6-8 Pages. 12 point font. MLA How is sport like religion? What are the key differences and similarities? Please use references using the attached articles with citations.

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December 15, 2015

S p o r t i s m o r e a b o u t p h i l o s o p h y t h a n w e

m i g h t t h i n k

T he greatest com petitive advantage, in cricket and other gam es, is the ability to

use existing inform ation better than the opposition i.e. critical thinking

ED SM ITH

A rguing that sport can learn from philosophy sounds im probable. Superficially,

sport and philosophy have little in com m on: one is allegedly purely physical, the

Yes, sport is about scorelines, but we overestimate the extent to which the score reflects performance ©

Hardy's 12/16/2015 Ed Smith: Sport is more about philosophy than we might think | Cricket | ESPN Cricinfo

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other (according to cliché) a m atter of thinking about thinking.

B ut professional sport, casting its net ever w ider in the search for com petitive

advantage, has em braced m any new disciplines. Several sciences and quite a few

quasisciences find them selves contributing not only ideas but also em ployees to

professional sport. M athem atics, statistics, physiology, nutrition and psychology

have all influenced sport. A lm ost every top professional side has access to data

analysts, physiotherapists, strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists and

psychologists. Step forw ard the philosophers?

A fter all, sport's new vogue disciplines do not alw ays rely on proof and practicality.

The greatest beneficiary of all has been the least scientifically tested:

m anagerialism . The biggest grow th industry inside sport is the m anagem ent class

and the language it invented for its ow n purposes. W ords and phrases that never

used to im pinge on sport at all are now com m onplace: "reporting to", "m ission

statem ents", "line m anagers", "accountability", "job descriptions", "clearly defined

roles". W e forget that these things are relatively new and that leaders used to

exercise pow er w ithout them . Instead, w e got by w ith decisions, judgem ents and

authority.

I realised that professional sport w as being sw am ped w ith m anagerial jargon w hen

I w itnessed a hardliving, straighttalking and usually nononsense team m ate

com plain after being fired out by a bad lbw decision. B ack in the dressing room , he

started throw ing his kit around. B ut his rant w as phrased in a peculiar w ay: "N o

******* accountability, these um pires!" W ith such unhelpful concepts buzzing

around inside his m ind, no w onder he got hit on the front pad.

It sounds pretentious, alm ost preposterous, to argue that sport's m anagem ent class

w ould be better off to ditch the m ission statem ents and corporate jargon, and to

read som e (select) philosophy instead but I think it's true.

Sport is alw ays desperate to em pow er people w ho can give them inform ation

statistics, diet sheets or training program m es as though inform ation is the only

form of advantage. B ut it isn't. The greatest com petitive advantage is the ability to

use existing inform ation better than the opposition, to be trained in critical

thinking. This, of course, belongs to a m uch longerstanding tradition: philosophy. 12/16/2015 Ed Smith: Sport is more about philosophy than we might think | Cricket | ESPN Cricinfo

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I o fte n w is h th a t th e e n e rg y a n d

d e b a te d e v o te d to o b s e s s in g a b o u t

" w in n in g " c o u ld b e re c o n fig u re d

a s in te re s t in im p ro v in g

p e rfo rm a n c e . I th in k p la y e rs w o u ld

p la y a lo t b e tte r a s a re s u lt

TS E liot's classic lines "W here is the w isdom w e have lost in know ledge? W here is

the know ledge w e have lost in inform ation?" is even m ore relevant in the internet

age. E veryone has got opinions; anyone can gather facts. It's using them better

that's the real opportunity. A t a tim e w hen inform ation is so vastly available and

cheap to gather, the longterm advantage derives not only from how m uch coaches

"know ", but how w ell they can "read" sport. A nd it's not only the coaches. R eading

the gam e is also at the heart of playing sport and central to experiencing a fuller

enjoym ent as a spectator.

So here goes, the case for using thinking to rethink sport. O ne of the things that led

m e to think about this subject is A Philosophy of Sport, a superb book by the

C am bridge academ ic Steven C onnor that deserves to be far better know n by serious

sports fans and practitioners.

First, w e should be cautious about believing that sport delivers justice, that the

"right" team or player w ins. Yes, sport is structured to deliver a final judgem ent.

Like a trial (or the trial's m edieval precursor, the "ordeal") sport ends in an answ er

yes or no, w in or lose. The scoreboard, w e m ight say, is the jury. A decision m ust be

reached, and sport's dram a derives from artificially orchestrating a situation (the

clock) w here tim e is alw ays running out. B ut that doesn't m ean that w e as players,

fans or coaches m ust accept the infallibility of the decision reached.

