6 Theories of Sport

Robert L. Simon

What is a theory of sport and why do we need one? There are different theories
about the best strategy for countering a zone defence in basketball, how best to
train swimmers, or how best to swing a golf club. But a theory of sport seems to
be a different thing altogether. Indeed, are we begging the question by assuming
there is such a thing as ‘sport’ rather than a variety of sports that differ from one
another often in significant ways? Perhaps what counts as sport changes from
culture to culture or by historical context.1
In what follows, I will explore the nature and value of theories of sport by
breaking down the inquiry into the following topics: What is a theory of sport?
What purposes does a theory of sport serve? What are the most plausible theories
of sport? Which if any is best or most justifiable?

Theories of Sport
Surely all of us would agree that basketball, football, baseball and rugby are
sports and that watching television, sleeping and going up an escalator at a
shopping mall are not sports. But what about mountain climbing, running a
marathon, downhill skiing, recreational fishing and chess, sometimes called the
sport of kings?
One function of a theory of sport is to help us make distinctions between
activities that are sports from those that aren’t, even if the distinction is not
always a sharp one. Distinguishing sports from other related activities is
important, not only because of the intellectual issue of whether we can even
make such a distinction – perhaps the concept ‘sport’ is too vague to admit of
useful analysis or that sports have nothing in common that defines them – but
also for theoretical and normative reasons. For example, if we are to explain why
sports are so fascinating to millions or people around the globe, we need to
distinguish them from other activities, such as walking for exercise, that also
may be important for reasons of health but that differ from sports in very
significant respects.
Thus, there is a normative or evaluative function served by theories of sport;
to the extent that they help us identify salient features of sport, they provide
material we can use to morally assess sport as well. For example, the importance
we assign to winning in athletic contests may be at least in part a function of
what we believe are the values sports should promote.
This suggests that a theory of sport is a body of principles, some of which may
be quite abstract, that helps us to identify sports and distinguish them from

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other activities, but that also provide an assessment of the value of sport and a
normative framework for examining ethical issues that may arise in sport,
especially in athletic competition.
Theories of sport, then, should serve at least the following functions. First,
they should offer a characterization of sport that helps us to distinguish sports
from other activities, even if we cannot always do so due to complex borderline
cases. Second, they should explain the features of sport that make it of significant
interest to people around the globe, not only participants but spectators as well.
Third, they should explain the value (or disvalue if they are critical of sport and
sporting practices) of sport and provide the resources for the moral evaluation of
sport, perhaps especially competitive athletics, and the ethical issues that arise
in particular sporting contexts.

Functional Approaches to Sport

Some theoretical approaches to sport attempt to characterize it by its social
function. For example, sport may be viewed as a social mechanism for discharging
aggression harmlessly, for producing social cohesion among what otherwise
would be a mere aggregate of individuals (think of ‘Red Sox Nation’), or for
distracting masses of people from serious problems that exist on the world stage.
These functions can be morally assessed both positively and negatively; thus, the
members of Red Sox Nation can be viewed negatively as narrow partisans who
value their team whether it is right or wrong or as a community that has
developed ties of solidarity thus breaking away from the atomistic individualism
and consequent loneliness that critics say characterize much of the modern
state.2 These approaches are externalist in the sense that they characterize sport
and perhaps assess its value by its connections to social functions that can and
do exist independently of sport and are intelligible entirely apart from it. Thus,
religion might promote social cohesion. Moreover, rivalries in sport may be as
likely to produce division as unity.
Functionalist theories, at least in their cruder forms, are open to serious
criticism. Thus, the claim that participation in sports has the function of helping
athletes (and fans) to discharge aggression may seem to fit contact sports such as
American football and rugby, but has more difficulty explaining the nature and
impact of sports such as curling, rowing, figure skating, gymnastics, archery
and golf with their code of respect for and courtesy towards opponents. More
importantly, these theories don’t explain why people choose to discharge
aggression through sport, if that indeed is what happens, rather than, say,
through mere exercise such as hitting a punchbag. Moreover, even if sport does
produce social cohesion, functionalist theories do not explain the passionate
attachment of so many people to it (imagine a player or fan saying, for example,
‘I love baseball so much because of its broad effect on producing social cohesion’)
or provide the basis for moral assessment of issues that arise in sport, such as the
ethics of doping or even whether cohesion is always something we should value.
Contrary to functionalism, or other externalist approaches, internalists argue
that sport involves a set of principles and values inherent in and perhaps

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conceptually tied to sporting activities and practices. On the internalist view, we

can best understand and evaluate sport by attending to its internal features or
characteristics rather than its connection to broader social practices, institutions
or values.3 Internalists, then, take sport seriously as an activity that is of interest
and value over and above whatever social function it may also serve.

