship and the integrity of play have been marginalized.
Sports have long been held a special place in people’s lives, especially among children and youths. It’s fun. It is a way to develop physical and mental skills and stay fit. It teaches the importance of teamwork. Sports help build self-confidence, persistence and courage. It is a source of personal inspiration and transcendence. It is an arena for testing one’s limits and for societies to enact collectively the rituals that express the human condition.
“If sports are so great,” asked Charles Firestone, “then what’s the problem?”
Firestone, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Communications and Society Program, was serving as moderator of a three-day conference to explore this very question: What’s the matter with American sports these days -- and how might a new conversation be started to move sports in a better, more wholesome direction?
The conference, co-organized by the Lake Placid Sport Forum and the Aspen Institute, brought together thirty great minds in the field of sport to address the current and future state of sport in America. The gathering represented a rare moment in which a very diverse set of prominent voices in sports came together to share their deep concerns about the culture of sports today.
The group included professional athletes, Olympic competitors, coaches at all levels (professional, college, amateur), sports journalists, sports physicians, sports psychologists, academics and community leaders. The meetings were held at the Heaven Hill Conference Center in Lake Placid, New York, from September 25 to 27, 2009. A list of participants is included in Appendix A.
What brought the conference participants together was a shared concern about the over-commercialization of sport and some of its problematic values and practices. The group was especially focused on troubling trends in youth sports: the aggressive pre-professionalization of players, the stratification of young athletes by skill levels, the increasing injuries caused by too much play, and the “win at all cost” mentality.
There was concern, too, that adults and parents have become deeply immersed in their children’s sport experiences, sometimes obsessively so. Kids are losing control over their own play, whether structured or unstructured. As games become more regimented, demanding and expensive, youngsters are becoming props in the dreams that parents have for them. Children are less likely to reap the “life lessons” that are presumed to result from participating in sports.
This report, by rapporteur David Bollier, is an interpretive synthesis of the conference discussions. It excerpts the most salient insights and treats them thematically in five sections: 1) Play as a vital human need; 2) The business of sports; 3) The state of play in youth sports; 4) Ethics and leadership in sports; and 5) Recommendations for future action.
Conference participants expressed a strong desire to reinvigorate sport as an empowering, participatory experience that is accessible to everyone. The group also expressed the hope that The Lake Placid Sport Forum might serve as a new vehicle for advocating better policies and practices in American sport, particularly for young people. If the proper support can be found, the Forum intends to take its message to the major youth sports organizations, the media and policymakers as well as to sympathetic coaches, parents, students and athletes.
I. PLAY AS A VITAL HUMAN NEED
Hovering at the center of the conference discussions, always close to the surface, was the importance of play as an elemental human need. Why do we play? What purposes does it serve? Why do we need to protect our opportunities to play?
While sports is sometimes dismissed by some as a mere diversion, the underlying play that animates sports meets important human needs. It can contribute to creativity and everyday happiness, and be a source of great human pleasure, social bonding and transcendence. Anumber of athletes at the Lake Placid conference testified from their personal experience: play is a vital, formative force in our development.
Conference participant Tom Farrey, an investigative journalist and ESPN correspondent, opens his recent bookwith a joyous moment of his youth. In Game On: How the Pressure to Win at All Costs Endangers Youth Sports and What Parents Can Do About It (ESPN Books, 2008), Farrey recalls how, as a 12-year-old Little Leaguer playing first base, he once chased a foul ball heading toward the dugout.
Farrey wrote: “He [i.e., his 12-year-old self] extended his skinny left arm as far as his prepubescent frame would allow, accepted a mouthful of dirt…and looked up to find the prize nestled in the tippy-top of his glove. I learned something important that day about the limits of my perceived boundaries and the rewards that lie just beyond,” Farrey rcalled. “Ultimately, moments like that would shape the arc of my life.”
