The Coach as Moral Exemplar

This chapter presents a paradigm or model of sports to illumine their moral significance. It identifies four features as essential to the model. First, in its paradigmatic form, sports participation is a freely chosen, voluntary activity, designed with no end outside itself. Second, sports are governed by constitutive rules and regulative rules. Third, sports must be physically challenging within the designated framework and rules. Fourth, sports involve competition as a mutual challenge to achieve or strive for excellence within the framework set by the constitutive rules and the regulative rules of fair play and decency. The chapter then discusses three deviations occurred from the model: the emphasis on winning, the lack of moral courage, and relativism. Everyone bears responsibility to uphold honor in the society and in sports, but coaches, given their power, bear a greater responsibility. Understanding this is important for all of them, because the death of ethics is the sabotage of excellence.