The Morality of Sport-Hatred

It used to be the case that fans of Auburn University’s football team would gather after victories at Toomer’s corner in Auburn, Alabama, to throw rolls of toilet paper into the historic oak trees there. The trees have been removed. Not because Auburn University wanted it that way: Harvey Updyke, a fan of the University of Alabama’s football team – Auburn’s hated cross-state rival – poisoned the trees in 2010. Updyke was caught when he called in to a local sports radio show to brag about the deed. He was charged with criminal mischief, desecrating a venerated object and damaging agriculture. Although he initially pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, he later made a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to criminal damage of an agricultural facility. He served six months in jail, and was released in June of this year.

This is of course a bad situation. I’ve been to football games at Auburn, and though I sport-hate their football team, the celebration at Toomer’s corner was a great tradition and the trees, themselves, were beautiful. I don’t wish to pass more judgment on Updyke, but rather to reflection on an ethical question his action raises. Before posing the question, allow me a stipulation: Updyke’s crime was motivated by a particular kind of hatred. This is a kind of hatred often sanctioned in America and most Western societies with which I am familiar. Call it sport-hatred. I don’t have a unique account of hatred in the offing. I will understand it here as an intense blame-related emotion (or, if you prefer, an intense package of blame-related emotions and behavioural dispositions) directed at people, objects, ideas, symbols, actions: anything that inspires hatred. In turn, I will understand sport-hatred as hatred in the context of sports, and directed at people, objects, ideas, symbols, actions in the context of sports. Typically, sport-hate is directed at sports players, sports teams, sports organizations, sports mascots, and so on. When you sport-hate some agent (or some group agent, like a team or organization), you hate them because of their role or behaviour in the context of some sport.

The question: is sport-hatred morally permissible?

Obviously Updyke’s crime crossed moral boundaries. I am not asking about the moral permissibility of all actions motivated by sport-hatred. I am asking whether sport-hatred itself is morally permissible: do those of us who frequently undergo strong bouts of sport-hatred exhibit a moral defect? Am I morally blameworthy because I hate (citing teams here to avoid naming names) Arsenal, Duke University’s basketball team, or the Philadelphia Eagles?

Hatred itself is rarely if ever praiseworthy. Hate-crimes are taken to be especially odious crimes, and come with increased sentences. And hatred in daily life is frequently an overreaction, based on biased or otherwise mistaken judgments about the nature of some agent, some agent’s character, some action.

It is worth noting that, in contrast, sport-hatred is an oft-celebrated phenomenon. Forbes Magazine annually publishes a ‘top-ten’ list of the most disliked athletes. The sports and pop-culture bellwether Grantland recently hosted a vote to determine the most hated college basketball player of the last 30 years. Thousands of readers voted to winnow a field of 32 down to the most hated one. And of course any Premier League fan will gladly tell you what they think of the players and fans of their most hated rival (I recently watched a Newcastle-Sunderland derby with a Newcastle fan, and as a fan of the typically vitriolic and insanely competitive college football played in America’s Southeastern Conference, I felt right at home). If sport-hatred is morally wrong, it is perhaps the most widely-celebrated moral violation in modern society.

This unsettling thought creates a bit of pressure to justify sport-hatred. So we might wonder what kinds of considerations could do this for us. And posing this kind of question raises more general questions about the relationships between sport and morality.

In an interesting discussion, Peter Arnold (1994) mentions three possible views on the relation between sport and morality. First, there is the view that sport is morally valuable in the sense that they constitute a kind of moral training ground. Second, there is the view that sport is morally neutral, or at least morally unimportant. As Arnold describes this view, sport is “essentially non-serious” (76). Third, there is the view that sport is morally disvaluable in the sense that the kinds of character traits and actions promoted by desires to succeed in sport – e.g., aggression, dominance over others – are morally onerous.

Of course there are more possible views than these, and I suspect versions of all three views might be adopted to greater or lesser degrees amongst the populace, perhaps depending on the aspects of sport under consideration. It is implausible to think that sport is essentially morally valuable, neutral, or disvaluable. Sometimes engagement in a sport does serve to cultivate the moral virtues – certainly many place their children onto sports teams not just because they want them to have fun and make friends, but because they want them to learn the value of hard work, cooperation, and so on. But of course most of us are familiar with examples of sport-vices: little league coaches who care only about winning, parents of 5-year-olds who brutally berate (and sometimes physically assault) the referee, selfish players who seek only personal glory, and so on. And of course many of us feel the pull of the sport-is-neutral view. What’s so bad about a bit of vicious banter in the context of a game? Isn’t it much more fun to hate your rivals? Who wants to play a bunch of ruthlessly polite opponents?

Upon reflection, it seems clear (to me) that sport-hatred is sometimes justified (and thus permissible), and sometimes unjustified (and thus impermissible). An example of unjustified sport-hatred: we might hate a player simply for his or her success. This seems to me unjustified, and impermissible. (Likewise the actions motivated by sport-hatred can be unjustified and this impermissible. Sometimes fans cheer when an opposing player is injured. Philadelphia Eagles’ fans did this once when a Dallas Cowboys wide receiver (Michael Irvin) apparently hurt his neck badly. This seems to me (full disclosure: a Cowboys fan) a clear case of sport-hatred motivating an unjustified, and impermissible, action.)