Sport's default position is to overestim ate the extent to w hich the score reflects

perform ance. H ere is a trivial exam ple draw n from life as a spectator rather than a

player. The other day, as I w atched A rsenal play football w ith a friend (w e are both

fans, though he is an instinctive pessim ist) he suggested that A rsenal ought to

change tactics because they w ere totally dom inant yet still hadn't scored. M y reply:

"G iven that they are obviously trying to score, can you think of a better w ay of 12/16/2015 Ed Smith: Sport is more about philosophy than we might think | Cricket | ESPN Cricinfo

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achieving it than being totally dom inant? H ow about m ore of the sam e?"

H ow m any good plans are abandoned before they com e good because the score does

not reflect underlying reality? A nd how m any bad plans survive too long because

the scoreline is m isleadingly positive?

The sam e point applies in retrospect. Firstlevel thinking is: "W e w on w e w ere

better" and "W e lost w e w ere w orse." Secondlevel thinking is: "W e w on perhaps

w e w ere better" and "W e lost perhaps w e w ere w orse." W inning and losing are

certainly evidence; but they are not the only evidence. People w ho think that

w inning is the only thing are less likely to help team s to w in m ore often. O bviously

you have to play to w in at the tim e; that is a sim ple function of necessary

com petitiveness. Yet I often w ish that as if by m agic, the energy and debate devoted

to obsessing about "w inning" could be reconfigured as interest in im proving

perform ance. W hat w ould happen? I think players w ould play a lot better.

A connected idea (and I w ould agree w ith this, w ouldn't I?) is that believing in luck

is not unscientific, or slack or, as m any people think, an "excuse." Luck is sim ply a

fact of sport, built into its hardw are, an inevitably huge factor over the short term .

Sport m isleads us doubly on the question of luck. First, because sport delivers a

final judgem ent, acknow ledging luck seem s to underm ine the w hole spectacle from

an em otional point of view . Secondly, the final result, after the fact, takes on the

aura of being predestined so w e tend to forget how explicitly uncertain it w as all

along.

Think carefully the next tim e you say: it w as alw ays going to end that w ay. A re you

sure it couldn't have ended the opposite w ay just as easily, had the bounce of the

ball been different?

In sport, w e exercise and train the body to m ake it m ore flexible and adaptive, so it

is able to do w hat it could not do previously. The aim is to increase and im prove

capacity, opening up the possibility of solving problem s that haven't yet

m aterialised. N ow substitute the m ind for the body: w e "exercise" the m ind,

training ourselves to think better, by w ay of philosophy. M any of the best

sportsm en, of course, do this naturally, w ithout ever thinking of them selves as

"intellectual", still less "philosophical" though they are, in fact, both. B ut they have 12/16/2015 Ed Smith: Sport is more about philosophy than we might think | Cricket | ESPN Cricinfo

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to get there on their ow n, w ithout m uch outside encouragem ent. The idea that

sportsm en should try to becom e better at thinking and decisionm aking, every bit

as m uch as they do in m ovem ent or strength, has alm ost never been part of

m ainstream sporting education.

Finally for the purposes of the colum n, though certainly not the subject w e have

sport in the w rong category. In particular, w e m isread sport's relationship w ith "real

life" (shorthand: serious, grow nup living). "R eal life" is cast as som ething sturdy,

solid and verifiable, w hereas sport is assum ed to be ephem eral and lightw eight, only

useful as a sym bol or an allegory for som ething m ore real and determ inate in the

real w orld. This m ay be the w rong w ay around. Sports m ay not "m atter", in the

sense of life and death, but they are unusually and explicitly real. E vents in sport

definitely happened. U nlike real life, w hich, as C onnor puts it, "despite its upright

reputation, is plainly a treacherous fogbank of delusions and deceptions".

W hen I w rote editorials (that's the serious bits, not the sporty bits) for a new spaper,

I som etim es w ondered if papers should experim ent w ith putting the back pages at

the front and the front pages at the back. Typical backpage story: "H e shoots, he

scores." Typical frontpage story: "A n anonym ous source close to the prim e m inister

confirm s… " N ow tell m e, w hich one is hard new s?

Sport is both m ore serious and less serious than you thought, a subject deserving of

m ore philosophical attention and a discipline that w ould benefit from it.