Internalist Theories of Sport

Formalism
An influential internalist approach to sport is often called ‘formalism’. Formalism
probably derives its inspiration from the work of Bernard Suits, who in his book
The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia challenged the suggestion made by the
great 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that if we would just ‘look
and see’, we would find that there is nothing in common to all games.4 This
suggestion was part of Wittgenstein’s challenge to the Platonic ideal that
philosophers should look for the form or essence of concepts such as ‘beauty’,
‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’. In particular, Wittgenstein advanced the very influential
notion that games might resemble each other in the same way members of
families might resemble each other; the members might not share one common
characteristic, but there might be overlapping sets of characteristics that some of
the members shared with some others uniting all in a network of overlapping
similarities and differences. Thus, on Wittgenstein’s account, Monopoly, chess,
Ring around the Rosie and baseball are all games but do not necessarily have one
or more common properties that make them games. The concept of game is a
‘family resemblance concept’ with no one characteristic or set of characteristics
that are necessary and sufficient for being a game.
In response to this, Suits argued that there are common features of games.
Since he also plausibly suggested that all sports are games, games of physical
skill, his analysis, even if open to some criticism, sheds much light on the nature
of sports and provides the basis for formalistic analysis of sports.
In particular, Suits argued that games were characterized by four elements
known as the prelusory goal, constitutive rules that prohibited the most efficient
means for achieving the prelusory goal, the lusory goal and the lusory attitude
(or accepting the constitutive rules just in order to make the activity possible).
Thus, the prelusory goal of basketball might be putting a ball through a raised
hoop, but doing that only counts as scoring a basket in basketball if the
constitutive rules are followed (thus putting the ball through the hoop by
climbing a ladder and dropping it through is not a move in basketball). The
limitation on allowable means of achieving the prelusory goal is accepted just in
order to make the game possible. Thus, other activities, for example taking the
college entry exam, may be governed by rules, even constitutive rules, but these
normally are not accepted just to make the activity of test taking possible.
Basketball is a game by Suits’ account, but taking the college entry exam is not.
The role of constitutive rules here is important. Their function is to create
obstacles to attaining the prelusory goal by defining what are permissible and what
are impermissible moves allowed within the game. Constitutive rules characterize

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how the game may be played and how it may be won. Golf, for example, involves
putting a ball in a hole, ordinarily an easily achieved goal, but, as has often been
noted, not when it must be accomplished with what Winston Churchill called
‘implements ill designed for the purpose’. Hence, Suits’ pithy abbreviated definition
of games: ‘the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles’.5
Suits’ definition clearly is insightful, although it remains debatable whether it
is entirely successful or open to counterexample or whether all sports fall under
the heading of games.6 Luckily, we need not delve into all those controversies
here. Instead, let’s focus on the central role Suits’ account assigns to constitutive
rules and the theory of formalism that arises from it.
Remember that constitutive rules define what counts as permissible moves
within a game, as well as what constitutes winning.7 Rules of skill, rules that
suggest strategies for good play, such as ‘in baseball, hit behind the runner so the
runner can advance to scoring position’, characterize strategies for competitive
success, but do not identify what counts as a play within the game. Constitutive
rules, it can be argued, define the game and are central to the theoretical approach
to sport known as formalism.
Formalism is a theory of sport (or more accurately a family of closely related
positions) that identifies sports with practices or activities governed by
constitutive rules that, following Suits’ suggestions, create obstacles to achieving
the lusory goal of the game. What counts as a rule is determined by the formal or
in some cases informal rulebook governing the sport in question. What
distinguishes different sports from one another are the different sets of
constitutive rules that apply. Formalism in sport closely resembles formalism in
legal theory, which identifies a legal system with a set of rules derivable from a
supreme rule, which in the sophisticated version developed by the British
theorist H.L.A. Hart is called the Rule of Recognition.8
Although it is not entirely clear what normative implications can be derived
from formalism, it is plausible to think that respect for the rules is paramount
and cheating is a cardinal sin. In fact, formalism leads to what might be called
the incompatibility thesis: the idea that cheats cannot actually win games since
they are not actually playing the game (as they violate the rules that define it). In
this view the good sport is one who respects and plays by the rules; generosity
towards opponents over and above playing by the rules, is not required (although
it may be encouraged), except perhaps in non-competitive contexts where a sport
is played just for exercise or in an informal friendly context.9
Formalism is important because it builds on Suits’ analysis by emphasizing
the key role of constitutive rules in sport and the importance of fair play,
understood as playing by the rules. However, it has been exposed to such
extensive criticism that it is doubtful if many (or even any) contemporary
theorists of sport endorse it, at least in the admittedly thin form sketched out in
this section.

