Sportsmanship: It’s how you play —- and watch —- the game

During last week’s mostly forgettable Georgia Tech-Clemson basketball game, some of the most uplifting action took place after the whistle stopped play.

As players tangled and one Yellow Jacket or another was sent sprawling, there occurred something largely unseen these days: A player reaching out to help an opponent to his feet when the play was over. Stop the presses. For one afternoon on The Flats, Clemson routinely offered a hand up to a team that badly needed it.

Presumed dead in the age of trash-talking and chest-thumping, sportsmanship still has a heartbeat if you search long enough to find it. Tuesday is National Sportsmanship Day, a time to take inventory of our athletic ethics.

It isn’t difficult to see where we are falling short.

Be that locally: When Lowndes County melted down during its state football playoff loss at Gwinnett’s Grayson High last season, the scuffles and the posturing went straight to YouTube and cyberspace infamy.

Or on a much bigger stage: When even sainted Florida quarterback Tim Tebow drew an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty during the Gators’ national championship victory in January, did that not signal the end of civilization?

Professional sport has become a platform for hubris run amok. And when players convulse in celebration after each 3-yard gain or fast-break finish, their antics turn off older fans and infect the younger ones with their example.

Changing the flow

The voices of disgust are many.

“The me-me stuff has gotten worse,” lamented Georgia Tech men’s basketball coach Paul Hewitt.

“We have a lot of negative models of sportsmanship at other levels and, of course, it filters into our games,” added Ralph Swearngin, executive director of the Georgia High School Association.

But do not approach another National Sportsmanship Day —- this is the 19th one —- without hope.

There are people out there attempting to revive sportsmanship, or civility at least, on field and floor. It is one thing to mourn the loss of nobility in sport. It is another to wade against the current and try to change the flow.

That recent gesture of sportsmanship from a Clemson basketball player may have been born from an embarrassing incident five years ago in an entirely different arena —- a 2004 football brawl so ugly that both schools sacrificed postseason bowl bids because of it, scarring both Clemson and South Carolina. Clemson soon thereafter began a program of sportsmanship training that has been recognized by the Institute for International Sport, the keeper of National Sportsmanship Day.

Problems show up well before college, of course. Just ask any Little League parent. And much of it is the handiwork of people who should know better.

“It’s not the kids I worry about as much as the grown-ups,” said Mike Oglesbee, for 35 years a high school basketball official on the fringes of metro Atlanta.

The coaches who set the tone with their bench behavior and the parents who believe their little darlings are the next Dwight Howard or LeBron James are the source of most of his headaches, Oglesbee said.

That theme runs across all levels of youth sports.

“The major issues we’re seeing are too much parental involvement, too much focus on winning, too much focus on selective sports [instead of kids sampling a variety],” said Brian Shulman, author of “The Death of Sportsmanship,” and head of the Birmingham-based Learning Through Sports program.

“We definitely need more focus on the fun aspect of sports and on the learning and teaching aspect,” he said. And thus, Shulman figures, it’s important to clear away the delusional fog that every kid is playing for a college scholarship and big pro contract.

Taking charge

There are efforts at the grass roots level to return some sense of perspective to the games. For instance, don’t go to a Decatur Recreation Department basketball tournament expecting to raise a ruckus.

“We have a very low tolerance for yelling,” program director Stacy Green said. During one 15-and-under event this season, she went over to the parents of a visiting team and warned them to quit booing the officials and haranguing the kids, or they’d be told to leave.

“I’ll stop a game and tell them the game is over if I have to,” Green said.

Throughout youth lacrosse, a rapidly growing sport around the metro area, there is a program of self-policing in place. Each team is expected to designate one parent to be a “sideline manager,” who patrols the perimeter during the game, keeping order among that team’s fans.

Shulman’s Learning Through Sports program, a series of sportsmanship training courses for coaches and players, helped cut the number of high school football ejections in half last year in Alabama and Mississippi, he said. Georgia does not take part. Nevertheless, that number did fall here, as well, from 150 in 2007 to 112 last season.

Swearngin said the GHSA instead relies upon messages delivered through regular meetings with officials and coaches, and enforcement of a code of conduct for participants and fans.

