Hello, my name is Dr. Julia Ossman, I'm the
director of the Institute for the Humanities. I'm
very happy to welcome you to this event. I am
joined today by Dr. Greg Tweet Meyer, who is an
associate professor in the Department of
Kinesiology here at Mississippi State. Hello, Greg.
How are you doing? Good, thanks. I'm also here
with Dr. Scott Kretschmer, who is professor
emeritus in the Department of Kinesiology at Penn
State University. Hello, Dr. Kretschmer. Grevious,
thank you both for being here this afternoon. So I
understand that you both are in the Department of
Kinesiology at your respective universities, but
can you tell me a little bit more about what you
specialize in and what you study?
Sure. So I actually studied with Dr. Kretschmer at
Penn State, I got my Ph.D. there. Between two
thousand four 2008 and the history and philosophy
of sport, and although the degree says history and
philosophy, everybody that takes that PhD
emphasizes one of the other. You have to do both
to make yourself marketable, but you emphasize one
of the other. So I emphasize philosophy with Dr.
Kretzschmar and that's the main research focus
that I have and teaching focus that I have here at
Mississippi State.
And I do philosophy of sport, I did it at Penn
State, I'm still writing, even though I've been
retired for a number of years. They keep asking me
to teach and foolishly, I keep agreeing to do so.
So I taught this last fall by Zoome. My first
attempt at that,
I studied philosophy at the University of Southern
California and the philosophy department for my
graduate work. But my degrees are all in physical
education because I love sport. And so I've always
been in physical education departments and I've
always examined sport from the humanities side. So
what is sports philosophy? Because when when I
think of sports, I'm thinking of people playing on
the field. Is it is it you know, do I take that
shot or not? Take that shot. How how does this
work?
Either of you, you're both sports. Well, I mean, I
would say it's it's all the branches of philosophy
applied to the lived experience and reflection
upon. The playing games that people love, so
ethics is the most obvious area that people are
aware of related to sport philosophy, you know,
issues of Title nine, performance enhancing drugs,
all the stuff you see in the news, cheating the
Houston Astros, cheating their way to the World
Series a couple of years ago and so forth. But
it's broader than that, too. It's it's
metaphysical questions. It's questions of
aesthetics. What's beautiful about sport? Is there
an objective definition of beautiful sport? Is
soccer the beautiful game in an objective way? Is
it better than baseball and so forth? I can I can
answer that, Greg. It's not baseball is a much
better game. But
to to further answer Juliet's question, another
major issue has to do whether a kind of a paradox.
We humans put a lot of energy into things like
baseball and some people call them silly games.
They don't produce anything. You know, if you're
just playing for fun, if you're playing for
recreation, they don't make anything. And so we
wonder why we spend so much emotional energy. I
know you you folks down in Mississippi care a
little bit about your football team down there.
And I've seen some pictures of people yelling and
putting paint on their face and doing really
totally irrational things. We at Penn State would
never do that. But why why do we care so much
about play games, sport, dance? Things that are
sort of on. The side of life, they're not directly
related to our survival, but yet they mean so much
to us. We philosophers, Greg, including Doctor
Tweet me included, mess with those kinds of
questions. And so you're talking about philosophy.
But, Greg, you said that you had to kind of get
your PhD in philosophy and history of sport. So
are there other sports humanities besides
philosophy and history? You mentioned ethics. You
mentioned aesthetics is part of philosophy, but
are there other things that people look at at
sports that use human discipline in terms of
academic disciplines that have thriving
communities? It's basically three sport,
philosophy, sport, history and sport sociology.
You could throw in sports psychology there
depending on where you slide psychology on that
scale between the sciences and the humanities.
Obviously, there is a humanistic strain in
psychology. My read of psychology that pushed and
pushed and pushed more in a scientific direction.
But there's certainly sports psychology angles
that could be taken related to the humanities and
the other is the arts related to literature, film
and so forth. So if one if somebody and by the way,
I forgot to mention at the beginning, I have
several questions for these sports humanists. But
if any of our viewers or anybody listening, if you
have a question for either Dr. Meyer or Dr.
Kretschmer, if you could just put it in the
comment section below the video that you're
watching right now, I would love to ask it on your
behalf or inject a comment on your behalf. So so
please don't hesitate to ask your questions. But
Greg and Dr. Cutch marketing, getting back to the
questions that I was asking you a bit earlier. So,
you know, you're talking about sport and art and
sport and philosophy and sport and psychology and
sport and social sciences. So if somebody wanted
to study sports in that way or using that
methodology, do most people have to study that
discipline first and then just apply it to sports?