Conventionalism: A Criticism of Formalism

Formalism, or the model of rules as it is sometimes called when applied to law, is
open to a number of significant criticisms. Two in particular have been especially

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influential. The first is that formalism ignores the social or conventional aspects
of sport and hence is too abstract. The second is that formalism is inadequate as
a resource for the moral evaluation of sport.
Consider what is now a common occurrence in football. Team A is on the
attack, in possession of the ball, when a player on the defending team, Team B,
sprains his ankle and falls to the ground in pain. Following a well-known
practice, a player on Team A kicks the ball out of play, so the injured opponent
can be treated, even though this deprives Team A of the advantage. When play is
restarted Team B will take the throw-in and one of their players will intentionally
return the ball to Team A, restoring as much as possible the state of affairs before
the injury. In other words, Team B ensures that Team A is not disadvantaged for
its act of sportsmanship.
This type of incident is not covered by any formal rule of the game. The
rulebook does not require such behaviour or even encourage it. Rather, both
teams are following a social convention that is accepted by footballers: the
convention is part of the game but is not a formal rule. (In fact, this practice
unfortunately is threatened by the act of ‘flopping’, where a defender pretends to
be injured in order to stop play and deprive the attacking team of any strategic
advantage they may have gained.)
The idea that sport is to be understood in terms of often tacit conventions as
well as formal rules is often called conventionalism. According to an influential
account of conventionalism, the ‘ethos of the game’, or common social
understandings, is as crucial to understanding sports as rules.10
Conventionalists also suggest, contrary to the incompatibility thesis, that
actual games are almost never played strictly according to the rules. Indeed,
although formalists may argue that those who intentionally violate the rules
aren’t really playing the game, common understandings of sport suggest
otherwise. For example, two golfers who agree before teeing off to allow a
mulligan off the first tee (a chance to rehit if the first drive is inadequate) surely
are still playing golf even if mulligans are prohibited by the rules. Similarly, a
major league pitcher who throws an illegal spitball during a game may be
cheating, but surely is still playing baseball and not some other game.
Second, others, including myself, have argued that the version of formalism
sketched so far does not provide a good basis for the ethical evaluation of sports
and behaviour within them.11 That is, there is far more to the ethics of sport than
is captured by the idea of adherence to the rules. For example, it does not tell us
whether a change to the rules is better or worse for the sport, or what the ethical
ramifications of such a rule change might be. Thus, a proposed rule change
allowing head-to-head contact in American football might make the game more
entertaining to some fans who love to watch devastating ‘hits’, but may be bad
for the game, leading to injuries to star players whom the fans want to see
perform, and more importantly may be ethically indefensible due to the
seriousness of the head injuries that might follow.
Moreover, sportsmanship surely involves more than adherence to the rules.
For example, the convention in football discussed above, where one team refuses
to take advantage of an injured opponent, surely has much to be said for it

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ethically whether or not it is required by the rules. Similarly, while not required
by the rules, regular-season opponents who help each other improve through
common workouts in off-season sports camps or informal practice sessions are
not required by any rules to assist one another, but their behaviour, as we will
see in the section on broad internalism, should certainly be encouraged.
If these criticisms are sound, formalism as described so far is at best incomplete
as a theory of sport. But do formalists have a satisfactory reply? If not, is
conventionalism the best available theory of sport?

