Values and ethics associated with sport Essay Example for Free

Values and ethics associated with sport Essay An explanation as to the importance of ethics and values for sporting organisation and the individuals who participate  Individual and group development has a lot to do with the ethics and values that are learnt through life. Ethics and values are important for individuals who take part in sport because sport plays a major role in a lot of peoples lives from an early age. Players and fans that are into sport tend to devote a lot of time and effort to their favourite sport. If you look into the nature of fairplay in sport for some people it leads to their understanding of fairness in a wider social setting, this is because many of our basic values, such as playing fairly are often absorbed through athletic competition because when kids are taught about sports emphasis is often put on playing fair. The underlying importance of this is that if an individual or group do not develop a proper set of ethics and values it will make them and their club look bad. An example is a player like Roy Keane who admitted in his autobiography that he broke a fellow footballers leg simply because he wanted to. From this I can understand that Roy Keane did not grow up with the same sort of values that I did. He didnt get it hammered into him when he was young that breaking someones leg isnt part and parcel of the sport. This also reflects a bad image on the club and if my memory serves me right Manchester United round about that time were considered quite a dirty club. No proud owner of a club really wants their club to be known as an aggressive bunch of cheats. It is nobler to be like Chelsea who last year not only won the Premiership but the fairplay award as well which if you look at it really makes you think yeah they are true champions because they won it fairly. You could argue that they spent 100 million pounds to win the league but they still did it fairly more so than any other team in the land and I and hopefully many other football fans respect them for it. From a strong commitment to ethics and values players can achieve likeability and move onto more successful jobs. An example is Gary Linekar he never received a yellow card in his whole life ans he has since taken over from the legendary Des Lynam as the Match of the Day host. Players with bad reputations that are openly disliked by the majority of fans are unlikely to move onto other limelight jobs when their career over as well as simply being disliked by the general public. When these players careers are over they still have to do the shopping, go out to eat etc. When they go out into the public people are going to have an opinion of them based on the ethics and values that they have shown on the field of play. Who wants to be openly disliked?  Clubs have a good public image to gain from having a strong commitment to ethics and values and all good businesses know that a good public image means more money. A consequence of bad ethics and values could be related to athletics. Probably the most talked about ethic in sport is the prohibition of using performance enhancing drugs in athletics. A lot of people do wonder what justifies this prohibition because why shouldnt athletes, especially competent adult athletes be free to take risks with their bodies? The answer to this comes down to ethics and morals most of us have about sport. This is an important rule because performance enhancing drugs such as steroids have very harmful side effects as well as providing an unfair advantage. It is important that a value such is this is instilled into athletes of all ages because really we would hope that all athletes would want to compete clean not only because they should want to see how good they can become without performance enhancing drugs but hopefully the integrity of the sport should be important to them as well. I remember I myself used to be a big fan of athletics back in the day of Linford Christie and Colin Jackson but over time I began to get tired when my heroes, the people I looked up to got stripped of their gold medals because they had cheated. Incidents like these put me off the sport and I no longer watch it, this is why it is important for individuals and organisations to have a strong set of ethics and values. Children look up to and aspire to be like a lot of the athletes that are on the TV these days and a poor showing of ethics and values by a well known professional sportsperson will surely be taken in and acknowledged as ok by many young athletes. Basically fans want to trust that an athletes accomplishments are achieved fairly. Consequences of bad ethics and values are that sportspersons integrity is totally lost, the sports integrity itself will go down and younger athletes may lose faith in wanting to be a professional. Coaches at all levels experience the pleasures of watching young people develop sport skills and contribute to successful teams. However, coaches also have important legal and ethical obligations to their athletes. Coaches need to ensure that a strong set of values are instilled right from the start of those of whom they are coaching playing days. Earlier on I described the consequences of a bad set of ethics for an individual. In my opinion a coach with a bad set ethics is far worse because it is just not him or her who looks bad it is the people he/she is influencing as well. First of the importance of a proper coaching is the influential factor. This doesnt just apply to children but to adults as well. The problem these days is that winning is everything and some coaches do actually teach that. Various coaches at the top level send their players out to win a match through diving, time wasting and fouling opposition players. So adults can be influenced as well and so can kids who are learning in much the same way that winning is everything. It is imperative that a coach instils values and ethics into a child as early as possible so that they are not so easily swayed into cheating as they get older. This once again helps keeps intact the integrity of the player, the club the play for and the sport. The benefit these players will have are that they can become an upstanding member of the public a role model that players can look up to sort of like a David Beckham figure (bad example). Consequences are that from a young age players are conditioned into thinking that winning is everything and this can spill over into real life. A sports player may cheat on a maths test or lie to get a girlfriend because the values that they learnt through their coaching apply to their real life situations. Coaches need to be a positive role model and penalise unfair play! An example I can remember when this was not done was in the final of the 1999 womens world cup. The American womens football team completed regulation and extra time play against china with the score drawn. The championship, viewed through the world by millions of fans, many of them young American girls captivated by the success of the American women, was to be settled by a penalty shootout. The coach had decided one of the Chinese shooters, Liu Ying, lacked confidence so said something to the American goalkeeper, Briana Scurry. When Ying made her move, Scurry took two quick steps forward, in violation of a rule of football, to cut off Yings shooting angle. The tactic worked. Scurry deflected Yings shot and the Americans won. As for as Im concerned Scurry acted unfairly and cheated by violating a rule on her coaches advice. It set a bad example to all the aspiring young American women and for me and many other people that watched, the American victory was tainted by unethical behaviour in a deliberate violation of the rules. I see that as a major consequence of bad ethics taught and it is still happening all over the world in other sports such as boxing where fighters have cheated in a multitude of ways through their cornermen. To be honest a lot of the people that cheat in sport through advice of their coaches are remembered only for their win and not for the cheating but there are many people still out their who view these sportspeople and the people that coached them as cheats and they have to live that for the rest of their lives. The main value statements that need to be learnt in order to obtain an NVQ in sport and recreations are that people shouldnt be discriminated against based on their age, gender, ethnic origin or if they are disabled.The reason that these value statements are in place is because in this day and age there is still a lot of prejudice in the world. Prejudice cant be afforded in competitive sport or the sports industry. Sport in reality is supposed to be all about enjoyment and achievement and shouldnt in anyway be anything to do with a disability, age or colour of someones skin. The benefits of the individuals who learn these value statements and take them in are that they will influence people to shed their differences and help understand other peoples needs and this will help to draw different types of people together. Basically differences can be buried by sport if people learn these statements then apply them to the sporting organisations they work in. An example is that they could encourage different race teams or mixed age teams or include people with disabilities. Most of the football teams that we support today have a mix of nationalities. The small minority of supporters that are racist tend to support the ethnics in their own team with the same love shown to the people in their team that are the same races as them. This shows that sport can bring people together at the highest level which means that it can be filtered down to lower levels like people working in leisure centres or small clubs. With regards to age sport and sports facilities should cater for all ages. Just because someone becomes older does not mean that they lose there ability or desire to play sport. Old people should be valued equally when they go to a leisure centre its not that they want to do a swimming lap in twenty seconds they just want to enjoy themselves and be involved. Older people might look old but some dont feel old and contribute their knowledge and experience to those that are younger. The benefits of understanding the older people in the community are that it open doors and gives opportunities for special events such as swimming for the elderly or special classes. Old people dont want to feel inferior or isolated and if sporting organisations can help and understand them by arranging and encouraging activities for them to take part in it can only improve the organisations overall/community image.