Or can you study sports philosophy and sports
psychology and sports social sciences as their own
disciplines in various places? Let me start with
that. Greg was one of a number of doctoral
students I had at Penn State over the years, and I
would interview all of the would be students
before I accepted them into the program. And
having an undergraduate major in philosophy was
not a prerequisite, that I would take individuals
who had majored in physiology or majored in
business or majored in all different kinds of
things. My prerequisite, something related to the
humanities, they had to have experience and
movement, human movement or some form sport
exercise. I had one on one individual came who was
a marathon runner because we philosophers deal
with the subject of the lived experience of sport.
I could not teach a student in three years all the
experience they need as a football player or a
baseball player or a runner, a bike or a swimmer,
a skier. They had to come with that. And I think
another thing that was important for me is that
they they came with a passion, a love for that
activity. It wasn't just an academic exercise for
them. It wasn't for me. When I went to graduate
school, I really wanted answers to questions about
why sport, why physical activity. What does my
body mean as a as a person? How am I related to
this physical hunk of flesh that I carry around
with me? And so those were the key things. And
then I would say I could train them myself. And so
between me and the philosophy department, over
three years are a little more than three years, my
students would get a good enough background to
think, well, right. Well, like Dr. Meyer has done
since he's graduated. I would I would follow up on
that real quick, just with the little anecdote
when I went out to interview
at Penn State. I was in Dr. Christophers office on
spring break two thousand four. There was nobody
else around, recalls this big labyrinth. It was
like getting through a maze to find him. And we I
sat down at his desk and the first question he
asked me, because this is how it's related to your
initial question. I wasn't a philosophy major
undergrad. I was an art major. And his first
question was, what is art have to do a sport? And
my immediate instinctual answer was play, which
apparently is exactly what he wanted to hear.
So if I can go back to something you all mentioned
a little earlier, but that's very much related to
what Greg just said, why do we need sports? Why do
human beings care so much about people running
around with a ball or a stick or whatever it is?
Why why does this and it's it's interesting.
Whenever I check the news, I like to look at the
news on BBC, the British news website, and, you
know, the top parts, all international news and
who's waging war on who in politics and everything.
And then the last third of the page is always an
English football on this big international news
site. So why do we care so much about sports?
Give me the short answer, short answer is that
people are meaning seeking creatures.
We need to have purpose in our life, we have to
have things we care about. We care about our
spouses, our loved ones, our children, we care
about our jobs and our vacations and the things
we're dedicated to, but our caring doesn't stop
there. And so I think the short answer is sport,
for reasons that Greg and I have been researching
for years attracts us it. Allows us to care deeply
about something getting better, winning, rooting
for a favorite team. There are lots of ways we
care and support. In some ways it's like religion,
because that's another place where we we grow it
to life, caring deeply about how things come out.
And so we invest, we trust, we have faith in sport
requires very similar kinds of attitudes. I have
heard football being called a religion in
Mississippi many, many, many times, but you make a
very a very good case there. Greg, do you have
anything to add? I would just add the basic
philosophic distinction of intrinsic versus
extrinsic goods. One way usefulness and the
extrinsic are our immediate priority is Dr.
Kretschmer alluded to before. You know, if you
don't have a roof over your head, food in your
stomach, you're not going to be around for long.
But once you take care of that immediate question
is now what? And the intrinsic goods being good in
themselves don't succumb to that problem, right,
if something is beautiful, you pursue it simply
for its own sake. And sport, like religion, is one
of those realms of intrinsic value, intrinsic
purpose, where we pursue the good, the true and
the beautiful, simply because that's what it is,
not because it's useful, because it will fill
their stomach or fill our bank account, but
because, as I said, we need meaning in our lives.
And so we play sports. Well, it's not the only
thing, hopefully, but yeah, absolutely, I think a
lot of us do. Or if you're like myself, I'm not
much of a player, but I certainly watch them.
Right. We can if you think about food, for example,
or nutrition that skates this line perfectly.
Right. If you if you just talk to a nutritionist,
they could just chop up the food, stick on a plate
and say, here's what you want to eat. But the
presentation, the cooking, the flavor, all that
matters to. Right. We want to live well, not just
live healthy. What Greg and I are talking about is
something that's very important because to
oversimplify matters, people in physical education
and kinesiology tend to fall on one of two sides
of the scale. And a number of my colleagues, some
of them very good colleagues, because both sides
of the scale have some arguments in favor of them.
Many of my colleagues are public health people.
They marched to the drummer of Good Health. The
reason we exist in the public schools for the kids,
the reason we exist in the colleges to promote
health. And so we do push ups, sit ups and jumping
jacks and we run people around the track. We try
to help people lose weight. We try to keep people
alive. You know, we carry Hunter-Gatherer kinds of
cardiovascular systems that aren't meant for
sitting. And statistics now show that sitting
kills just like smoking cigarettes and doing other
things. So that side of physical education is an
important one. We want to live longer. We want to
have energy and health. But Greg and I are birds
of a feather on the other side of the coin. And I
didn't give this to him. He came this way when he
first met me. We care more about quality of life
and then health becomes a byproduct. And I always
tell my students, if you love to run, if you like
to bicycle, if you love to ski, your heart rate's
going to go up and you're going to have meaning in
your life. And some of the psychologists that Greg
mentioned or you mentioned earlier are showing
that attitude matters to health. And so if we have
a life filled with meaning and things we love
doing, that in itself promotes health, even though
that's not the main objective that I I'm in that
for I taught school classes for year golf,
distance running racquetball, and I was my main
objective director was always to have the kids
fall in love with the activity and the story. Yeah.