Several readings for the conference affirm the importance of play in our lives. In the book Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul (Avery, 2009), physician and psychiatrist Stuart Brown notes, “Neuroscientists, developmental biologists, psychologists, social scientists and researchers from every point of the scientific compass now know that play is a profound biological process. It has evolved over eons in many animal species to promote survival. It shapes the brain and makes animals smarter and more adaptable. In higher animals, it fosters empathy and makes possible complex social groups. For us, play lies at the core of creativity and innovation.”
Sociologist D. Stanley Eitzen of Colorado State University writes that “sport elaborates in its rituals what it means to be human: the play, the risk, the trials, the collective impulse to the games, the thrill of physicality, the necessity of strategy; defeat, victory, defeat again, pain, transcendence and, most of all, the certainty that nothing is certain -- that everything can change and be changed.”[1]
Participants at the Lake Placid Sport Forum were keenly aware, from personal experience, of the joys of play -- and of the many constraints on play that organized and professional games may entail. They realized that the struggle to reclaim the integrity of play in sports is not just a struggle against “outside forces” such as commercialism, the media and the American fetish of competition. The struggle is equally an internal struggle.
Mike Richter played for fifteen years with the New York Rangers and for three Olympic hockey teams representing the United States. He is now a founding partner of Environmental Capital Partners, a private equity firm that provides long-term capital and management to companies in the environmental industry. In opening remarks about the problems afflicting American sports today, Richter told a story of an old Cherokee counseling his grandson:
“My son,” he said, “the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us. One is Evil. It is anger envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thought about this for a minute and then asked his grandfather “Which one wins?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Much of the conference was devoted to figuring out how to identify and feed the right wolf.
II. THE BUSINESS OF SPORTS
If play is indeed a vital human activity that must be nurtured and protected, we must grapple with Charles Firestone’s opening question: “If sports are so positive, what’s the problem with sports today?”
Katie Kilty, a performance consultant and Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Endicott College, said, “The problem is that the positives [of sport] aren’t a given any more. They’re not as visible. The business of sports has taken over the play of sports. Everything is monetized and the athlete has become a marketable commodity. Access to participation has changed as a result. Sport has become less about play and more about who can generate the money. We need to turn up the volume on the more positive sport experiences that are still in existence today.”
It was a theme that many participants echoed: the business of sports is overwhelming the joys and satisfactions of play. So much money is being made by professional athletes, leagues and teams -- not to mention the media, sports clinics and coaching schools -- that business imperatives are eclipsing our deeper human needs for play. Professional sports has become a glamorous, lucrative spectacle that its commercial imperatives have remade the culture of sports.
“It is not sports per se that is the problem,” said Mike Richter, “but how we engage with sport. Competition, self-challenge and play are present in all higher-functioning mammals, and research suggests such activity is crucial for human development.” He added, “All evidence suggests that it is not the kids that have changed, but we the adults that make the rules, decide what is important, and model the behavior.
“Our schizophrenic approach to competition -- which swings from ‘win at all costs’ on the one end of the spectrum, to ‘everyone is a winner’ on the other -- has diminished the value of sport and much of the good that it has to offer. We desperately need perspective and balance to re-enter the equation.”
There was broad consensus among the group that there is nothing inherently wrong with sports being run as businesses. The problem, rather, is the way in which the two are combined -- and how the mores of professional sports then set the tone for youth sports. “Sports today is both over-exposed and under-appreciated,” Richter said. He continued:
“One the one hand, we have more interest in sports than ever -- from 24-hour sports news to professional trainers, and youth travel teams with 80-game schedules. The business of sport is larger, more complete and better than ever.
“On the other hand, actual participation across the society is something entirely different. Attrition rates for youth sports are enormous. Participation on the youth level is down and childhood obesity is up. Children’s inactivity is causing adult onset diseases and ailments at unprecedented rates. The ability for the average child to participate in many sports is down, there are enormous cuts in funding for Phys Ed classes, and recess is routinely eliminated from the curriculum. What has increased, often, is the level of competition for those who remain.”