Fan behavior, specifically at basketball games, remains one of the big concerns among those involved in local high school sports.

“We allow people to do things in the stands and on the floor that we would not allow them to come into our lunchrooms or media centers and do,” said Oglesbee, the long-time ref. Specifically, he mentioned crude chants that regularly cascade from the stands.

Added Swearngin, “One of the things we are interested in is bringing back people who don’t have kids in school who want to come and watch high school athletics. We’re losing a lot of that because they don’t like the atmosphere of our events.”

The scope of the issues filed under sportsmanship —- from rowdyism in the stands to combat on the field to gamesmanship and cheating behind the scenes —- makes it a particularly difficult problem to corral.

But they’re not quite ready yet to call off National Sportsmanship Day due to lack of interest.

“Yes, you can fix this problem,” Shulman said, “but it takes leadership, takes effort. It’s not easy.”

“When executive directors of all the states get together for national federation meetings, [sportsmanship] is always a major topic,” Swearngin said. “It is something we’re fighting in every state. But we think it’s worth the fight, so we’re going to keep at it.”

Portrait of an unruly fan

So, who is that jerk in the stands?

“Probably male,” begins Kirk Wakefield, a Baylor University business professor and researcher into the sub-species that is the dysfunctional fan.

“He’s less educated,” he continued. “Has a lower income [less than $50,000 a year]. Is younger [average age 33].

“People out there acting the fool are mostly among those who feel like they have to have alcohol to enjoy the game. Typically, they are the ones who are going to have to be escorted out of the game, get into a confrontation with another fan or are just a nuisance,” Wakefield said, drawing a most unflattering portrait.

“These are probably pretty socially fragile people in the first place. People who get their self-worth through their favorite teams or players.”

Wakefield arrived at this composite through interviews with ticket-holders (not students) at several SEC football games while working on a 2006 paper on the subject.

THE GOOD AND THE BAD OF SPORTSMANSHIP FROM THE PAST YEAR

THE GOOD

May 2008: Western Oregon University senior Sara Tucholsky homered against Central Washington University. Stumbling around first base, Tucholsky collapsed with a badly injured knee. The teams were informed that she would be credited with only a single unless she could continue to round all the bases. Her own team was not allowed to help her. Instead, two Central Washington players picked up Tucholsky and carried her around the bases to home plate. Central Washington lost 4-2 and was eliminated from postseason contention.

May 2008: Bellarmine (Wash.) Prep runner Nicole Cochran was disqualified from the state championship 3,200-meter run when officials said she had taken three consecutive steps on the inside line of the track. On the awards podium, Andrea Nelson of Shadle Park High, who had been bumped up because of the ruling, took off the gold medal and placed it around Cochran’s neck. The rest of the top 8 runners followed suit, each exchanging their awards for a lesser one. The state high school association eventually made Cochran’s victory official.

February 2009: Hours before a home high school basketball game, Milwaukee Madison guard Johntel Franklin lost his mother to complications from cancer. Arriving at the gym midway in the game, Franklin informed his coach he wanted to play. Because Franklin was not included on the pre-game roster, DeKalb (Ill.) High was awarded two technical free throws. On orders from the coach, the DeKalb shooter intentionally missed the free throws. Milwaukee Madison won the game 62-47.

THE BAD

May 2008: Losing badly in the fourth inning of a state championship baseball game against Cartersville, Stephens County pitcher Cody Martin threw a high fastball and catcher Matt Hill intentionally ducked, allowing the pitch to strike umpire Jeff Scott squarely in the face mask. In the aftermath, Stephens County was fined $1,000 by the GHSA and placed on “severe warning status.”

January 2009: Near the end of Florida’s national championship victory over Oklahoma, Tim Tebow, the 2008 Wuerffel Trophy winner for his exemplary citizenship, was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct after aiming a “Gator Chomp” celebration at Sooners safety Nic Harris.

2008-09 NHL season: Major penalties for fighting are up nearly 24 percent in the National Hockey League from the same point a year ago. The league is on pace to reach numbers not seen since before the lockout of four years ago.