Well, you're talking about kind of this sport as
this very good thing is kind of this intrinsic
good thing, and it's something that we do because
we enjoy and we want to live very happy lives. And
then if you're doing these things we enjoy, then
we will be healthy as a as a as a result. But you
also mentioned earlier sports ethics. And, you
know, it's no secret right now that there are lots
and lots of conversations about the ethics of
various sports. Our student athletes really
professional at this point. Should they be paid?
Are they really amateurs? Should they not be paid?
Would it kill university sports if we started
paying athletes, et cetera? That's just one of
many, many, many questions. People are worried
about concussions and people are worried about the
amount of money we pay professional athletes and
the relationship between professional athletics
and the Department of Defense in some cases and
things like that. I've got a colleague who writes
on this. So what are some of the the current
ethical issues with professional or college sports
that you are most worried about or you are
following right now?
Why would I would mention three that I don't get I,
I don't think get enough attention. Hmm. The first
is the growth of gambling in sports. And other
than the obvious back and forth on that debate of
the health of gambling as a pursuit. I think the
larger issue that people really aren't talking
about is the leagues getting in bed with the
casinos. So Major League Baseball, for example,
recently signed, as I believe, have all the other
major American sports, a proprietary data contract
with casinos in Las Vegas. Which means that
they're advanced analytics statistics go to Vegas
and Vegas, have inside information that the fans
don't have, which means that the. Scales are
tipped in the direction of the casinos even more,
and baseball is making money indirectly off the
backs of the average fan who is ignorant of the
way the system set up to give proprietary data to
the casino so that they're more likely to lose.
The second one would be the issue of roadblocks.
We tend to think of that purely as a technological
issue, when will we have the technology to do it?
Well. I think it's great. What is it that you just
mentioned, robot arms, so should the strike zone
be called by an umpire? Should it be called by
computer? Oh, a robotic umpire.
I would argue for a host of philosophical reasons
that we don't necessarily need to get into any
detail on that robots can't work, that even if
they could work, it would be counterproductive. It
would dehumanize baseball in important ways.
And it would deny the reality of judgment, which
is necessary in all human endeavor from the
scientific deep bench sciences all the way down to
the allegedly purely subjective humanities and so
forth. And then the third one. It's probably the
one I'm most worried about, and that is the
professionalization of youth sport. Where we turn
kids into little recruits at six, seven, eight,
nine years old, I was just reading an article in
the Athletic this week about parents paying tens
of thousands of dollars to get their kids with
quarterback gurus so they can land that big
scholarship. And the lead example in this article.
Was a father deciding his son would be a
quarterback at age five?
Hmm. Obviously, this isn't healthy for the kids,
or at least there's a real danger, it's not going
to be healthy for the kids, it's not healthy for
any parents pocketbooks, and it immediately
eliminates a whole bunch of kids for socioeconomic
and other reasons from that deep, meaningful
experience we're talking about because they get
priced out of it or eliminated because they're not
good enough at the ripe old age of seven, eight,
nine years old. Wow. Well, and you're talking
about that, that's making me think even of some
things I've read about ballet grooming young,
especially young women to be ballerinas when
they're very, very, very little and in some ways
risking the kind of love of sport or that kind of
love of movement that you were talking about in
the first place. What are you worried about, Dr.
Kretschmer? Wow. I like the three that the Gregg
chose.
There's no shortage in sport, have ethical issues.
