Winning Vs. Winners: Virtue in Sport

In her work “Sport, Education, and the Meaning of Victory”,  Heather L. Reid discusses what it really means to “win.” Of course, on the surface the answer is obvious – winning is besting the other playing or team according to the rules of the game. In a baseball game more runs are scored, in football more touchdowns, and on the track a faster time must be recorded in order to record a victory. However, if winning was such a simply defined objective, it’s unlikely that our culture would put such stock in the “winners” that we revere in the world of sport today. Clearly, “winning” and being a “winner” are something different.

In the film Rudy, the plot focuses on a young man with a passion for football but without the skills or grades to make the Notre Dame football team. However, through months of dedication and personal sacrifice he is eventually able to suit up with the team and play in a game for one final play. The movie paints him as the ultimate victor in this case, and the crowd and his teammates certainly agree as they carry him off the field on their shoulders. However, by traditional standards, Rudy isn’t a winner at all. He’s small, not particularly talented, and has a football career that lasts for one play, hardly one that contributed to the success of his team. By all accounts, Rudy should be ranked at the bottom of his team, not portrayed as a victor. Rudy’s ability to overcome the bonds of the traditional definition of winning without overcoming the bonds of his physical limitations points to there being an aspect to winning that is more powerful than just succeeding in physically besting an opponenent.

According to Reid, we see true winners as people who are able to have both virtue and physical prowess in their victory, and we label virtue as a more important quality than physical victory itself. Our most revered sporting heroes are not just athletes who have shown incredible physical talent, but also people that we look to as role models and examples of chivalry and honesty. Indeed, when an athlete is found to have been using drugs to enhance their performance we’re not only disgusted with them, but apt to take away any status of “winner” that they previously possessed. Lance Armstrong, perhaps the most famous case of substance use in athletics of our time, has been stripped of all his victories that labeled him as one of the most prominent and successful athletes of our time. Interestingly, Lance could likely still be a dominant athlete in the biking arena. However, due to his dishonest history, society is unlikely to label him as a winner despite his physical abilities. The same phenomenon would occur if an athlete was convicted of illegally betting against themselves or even of doing something dishonest off the field.

In Rudy, the audience still sees Rudy as a victor because he has all the exemplary qualities that our society looks for in a victor, even though he doesn’t have the physical skills usually required to find success. In fact, his ability to stay his course, work hard, and improve despite his shortcomings actually increases the extent to which we see him as a victor. If not necessarily a victor in relation to the game of football at the college level, he is in every way a victor when it comes to overcoming his own previous limitations, both on the field and off. To do so required perseverance, dedication, and faith in himself in the face of adversity. Our society looks for all of these qualities in a star athlete, and is able to translate “star athlete” status to Rudy because of these parallels.

Reid also discusses the idea of “justice” in sport, and how sports are an arena that people revere for its ability to show a person’s bare potential and skill in a way that is honest in (almost) every way. No matter the claims or arguments that are made for one’s athletic skill, Reid writes, the only way to truly know someone’s ability to succeed is to have them prove it on the field in front of a crowd. Perhaps that’s that reason that our culture (and culture’s across the world and history) have worshipped sport to such an extent, for its ability to strip away the facades of rhetoric and persuasion and instead showcase people at their bare talent. It’s likely for this reason that people are so shocked and disgusted when a person is found to be not virtuous in their play because it is a perversion and a direct violation of the principles that sport is built on. Reid talks of how we hold our athletes to higher moral standards than our business tycoons of equal levels of success because sport is seen as a much more than just “winning” or turning a profit. Instead, to be a “winner” one must exhibit first virtue, then physical talent.

For a classic example of a revered "winner", and someone close to home, check out this video of our recently retired staff member Dave Wottle: