Play Until the Whistle Blows: Sportsmanship as the Outcome of Thirdness

Abstract

There appears to be a common misunderstanding in almost all earlier and current accounts of sportsmanship. Most, if not all, of these accounts try to establish an alleged identity between sportsmanship and a moral virtue of some kind. Among others, sportsmanship has been identified with such virtues as honor, generosity, magnanimity, integrity, genuine concern for others, fairness, and fair play. 1 Among other sport theorists, for instance, Peter J. Arnold identifies sportsmanship not with a single moral virtue but rather with “a form of social union,” “a means in the promotion of pleasure,” and “a form of altruism” or some type of combination of these “three views” (1). What emerges out of one’s critical examination of these accounts is the fact that, as Peter J. Arnold rightly acknowledges, “the term sportsmanship and its relation to sport and morality is a more complex and subtle one than is commonly supposed” (1: p. 164). Unlike these accounts, the current article relies on Charles S. Peirce’s notion of epistemic mediation to offer an account of sportsmanship that is consistent with the empirical nature of sporting activities. Accordingly, sportsmanship derives from the local demands of each particular sporting activity. In this sense, sportsmanship is understood to be the result of a generalization of meaning, which is referred to here in Peircean terminology as thirdness. Such generalization of meaning, we argue, appears to be a necessary aspect of sport education, especially for children and youth, if one hopes to avoid the current undue reliance on the power of referees and officials. Thus, we hope to show, for instance, that the command “Play until the whistle blows!” seems to suggest that the proper realization of sporting activities must be totally dependent upon the power conferred, somewhat by default, to the referees and officials. This attitude is mistaken because, as Robert Simon points out correctly, We also need to consider the role of officials and referees in sports. Should we conclude that since opponents in many forms of organized competition delegate responsibility for enforcement of the rules to officials in full knowledge that officials sometimes make mistakes, the decisions of officials should be accepted as ethically final? Alternately, do participants have obligations not to accept unearned benefits arising from particularly egregious official errors,