I've been on panels on youth sports. I've been on
panels dealing with whether athletes should be
paid, college athletes should be paid or not. And
I've been on panels that talk about drugs,
anabolic steroids and whether or not they should
be not allowed. So there are so many issues, I
think some personal ones for me, one of them is an
old issue is gender equity. Right. Title nine was
a hot button one to put in place. And it's still a
hot button politically. People who
are on the men's side of athletics blame Title
nine for the cutting of wrestling, the cutting of
men's volleyball and some of the steamed because
there's not enough money to go around. And they
point the finger directly at the women and say, if
we didn't have Title nine, those teams would still
be here. I don't know what has happened in
Mississippi in that regard, but number of schools
and the Big Ten where we are have cut programs,
particularly men's programs, to meet Title nine
requirements. The statistics show that it's not
Title nine, primarily, it's the exorbitant
expenditures in men's football and men's
basketball. If you look at the budget and any big
Division One school, you'll see that ungodly
amounts of money go to those programs. And so,
yeah, if you're going to spend half your budget on
those two front porch programs and they are
important programs for the visibility of our
schools, you're not going to have money left over
for women's sports or men's sports, or at least
not many of them. So I worry about Title nine,
women's opportunities to play, by extension,
handicapped kids, chances to play people who are
sort of out of the mainstream of elite sport. So
it's kind of a play on Greg's idea of the youth
sport, who are the people who don't have power and
are not in the limelight? And are they getting
good sport experiences? Do they have a chance to
fall in love with sport? Yeah, related to the
piggyback off that larger theme, I would I would
add another one, and that is the neglect and
decline of physical education in our schools and
arguably more importantly, in our colleges and
universities, because there's a lot of kinesiology
programs that are eliminating it as a major in
their departments. So it's interesting that you
bring this up, because I actually have a question
on our Facebook page. And just a reminder, if you
have a question for either of these gentlemen,
please do put it in the comments section below the
video and I'll be sure to ask it. But we do have a
question for Mattie Bass asking if there are
reoccurring gender differences that you see in the
sports humanities that you teach. So we not
necessarily even in sports and in the sports
humanities. Do you see if there are reoccurring
gender differences to quote, as a predominantly
male or female, the students who take your classes
or who go into this field? Yes.
OK, men on average are taller.
That's indisputable, but I'm a little bit of a
renegade on this because I'm not afraid of talking
about the differences. My daughter played Division
one basketball, so I've got women in the family
who are very gifted athletically.
The big question, one of the big questions is it
matter who asks the question? Yes. One of the big
questions Mattey has to do with whether it's
nature or nurture know are women raised
differently in our culture enough differently that
they think differently, they play differently,
they compete differently and so forth. Or is there
something more fundamental to our biological
makeup that we've come into the world oriented
just a little bit differently on the male side, on
the female side, and all the blends in between the
two binary categories of male female? I think it's
both. And I think there's a degree of of nature.
We are different by nature, to a small degree.
We're human, mostly to a small degree. I think by
nature we're a little different. And then, of
course, by our upbringing, how how we're raised to
think of ourselves and our gender is different. So
there are a lot of interesting issues about
whether men should coach women sports because men
have been raised differently to think differently
about sports and maybe genetically they're a
little bit different to or should women coach
women sports. And now there are a number of
questions about the in between people, you know,
people who are not clearly one gender or the other.
They're transgender and they're questions of
fairness. They're questions of opportunity. Where
should they compete? How should they compete? And
as you're probably aware in the in the media,
there are a lot of hot issues about Caster Semenya
and whether her unusual biological makeup should
keep her from competing in women's categories. So
gender is an important issue. And from my
perspective, I don't get hung up on sex. I hope I
get hung up on people who don't get a chance to
play. And I don't want gender to get in the way of
that.
Greg, did you want to add something to that
question or
do you think you can just. Well, I would say I
would echo his thoughts that it's a hot button
issue. I think there's a deep connection to
metaphysics and the nature of the human person
there that needs more attention. Dr. Kretschmer
mentioned before, you know, what am I why do I
have a body? What is my body? Is my body, me?
That's all related to that issue. It's such a hot
button issue. I don't think that there's enough
careful, considerate, dispassionate analysis that
goes on my wrist for any if there any untenured
professors listening out there. Don't do your
research on that until you get tenured. I would
agree that advice. It's whatever you think on that
issue. It's a it's an issue that's not going to go
away. Right. And there's also another comment here
on our Facebook comments. This is from George Dunn.
And I think relating back to what you were saying
earlier, Greg, about
the problem with gambling and also the problem
with robotic umpires. He's posted an article about
how baseball is more than a sport, but it isn't an
example of a functioning legal system. It's its
own legal system. And that kind of leads me to ask,
you know, to what extent does professional
baseball or football or any sport or the SCC or
the NBA or any large professional sports
organization or quasi professional sports
organization? Care what you guys think. Are you in
dialogue with any of these companies that you make
money off of athletes or that organize the
athletics? Or do you just kind of sit on the
benches and make commentary from a distance?
Well, by and large answers, no, they don't care
what we think, that's not absolutely true. The
NCAA reached out and had a symposium that Dr.
Kretschmer was part of between academics and
coaches and administrators, what, about 10, 15
years ago now? Yeah, when Myles Brand was
president of the NCAA.
Occasionally you will have a journalist or
somebody reach out to you. I had somebody from the
Houston Chronicle do that to me about four or five
months ago related to the Astro scandal. But our
influence is almost always in direct. One of the
places where we have had an impact is on the issue
of policies regarding performance enhancement,
drug taking, the IOC, the USOC, the Olympic
committees have invited train philosophers of
sport to sit on their panels to help them work
through rationales for the drug policies.