An example of justified sport-hatred: famously, the New England patriots were once caught spying on the play-calling of other teams. This gave them an unfair advantage, and it is justified to sport-hate them for that.

Considerations of proportionality are relevant here as well. It is possible to sport-hate someone too much. The sport-hate heaped on LeBron James, for example, was perhaps initially justified: LeBron callously left his home-town Cleveland Cavaliers for perceived quick-success with the Miami Heat. Fans burned James’ jersies. The media loved the spectacle. But the sport-hatred continued, and to some extent still continues, over three years later. This is odd, since LeBron is in many ways an excellent teammate and competitor. It looks like the sport-hatred many still heap upon LeBron is out of proportion.

This discussion suggests that the reasons we engage in sport-hatred (as participants and observers) are crucial. What we need to identify, then, are the kinds of reasons that justify sport-hatred. What might these be?

A tempting – and admittedly tentative – proposal goes as follows. The kinds of reasons that justify sport-hatred either (a) track or (b) mirror those that justify hatred outside of sport. Consider people who exhibit moral vices – the arrogant, the callous, the selfish. Although it might be too much to suggest that irrevocable hatred of such people is justified, it is arguable that a circumscribed hatred is justified. Hatred in response to an action that exhibit moral viciousness might be justified in much the way that other blame-related attitudes are justified.

What kinds of sport-related actions track actions that exhibit moral viciousness? Those that exhibit moral viciousness directly. In my view the field of play is not entirely morally neutral. Athletes can exhibit laziness, selfishness, arrogance, malice, and so on. Such athletes arguably open themselves up to justified sport-hatred. Notably, one of the most hated college basketball players in recent memory, J.J. Redick, has admitted as much. In an article by Robert Mays discussing the amount of vitriol Redick received while playing for Duke, Redick told Mays: “I probably deserved it. I was sort of a prick.” Interestingly, Redick has long since toned down his antics and his attitude, and basketball fans seem to have noticed. Redick-the-professional-player is not nearly as hated as the college version.

I have suggested that justifying reasons for sport-hatred might not only track those that justify non-sport-hatred, but might mirror these reasons. I take this to be an importantly different relation, one in which we respond, not to features that themselves justify hatred, but to features that meet a mirroring requirement. To understanding what I have in mind here, note that sport competitions often mirror real-life moral conflicts. Many of the best sports movies – Mighty Ducks, Rocky IV, Karate Kid, The Replacements (just kidding) – capitalize on this fact, offering us a moral and a sports conflict that mirror and play off of each other in obvious ways. The relation between the dramatized conflicts sport displays, and the moral conflicts of ‘real life’ is likely to be complex, and difficult to specify with any precision. But consider three examples of how sport-hatred can mirror morally justified hatred in non-sport contexts.

First, it is sometimes the case that we come to sport-hate a player for certain character-related failings. That is, we heap blame and scorn upon a player for consistently failing to meet some norm internal to the sport. This might be a failure to rotate on defense, a failure to wrap up a tackle, a failure to make an easy shot, or whatever. We respond with sport-hatred in such cases in part because we take these failings to reflect a deficient character – at least in the context of the sport. It would be odd and probably out of place to suspect that some person’s deficiencies in a sport are easily transmitted to non-sports contexts (in spite of John Wooden’s famous quote that sports ‘reveal character’). But it might be justified to sport-hate such a person because, by the standards internal to that sport (or to sports in general), their character is deficient.

Second, we sometimes come to sport-hate a player or a team because we find their success an example of unfairness. Arguably, much of the sport-hate heaped on dopers stems from a justified hatred of unfairness. Or, to take anoter example, many people loathe the New York Yankees because it seems to them that the Yankees can simply buy success. Their success seems unfair, and the sport-hate is motivated by a justified hatred of unfairness, here on display in the context of a sport.

Third, we often come to sport-hate arch-rivals. This might seem to be motivated by biases, and thus obviously unjustified. But maybe not. Conflicts between rivals resemble certain kinds of very rare moral conflicts, between good and evil. I say such moral conflicts are rare because it seems to me that transporting the good vs. evil dynamic outside of sports is usually ill-advised (the world is not so clear-cut). But sport, as many have argued, does seem to provide a training ground of sorts – one in which we can identify with one side in a contest, and thereby experience all sorts of emotions and attitudes (including sport-hatred) directed to the other side. Sometimes there exist moralized conflicts in life in which hatred of the opposing side is morally justified, and in which hatred plausibly motivates morally praiseworthy actions (exhibitions of courage, for example). If the reasons for sport-hating another team (because they are your team’s arch-rival, for example) legitimately mirror these conflicts, it might be that sport-hatred of the arch-rival is thereby justified.

Peter J. Arnold (1994). Sport and Moral Education. Journal of Moral Education 23(1): 75-89.

Robert Mays (March 14, 2013). ‘I Was Sort of A Prick’: J.J. Redick on Playing ‘J.J. Redick.’ Grantland http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/54296/i-was-sort-of-a-prick-j-j-redick-on-playing-j-j-redick Accessed November 3, 2013.