From the issue dated May 21, 2004
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Bad Conduct, by the NumbersA league in Division III tries to cut down on poor sportsmanship by tracking fouls
Rudeness, taunting, and viciousness have become more prevalent at all levels of athletics. Gyrating in the end zone after touchdowns, hanging onto the rim after slam dunks, yelling at referees, and intentionally fouling opponents are largely accepted as the norm in professional sports, and such behaviors are seeping into college athletics as well. In addition to the general incivility of poor sportsmanship, educators say athletes are losing sight of the ideals of athletics: fair play, honesty, and mutual respect. "We have an overemphasis of 'win at all costs' that begins at the peewee level," says Todd S. Hutton, president of Utica College. "We place so much emphasis on winning and not enough emphasis on sportsmanship. We're swimming against the tide here." Utica's athletics conference, hardly immune to these problems, is taking steps to fix them. Having seen promising early results, it is trying to spread its program to the rest of Division III of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and, possibly, the rest of college sports. The Empire 8 Conference, a group of small colleges in upstate New York, monitors unsportsmanlike conduct among its athletes and coaches by tracking the personal-conduct fouls they commit during each game and reporting the numbers to college officials. "Sportsmanship is an important value of our membership," says Chuck Mitrano, commissioner of the conference, who came up with the idea. Tracking fouls is "something we felt we needed to do." After Mr. Mitrano took office in August 2001, he noticed athletes questioning officials' calls and using vulgar language. So he proposed to the conference's presidents, athletics directors, and coaches that teams record each time a player received a personal-conduct foul -- yellow and red cards in soccer and lacrosse, for example -- and send him the information within two business days. By tracking fouls, athletics directors, coaches, and presidents are more aware of such violations and are talking to athletes about their behavior in an effort to head off problems before they start, Mr. Mitrano says. Tracking Red Cards The conference started tracking red cards in men's and women's soccer in the fall of 2002, and in the fall of 2003 began to track all personal-conduct fouls for the sports that recognize them -- basketball, soccer, field hockey, football, lacrosse, and volleyball. In August 2003, the conference also decided that if athletes or coaches were ejected from a game, they would have to sit out the next one, and that Mr. Mitrano would notify the president of that player's or coach's college of the violation. "Student-athletes, coaches, and athletic teams in general, they're representing the institution," he says. "Anytime anyone's ejected from a contest, that's obviously not the best representation," and presidents "want to be aware of it as soon as possible." The emphasis on sportsmanship appears to have paid off: Most Empire 8 teams have reduced their personal-conduct fouls over the past couple of years. For instance, men's basketball teams, including coaches, received 37 technical fouls in the 2002-3 academic year and 23 in 2003-4, while women's basketball squads received 8 technical fouls in 2002-3 and 4 in 2003-4. Men's soccer teams received 103 yellow cards and 5 red cards in 2002; in 2003, the totals fell to 86 and 4, respectively. But the numbers for women's soccer teams increased, from 10 yellow and no red cards in 2002 to 16 yellow and 2 red in 2003. Mr. Mitrano notes that only two of the yellow cards handed out to the women's teams in 2003 were awarded for specifically unsportsmanlike conduct, and that the two red cards were given to players who had touched the ball with their hands near the goal, an automatic penalty. "Because of the success we had in our program and casual conversations with colleagues, I felt our program would be good to bring to the entire division," the commissioner says. So, after getting an $11,000 grant from the NCAA, he asked conference commissioners in all of Division III last summer to begin tracking their athletes' personal-conduct fouls and submit the totals to him. He told them that he would keep information about individual institutions confidential. Of the 26 Division III conferences with football teams, 21 responded to Mr. Mitrano's request, as did 33 of the 37 conferences with men's soccer teams and 34 of the 39 conferences with women's soccer teams. He found that football players in the Empire 8 committed 48 personal-conduct penalties, while other conferences' players committed as few as 21 and as many as 190. Among men's soccer teams in Division III, the Empire 8 had the third-fewest number of yellow cards and the second-fewest number of red cards. Among women's soccer teams, the conference compiled the seventh-fewest number of yellow cards. "Clearly in Division III we are not immune to sportsmanship concerns," says Daniel C. Dutcher, Division III's chief of staff, even though member-college officials may sometimes think they are immune because in the small colleges of Division III, "transgressions may not receive as much attention as in other divisions," he says. Mr. Dutcher says he cannot know for sure whether good sportsmanship is on the decline in the division, and he applauds the commissioner's attempts to find out. "Without data, we really don't know," he says. "It's all kind of anecdotal. One of the important things that Chuck's program does is help us to start establishing a baseline." As successful as the Empire 8's program may be, no one is calling it a panacea. During a February men's basketball game between Nazareth College of Rochester and St. John Fisher College, one player threw a punch at an opponent, prompting a bench-clearing brawl. A handful of players were suspended from subsequent games and required by their colleges to perform community service. "One of the things you're trying to instill in Division III is life skills," says Mike Daley, head basketball coach at Nazareth. The idea, he says, is to "teach young men how to deal with adversity as well as success, the calls you may not agree with, the contact that takes place." "If you have an argument with your boss, are you going to reach across the desk and pop him?" he says. Teaching students how to handle stress in the right way is not new, says Mr. Daley, who has coached at Nazareth for 18 years. But the lesson has become harder for students to learn as professional athletes continue to get away with foul language and taunting. "Kids are seeing this and get the impression that is what you have to do to get an edge on your opponent," the coach says. Seeing coaches and professional athletes behave badly during games -- not just intentionally fouling opponents but challenging referees and trash-talking -- sends the wrong message, he says. Mike DeBlois, a sophomore and reserve guard for Nazareth, agrees that professional athletes sometimes set bad examples. He remembers seeing Joe Horn, a receiver for the NFL's New Orleans Saints, retrieve a hidden cellphone in the end zone and pretend to make a call after scoring a touchdown in a game last season. "People need to realize it's a game," says Mr. DeBlois. "To compete as hard as they can, but in a friendly way." http://chronicle.com Section: Athletics Volume 50, Issue 37, Page A37 | |||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education