Typically, these organizations, partly because of
public pressure, are anti-drug. There are other
reasons to health reasons and so forth. But for
public relations reasons, most people prefer to
think of sport as drug free and so forth. And so
philosophers are needed to be at the table to talk
about good reasons for why we prohibit this and
why we allow that. Well, you know, why do we allow
a certain chemical to go into our bodies, but we
don't allow another chemical to go into our bodies?
What's what's the reason? And. The institutions
are interested in making sure that fancy it's not
arbitrary, you know, they're not just saying
arbitrarily, I say you're not allowed to drink
coffee before you go to a soccer game. There needs
to be a reason for it and it needs to be
articulated well. And philosophers are good at
giving reasons, articulating, and so they call on
us. And Greg mentioned the scholarly colloquium
for the NCAA. Myles Brand, who died of pancreatic
cancer tragically a number of years ago now, was
an unusual president of the NCAA. Usually
administrators of multi million dollar enterprises
like the NCAA want to keep academics at arm's
length. They don't trust us because we tend to be
critical, right. We tend to say, you know, you're
not doing it right and so forth. Myles Brand was
different and he was a philosopher of sport like I
am. And that's why I got involved. And he called
me one day and said, we need to get academics more
engaged in studying intercollegiate sport. And I
said to him, Aren't you afraid if you start
inviting people like Greg and me under the tent
that it's going to get worse? You know, we're just
going to be throwing hand grenades at you guys.
And he said no. He said, I believe. In the on
balance, college sport is very good for kids. That
was his deep belief and he said, if we have good
scholars looking at that, they're going to be some
negative things. He can do their problems in big
time sport especially. But he said if we have good
scholars looking at it, the goods are going to
come out, too. So I want good scholars studying
intercollegiate sport. And for a brief, shining
moment of about seven years, we have a scholarly
colloquium at annual NCAA meetings. And Miles and
I started to journal the Journal of
Intercollegiate Sports that still exists today
where there's hopefully good scholarship on
intercollegiate athletics. So there should be a
marriage. But Greg's right. By and large, they
keep us away. Hmm. I'm sorry to hear that, because
it just as a as as a humanist or just even as a
teacher, someone who teaches at a university. I
have taught at two very sports heavy universities.
And you get college athletes. And, you know,
sometimes it's just very clear that like, oh, your
level of preparation indicates that, you know,
maybe you're not quite ready to be in this class
yet, but somehow they managed to get here anyway.
You kind of wonder how this happened and things or
you get very worried. I used to get very worried
that, you know, I'm teaching this very basic
things right now. But then when I ask you to write
a very long paper in about two weeks, and I'm sure
I'm going to get a paper from you, quite sure what
the paper will come from and things like that. But
it's you know, you don't you're not always
encouraged to ask too many questions about these
kinds of things. So I guess my follow up question
for you then is, you know, you seem very
impassioned about, you know, some of the ethical
problems that you see in sport. You both are very
concerned about access. You're both very concerned
about sports staying, for lack of a better word,
fun and meaningful to the people who play them. So
does this kind of lead on that? You both that
being a sports philosopher or sports humanist
leads to some kind of activism. Do you find
yourself, you know, trying to influence policy or
legislation regarding gambling or, you know, how
old children have to be to be involved in certain
sports or things like that? I am speaking for
myself, I would say it really depends on your
definition of activism. If you have a broad
definition, I would say absolutely. I coach youth
soccer. I've been very involved in the Starchild
Soccer Association. I run a camp here and in West
Virginia for the last seven, eight years to help
teach special needs children how to ride a bike.
That all falls on a philosophy, in fact, I learned
about the program because I was I was searching
for examples to use in my sport philosophy class.
And then when I realized it was something to
travel around the country, I said, well, why can't
it be here? And maybe it should be here. And if I
don't do anything about it, nobody is going to.
And so forth. So I would be a little hesitant only
because the word activism in day to day
conversation tends to skew to one side of the
political spectrum and always being political in
the sense of being engaged in your community and
putting philosophy into practice and using what
you've learned to try and make the world a better
place, I would think every scholar does that.
I was in a situation in the year 2000 where I was
happy doing my research on my teaching, and
somebody approached me and said, would you be
willing to be the faculty athletics rep to the
NCAA for Penn State University? And my initial
reaction was, of course not, I've got plenty to do,
and why would I stick my finger into that mess?