Mark Messier, who played in the National Hockey League for twenty-five years and became one of its most celebrated players, agreed with Richter’s assessment: “The biggest challenge is getting money out of amateur and minor sports,” he said. “It contaminates the game.” (Messier now serves as Assistant to the President of the New York Rangers.)
Sports and the Media
The sports media in its many guises -- television, cable, sports talk radio, websites, YouTube and many others -- are certainly one of the most influential industries propagating the culture of sports today. Sport is cast as entertainment, competitive spectacle and profit-center.
Graham Fraser -- an athlete who has produced numerous sports events and Ironman competitions throughout North America over the past 20 years -- pointed out that the sports media play a major role in driving performance-based sports for kids. In turn, leagues, businesses and private coaches capitalize on this competitive ethic and publicity to make money.
“Private rinks need kids on the ice, so they offer hockey twelve months a year. Private coaches sell their services, and then choose the teams. It’s become a racket.” The system is very resistant to change, journalist Mark Hyman pointed out, “because so many players have an interest in perpetuating the system.”
Jeremy Schaap, an ESPN anchor and national correspondent who has won Six Emmy Awards, spoke about the ways in which the media now cover sports -- and how this coverage differs from earlier times in American sport. His keynote conclusion: “Money has changed everything.”
“The problem isn’t that sports is a business,” he said. “It’s always been a business. But now sports is more of a business, and there are no pretenses about that any more.”
Schaap said that the commercial ethic has not only changed pro teams, it has affected amateur sports and the Olympic movement as well. The Winter Olympics could never be held in Lake Placid again -- as they were in 1932 and 1980 -- because the Olympics are now a major business enterprise. “You need more people to come and more things to show on TV. You need more sponsors. You need the big, fancy hotels. You need the major corporate sponsors to host the fancy parties.”
Schaap identifies the arrival of free agency in the 1970s as a major turning point in American sports. When athletes could negotiate their salaries directly with teams, without league prohibitions that had prevailed for decades, it changed how sports media related to athletes, said Schaap. “Until free agency,” he said, “most people in the media thought, correctly, that athletes were under-paid. But now that the average salary in the NBA is $7 million a year and $5 million a year in Major League Baseball, it changes the dynamic in a fundamental way.”
Schaap cited the media’s treatment of Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez: “Here’s a guy who might end up the all-time home run leader, who has won the Most Valuable Player Award several times, who has never disappointed on the field. And yet nothing he can do is enough. Yeah, he hit 58 home runs in one season, but he’s paid $28 million a year, so everyone’s expectation is, that’s what he should be doing.”
In the 1970s sportswriting tended to be a “blue collar vocation more than a profession,” said Schaap. Reporters could relate to athletes more easily, and they often got to know each other well and hang out together. But then athletes started to earn much more money than most sports reporters, which altered their relationships with each other.
A racial and educational divide began to intrude as well. “Up until the late 1960s most athletes and reporters were white,” said Schaap. “Now you have predominantly African-American athletes in the NFL and NBA, and reporters and TV people are predominantly white.” In addition, he said, reporters at major media organizations like ESPN and Sports Illustrated tend to have at least one academic degree, and more than ever before, people in football and basketball have fewer degrees.
The phenomenal salaries that pro athletes earn means that, in one sense, they don’t really need the media. In the 1960s and earlier, said Schaap, “Athletes needed sports writers to present their stories and treat them fairly because they needed the ancillary income. They were generally under-paid, and so it was very important to them to be able to make money at their sporting goods store; to appear in cigarette ads; or to publish “as told to” autobiographies ghostwritten by reporters.
That dynamic doesn’t exist any more, said Schaap. “When the average NBA player is making $8 million a year, he doesn’t need $200,000 endorsements or book advances. And so athletes have less incentive to cooperate with media and to make an effort to be with media.”
Big money in sports has also made athletes wary of speaking freely. “Because there’s so much more at stake, they have to be more careful,” Schapp noted. “Now the money is so big, it’s important to get in one more year of playing, and then one more year, to keep those checks coming in. And so athletes are less open to the media, and less independent-minded on the whole.”