The Science of ?Poor Sports? - September 28th, 2005
Have you ever flipped through the papers or surfed the net, and come across one of those new ?studies? released by scientists revealing their latest discoveries to the world?
For the most part, their work does further the advancement of humanity. You know, like curing cancer and stuff. There are others however, that make you wonder why on earth a scientist would get involved in such a pile of bushwa in the first place, and even more to the point, you wonder who is paying them for it.
Studies like: "Caffeine, sleeplessness linked in teenagers;" ?People on low-carb diets are more irritable;? and ?Heavy social drinkers exhibit the same amount of brain damage as alcoholics.?
In other words, scientists have spent millions of dollars on confirming the following:
College students drink caffeine to stay up late at night to study or party and subsequently get little sleep; people are pissed off when they can't eat almost three-quarters of all foods they used to eat. And finally, people who booze to access suffer the same effects as those who booze to access.
Well, here?s another.
A professor spent 17 years and who knows how many taxpayer dollars to discover something that every sports fan knows, and didn?t need proven:
Athletes do a whole bunch of bad stuff - and they really don't really give a crap about it.
Sharon Stoll, a professor at the University of Idaho, has concluded that a great many jocks are "deficient in moral reasoning."
As in, they are spoiled brats, and don?t think the same rules apply to them as the rest of us.
Seventeen years.
For that.
Does this scream out, ?and still no cure for cancer? or what!
Her research found that members of male sports teams scored lower in morals than individual sport athletes and that the longer they competed in sports, the more morally calloused male athletes become.
"In sport we have moved away from honorable behavior," Stoll said in the Seattle Times.
Over the length of the study, 72,000 athletes filled out questionnaires designed to measure their moral reasoning.
Stoll believes that there is more emphasis on winning at all costs and material rewards, than that old-school nonsense like sportsmanship, fair play and not cheating.
Seventeen years is a long time to study anything, but reaching those conclusions wouldn?t have taken me 17-minutes.
Or, I suspect, any other sports fan for that matter.
Being a fan of sports requires us to put blinkers on to this pandemic behavior. Elite athletes are pampered almost from the first time they demonstrate their unique abilities. They are given free passes that few others are afforded both in school and socially.
They become egomaniacal from an early age, and there are few who have the ability to avoid the trap.
It?s not really their fault. It?s the system?s fault. But in the end, they are left as they are. Magnificent human beings physically ? but occasionally - damaged goods.
For the end user, as in us, we cheer for the athletes. We marvel at their ability. We even sometimes weep at their failures ? but only those on the field of play.
For their failures off the field, if they are due to their lack of Dr. Stoll?s moral compass, it?s all but impossible for most of us to be sympathetic.
How can we be? Looking in from the outside, all we see is someone who won the athletic lottery, is rich, famous and has it all - yet they?ve throw it all away.
If scientists are going to insist in studying sports, instead of focusing in on the patently obvious, how about spending time on something that can actually benefits folks.
Like how to perfect a five game parlay. Cheers ? Gavin McDougald ? AKA Couch
Remember to drop us a line at rants@betED.com to voice your opinion on one of McDougald's articles or on anything else you read at betED.com !
Have you ever flipped through the papers or surfed the net, and come across one of those new ?studies? released by scientists revealing their latest discoveries to the world?
For the most part, their work does further the advancement of humanity. You know, like curing cancer and stuff. There are others however, that make you wonder why on earth a scientist would get involved in such a pile of bushwa in the first place, and even more to the point, you wonder who is paying them for it.
Studies like: "Caffeine, sleeplessness linked in teenagers;" ?People on low-carb diets are more irritable;? and ?Heavy social drinkers exhibit the same amount of brain damage as alcoholics.?
In other words, scientists have spent millions of dollars on confirming the following:
College students drink caffeine to stay up late at night to study or party and subsequently get little sleep; people are pissed off when they can't eat almost three-quarters of all foods they used to eat. And finally, people who booze to access suffer the same effects as those who booze to access.
Well, here?s another.
A professor spent 17 years and who knows how many taxpayer dollars to discover something that every sports fan knows, and didn?t need proven:
Athletes do a whole bunch of bad stuff - and they really don't really give a crap about it.
Sharon Stoll, a professor at the University of Idaho, has concluded that a great many jocks are "deficient in moral reasoning."
As in, they are spoiled brats, and don?t think the same rules apply to them as the rest of us.
Seventeen years.
For that.
Does this scream out, ?and still no cure for cancer? or what!
Her research found that members of male sports teams scored lower in morals than individual sport athletes and that the longer they competed in sports, the more morally calloused male athletes become.
"In sport we have moved away from honorable behavior," Stoll said in the Seattle Times.
Over the length of the study, 72,000 athletes filled out questionnaires designed to measure their moral reasoning.
Stoll believes that there is more emphasis on winning at all costs and material rewards, than that old-school nonsense like sportsmanship, fair play and not cheating.
Seventeen years is a long time to study anything, but reaching those conclusions wouldn?t have taken me 17-minutes.
Or, I suspect, any other sports fan for that matter.
Being a fan of sports requires us to put blinkers on to this pandemic behavior. Elite athletes are pampered almost from the first time they demonstrate their unique abilities. They are given free passes that few others are afforded both in school and socially.
They become egomaniacal from an early age, and there are few who have the ability to avoid the trap.
It?s not really their fault. It?s the system?s fault. But in the end, they are left as they are. Magnificent human beings physically ? but occasionally - damaged goods.
For the end user, as in us, we cheer for the athletes. We marvel at their ability. We even sometimes weep at their failures ? but only those on the field of play.
For their failures off the field, if they are due to their lack of Dr. Stoll?s moral compass, it?s all but impossible for most of us to be sympathetic.
How can we be? Looking in from the outside, all we see is someone who won the athletic lottery, is rich, famous and has it all - yet they?ve throw it all away.
If scientists are going to insist in studying sports, instead of focusing in on the patently obvious, how about spending time on something that can actually benefits folks.
Like how to perfect a five game parlay. Cheers ? Gavin McDougald ? AKA Couch
Remember to drop us a line at rants@betED.com to voice your opinion on one of McDougald's articles or on anything else you read at betED.com !