And the long and short of it is I eventually did
say yes and did it. And it was an interesting
experience because
I had to walk a line between being the kind of
activist that Greg was talking about, the one that
gets, you know, the bad name for being a super
critic of everything that's going on. Because I
had to have a relationship with the coaches. I had
to have a reasonably positive relationship with
the coaches. But I'm an ethics teacher, for
heaven's sakes. I have to call a spade a spade
when something bad happens in real big trouble. If
you don't, as North Carolina makes clear, because
one of the major actors there wasn't sports ethics
teacher. Yeah, yeah. We I could tell you so many
war stories. Some of them. Well, I can't tell them
publicly, but I have many war stories that have to
do with ethics, with professors calling me on the
phone, for example, saying the starting linebacker
for Penn State football team was cheating on my
test this afternoon. What should I do? I I can
tell you that story, I had a very easy answer to
that. I said, you do exactly the same thing you
would do for any other student at Penn State
University. Do not change your behavior because
he's a starting linebacker on the football team,
you're in charge of your classroom, you have the
standards for your class, treat him like you would
treat the other kids. But, you know, I had all
kinds. There's a famous 20 hour rule that is
athletes are not allowed to spend more than 20
hours a week by NCAA rules on required athletic
activities. Keyword. Yeah, required athletic. It
doesn't count competition. This is practice, chalk
talk, weight sessions and so forth. I had a young
lady walk into my office one day and said, Dr.
Kretschmer, I have to tell you that our coach is
just violating the 20 hour rule from start to
finish. We're spending 30 hours at least a week
required to be on this person's team. And so this
was a coach of a big name team and a big name
coach had to go to the to the coach and say, hey,
cut it out. These kids are students. They have a
life. And I know you're under a lot of pressure to
win, but. Cut it back, play by the rules, and so,
you know, there were there were difficult kinds of
situations, but it overall it was a good situation,
fortunately for me, state, because most of the
coaches were very good about trying to balance the
student athlete requirements. And so, yeah, and I
coached Little League and million stories like
grade two to try to do it the right way. And good
people. When I gave a talk on little person sport,
they were asking, what would you do to reform kids
sports? I had two answers. Give the kids new
parents
and the second was give them a different coach.
That's where a lot of the trouble comes. And my
own experience in teaching my daughter soccer and
my son baseball,
where do you find yourself when you would go to
their games? Would you find yourself being that
parent saying no could get over there and you
could put in or were you very good at sitting on
your hands since you knew what was to be that
coach? I was 50 50.
I was pretty good. And but yeah, it's emotional.
When you're kids out there, you can't rationalize
it. You care because your eyes follow your kid,
even though rationally I know every other kid out
there is equally deserving of my eyes. You follow
your kid and it's just the way we are as parents.
We love our kids and we want them to do well. And
so, yeah, I don't apologize for that. It's part of
human nature. It's part of, I think, being a good
parent. You love your kids. More than you love
somebody else's kids, you hope they have parents
who love them like you love your kids, but yeah,
you know, so so these it's interesting because on
one hand, I'm hearing you talk and you all study
kinesiology and you study sport and it is your
life. And on the other side, you have the coaches
like the kind that you were in communication with.
Dr. Kretschmer in sport is their life and sport is
their passion and everything. But you all seem to
come at it from very different perspectives. You
do coaches, do they have to take sports,
humanities or some kind of sports man is at some
point in their training or in their education even
just is like a check in the block. If you want to
go into sports management or training or coaching
or any of those more practical professions, a lot
of them do, but not because they have to. So. Most
of the college and above coaches end up starting
with the gay somewhere, this issue of the coach
and they have to be in a graduate program to be on
the gay and sports administration, sport
management and so forth is a common choice because
of their interests. And most of those programs are
going to have an ethics class if the program's
anything close to.
Accredited, but, you know, if if you've got the
connections, you're the starting linebacker at
Ohio State or whatever, and you go to your coach
and say, I think I want to be a coach, too. And he
dials up from his Rolodex, six or seven people
that might need sugar. And they say, oh, yeah, we
know we really want to admire Meyer. He was a
great linebacker at Ohio State. I don't care what
you're majoring in. So there's a lot of coaches
with no academic background in sport at all. You
know, the biggest predictor that I've seen and
getting college level coaching jobs is connections.
Who did you play for? Who did you assistant coach
under? It's a networking kind of system. And so
your credentials and whether or not you took a
sport ethics class are so far down on the list,
they're invisible, but your behavior is not
invisible. And so there are some schools that will
stay away from a coach who has a track record
that's questionable. That's that's done some
things. One of my jobs as faculty rep at Penn
State was to be on searches of major coaching
hires. A men's basketball was one of them when I
was the ten years I did it. And we brought in some
really big name coaches. I mean, names that
everybody here listening would would know right
off the bat. And we were at a meeting with the
president and so forth and. We were debating
whether or not to to make an offer to this big
name coach, because we don't have good basketball
at Penn State. We need support. So everybody sort
of rooting that we get in a big name coach to turn
the program around and the president turn to our
athletic director and said, are you OK with this
hire? And our athletic director, who had done a
lot of research with other coaches in the Big Ten
and done some work on this coach we were thinking
about said I'm not, because I would think within
three years we'll have an NCAA investigation here
about wrongdoing. The coach was known to do run
around the rules a little bit, said the president
said, that's all I need to hear. We're not going
to do it. And we hired in a different direction.
So coaching behavior does make a difference in
some schools. But, boy, one of the things that
upsets me as much as anything is seeing a coach
getting fired at school for malpractice and then
getting hired at Scoby for a higher salary. Oh,
within three years, he can be fired from there for
malpractice because he wins. That's what matters.
Do you just stay on the positive side? There is
been a slow, emphasize, slow but steady growth in
coaching education majors. Oklahoma State, for
example, has a very well regarded program. The
problem with that, of course, is not required and
the students that go into it tend to end up at the
lower levels, high schools and so forth, which is
good for those high schools, assuming the programs
are doing a good job. But ethical pressures, the
temptations are, of course, you know,
exponentially higher. The higher you go, so it's.
You no way not serving where the demand ought to
be the greatest, right? So so, Dr. Kretschmer, if
I may, you brought up salary a few minutes ago,
and that was kind of making me wonder, does money
ruin sports? And I ask that because, you know, the
big money making sports tend to be the ones that
seem to attract the most controversy or the most
ethical violations. I mean, I hear a lot of
conversation about, you know, college students and
football or college students in baseball or
college students and basketball. I hear a lot less
concern about college students and track or
college students in wrestling or college students
in some of those sports that don't make money for
the university. So if we just cut money from
sports, would all of our problems be solved?
Well, some there are a lot of reform models out
there, and one of them is to do that hive off
basketball, football, hockey. They're up here. I
don't know if you guys don't play hockey. Right. I
don't know what baseball would be analogous down
here. OK, hive off the sports that make your money
and put them in a separate category. And then you
can have different rules and different protocols
and different salaries for coaches in the non
moneymaking sports. And they'd be more like
Division three. You know, we've been talking so
much Division one here. Division three is big time
sport. I mean, they're more away, more Division
three schools and division one, I think. And there
are a lot of kids who are having good experiences
at the Division three level or the NCAA level,
speaking as a former NFL and a high level and
their coaches are not making a million dollars or
five million or six million like our football
coach. So, you know, there's a lot of college
sport that is not money driven. I went to a
liberal arts school and all admission was free.
You couldn't buy a ticket if you tried. You just
went to the game, but nobody went. We played
without too many people because it was it was
amateur sport. It was sport for the fun of it. And,
you know, we didn't need to have one hundred
thousand people yelling for us, as exciting as
that is. So, yeah, money money's a problem, but
big time sport is not going away. And I've been on
so many reform panels that I know it's not going
to happen unless what some reformers refer to as a
tsunami. But there has to be something so
egregiously bad that it blows up the system and
people sit back and say, we can't do this anymore.
The marriage of education and big time sport is
killing the reputation of higher education. We've
got to divorce ourselves, but we've got a lot of
very big events. That's what I was just about to
say. If you say Penn State, Michigan State, Baylor,
what do you think? Yeah, we've had a lot. I think
Baylor, North Carolina. Yeah. It's that isn't a
big enough tsunami. One that Greg mentioned,
interestingly, has been brought up on some of the
reform groups I've sat on, and that's gambling. If
it turns out that someday there's systematic
gambling, fixing of games, big time sport,
reasonably ratio that could kill the goose, that
could kill the golden goose. And so ads in big
time sport lie awake at night worrying about
gambling. And is this the kind of thing where
someone who wanted to, you know, win a lot of
money on a game might bribe a player to throw the
game or something like that? This is what they're
concerned about. The gamblers are unbelievable at
Penn State. We've had people paid by Las Vegas,
let's say somebody. To. Work for them as an agent.
There are some there are bona fide student at Penn
State, but they're being paid by somebody to get
to become a friend of one of the football players
or one of the basketball players. They're in a
class with them and the student has no idea that
they're being paid by gamblers to get this person
to throw a game. And so when they establish this
kind of connection, then they finally talk to the
person, you know, you can get fifty thousand
dollars if you miss a couple of shots in the next
game and make sure that that that that is
happening. Today is a big time sport. And so it's
it's scary. At Penn State, we did Buku education
on that. I sat in on some of those sessions and
all of our athletes heard stories about those
kinds of events. Here's what you need to be
worried about. Here's what you need to have your
eyes open for because you can hurt yourself for
the rest of your life and you could hurt the sport
of Penn State for the rest of your life if you're
not careful with it. Because I'm always worried
about athlete education, because I want to make
sure as a history teacher that they get their
history and that they they do their readings and
they write their papers and they learn how to
write. And these are important skills, even if you
go on to be a professional athlete and everything.
But from what you're describing, it sounds like
student athletes are getting a whole other kind of
education, not just in the sport they're playing
and certainly not just in the classes they're
taking, but in navigating this kind of nefarious
web that they're stuck in. Yeah. Yeah, related to
the question that started off this part of the
conversation. What should we think of money? I was
point back to intrinsic versus extrinsic goods.
Say money is a great tool, but it's a tool and we
get out, we get our priorities mixed up, we get
ourselves in trouble, money corrupts. Or when it
becomes the end, instead of opinions, we're
supposed to use money to make sport better, not
prostitutes or in every direction we can to
generate more money. But that's often what happens
with regard to that intrinsic extrinsic thing. One
of the saddest things I ever experience as a
faculty rep at Penn State. Was a kid, came into my
office one day, a football player, and he said,
Coach, they call me coach, I wasn't a coach coach.
You know, when I played football in high school,
it was so much fun. I live for football. It was
the greatest game, he said. But I have to tell you
now, it's a job. Yeah, I don't like to go to
practice anymore. It's too much. And to have
somebody do the reverse trip, the one that Greg
and I are about, where they love sport and then
came to hate it or dislike it is the opposite
direction. Rather than starting with something
that's new to you, you're not sure you're going to
like it and end up in a dance for life until
you're my age and you still do it. Now, I think I
think a lot of kids probably have a story like
that one where they were really jazzed about
something and something just killed it for them,
unfortunately. Yeah, that is the Aspen Institute
in Colorado does a bunch of research on this with
Utah state academics. I believe, if I remember
right at some school in Utah and their most recent
report said, kids quit you. We're going to issue
sport at age 11. And one of the leading reasons
they give is it's not fun anymore.
And 11 too much pressure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot
of mean and like you said earlier, I mean nowadays
because money sport is can be such a ticket, right?
It can be your ticket to college. It can be your
ticket to fame and fortune. Afterward you can be
set if you get into the right sport. And so
there's all this pressure that, oh, you're showing
some talent. Oh, you're showing some potential.
You need to harness it or you might not even be
competitive later on. You might not be competitive
when you're 15 if you don't harness it by the time
you're 11 or you will and you won't be having any
fun anyway. So what was the point? The other thing
you've got to remember is it's a lottery ticket.
Most kids, doesn't matter how much they train,
aren't going to be good enough to get a college
scholarship. And it's a very expensive lottery
ticket, which means even if you landed. Most kids
don't get full rides even in Division one, unless
it's football or basketball, and that means if
you're spending 10 grand a year on training over a
six or seven, eight, 10 year period, you start at
five. It's going to be 10, 12 years and 10 grand a
year. It doesn't matter how much scholarship you
get, you're going to get you're going to end up in
the hole.
And then for those athletes who maybe they even do
get a full ride to college, but they don't make
the pros and they've sacrificed a lot of education
and their own health, et cetera, et cetera, to
excel at the sport, you know, then what do you do
when you're twenty three years old in a time have
been used up a bit. You define your whole life
around this one goal? No.
So I don't want to end on this kind of a sad note,
what what then is our responsibility as humanists,
as sports humanists, as not so sports humanist, as
someone who enjoys watching or someone who enjoys
teaching, what is our responsibility or what can
we do to intervene in this kind of process that
we've been talking about? What can we do to ensure
that sports continues for the love of it and not
for the cash of it? Philosophically, I would say
we have to emphasize, play and then emphasize,
play and then emphasize, play and then emphasize,
play again, paradoxically. I think the number one
goal, which I think is very difficult at this
point, but if we wanted to make a difference, the
number one goal would to reinvigorate physical
education both in our universities and schools and
I would say education and opportunity. Some people
don't like to move because they're not good at it.
They haven't had a good physical education
experience and haven't learned how to catch a ball.
I throw a ball or how to swim or how to ski or how
to bike and so forth. We need good teachers who
educate them. You know, my wife was an English
teacher and her job was to turn people on to good
literature novels. And it's a hard job. A lot of
kids don't like to read. They don't like the
getting the books. We face the same thing in phys
ed. Some kids don't like to swim. They're scared.
They're afraid of the water. They don't like to do
things to make them sweat. And so education is
crucial. And the second thing is opportunity that
we have to have more playgrounds, more places
where everybody, no matter how skilled you are or
how rich you are or whatever, gets a chance to
experience the joy of movement. OK, great. Well, I
will end on that note, thank you very much, Dr.
Kretschmer, for joining us today. Thank you, Dr.
Meyer, for joining the Institute for Humanities
again and for talking to me today. Any final
thoughts before I sign off, sign us off of
Facebook? I would just say I'm very proud of Dr.
Meyer and it's wonderful to see him thriving down
there in Mississippi. Thank you very much. And
thank you, Julie, for hosting us. This was a great
conversation. All right. Well, thank you again.
And for all of you who are listening and watching,
I'm looking forward to seeing you at our next What
Are the Humanities Anyway program, which will be
on the traditional humanities sometime in March.
So stay tuned. And again, thank you both very much.
Thank you. Thank you.