Criticisms of Conventionalism
Conventionalists suggest that each sport is best understood as a combination of
rules and conventions; that they cannot be properly characterized or understood
without appreciating the significance of the ethos of the game. While their
approach is insightful and does establish the importance of understanding the
culture surrounding sports, it is doubtful if conventionalism is any more
satisfactory than the minimal version of formalism we have considered in
providing an ethical basis for the moral evaluation of sport.
Before turning to ethical questions, however, consider not just how
conventionalists might distinguish particular sports from each other, presumably
by pointing to different combinations of rules and conventions, but whether they
distinguish conventions peculiar to sport from those associated with non-
sporting activities.
Of course, unlike many formalists, who might insist that all sports are games
of physical skill and then appeal to Suits’ account of games, conventionalists
might agree with Wittgenstein and say there are no essential characteristics that
distinguish conventions associated with sport from other kinds of conventions.
Or they might acknowledge that constitutive rules are more fundamental than
conventions and characterize sport much as the formalists do. Thus, they might
amend the formalist account in a conventionalist direction by characterizing
sports as games of physical skill in which constitutive rules create obstacles to
achieving a lusory goal, the pursuit of which is governed by conventions as well
as rules.
While conventionalism adds the importance of social context to formalism, we
need to ask if social conventions or customary practices have moral force when
we consider ethical issues in sport.
What are the ethical implications of conventionalism? One view is that
conventionalism suggests that in making ethical decisions in sport, we support
both the rules and the conventions applying to the sport in the context of the
social environment in which they hold. Thus, practitioners and observers of
sport who hold this view should simply follow the dominant social practices
surrounding sport in their culture.
Surely this cannot be correct. Conventions are not ethical just because they are
followed. Thus, if conventionalism as so far understood is correct, if football had
an existing convention that allowed players to deliberately try to hurt injured
opposing players while they were lying on the ground in pain, surely that would
not make it right. This version of conventionalism is committed to an extreme

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kind of ultra-conservative relativism that encourages us to follow (rather than

try to change) existing practices regardless of their content. Any proposed
change, again regardless of content, would be wrong in this view since it would
oppose existing conventions and practices. Because it is so accepting of the status
quo, let us call this version of conventionalism uncritical conventionalism. (We
will discuss a more critical version of conventionalism in another section of this
essay.)
Perhaps at this point, conventionalists might offer an externalist version of
their theory. In this version, conventions in sports are acceptable only if they do
not violate moral requirements derived from outside sports, for example, from
religion or from moral theories such as utilitarianism or Kantian deontology.
However, this suggests that sport has no moral resources of its own to offer, and
thus may prematurely reject internalist approaches to sports ethics.
Of course, athletes have no special dispensation to violate fundamental moral
norms such as prohibitions against murder or stealing. However, it is also true
that some actions are allowed in sports, such as tackling in football or body
checking in ice hockey, that might constitute criminal acts if performed against
random strangers outside the context of athletic competition. Presumably, such
actions are legitimized in sport, at least in part, because the contestants have
freely agreed to play by constitutive rules that allow such actions.
More importantly, there are ethical dilemmas that arise in sports on which a
better understanding of the evaluational character of sport might shed much
light. Such an internal morality, while not necessarily unique to sport, might at
the very least help us apply broad and abstract moral principles in specific
sporting contexts. For example, should a team accept a victory that it did not earn
(it was outplayed by the opposition) and that resulted from a series of clearly and
obviously bad calls by officials?12 Should winning be the only or even the major
goal of athletic competition? Do we owe more to opponents than just following
the rules? What important values, if any, does athletic competition promote and
what other values, if any, might it undermine? Let us consider how a different
internalist approach might provide a rational framework for approaching such
issues.

Broad Internalism: An Interpretivist Approach

Imagine a painting showing the following elements.13 In the foreground is a
farmer pushing an apparently antiquated plough high on a cliff overlooking a
blue-green sea. An ancient longship powered by rows of oars (perhaps manned
by slaves) cuts through the sea under a blazing sun. Birds circle overhead. In the
background, a pair of feet are visible just above the surface of the water.
Clearly, it would be a misinterpretation of the painting to call it Rush Hour
Traffic in Manhattan. Other titles such as Swimming in Indiana in 1942 don’t make
sense of the farmer, the ship or the blue-green sea. Students of the classics might
recognize the painting, given even my poor description of it, as Pieter Brueghel’s
The Fall of Icarus. Remember, in the Greek myth, Icarus and his father Daedalus
escaped from prison on Crete by building wings of wax. Although warned, in
the legend, not to fly too high because the heat of the sun would melt the wings,

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Icarus gets carried away and does fly too close to the sun with disastrous results
(the feet are his as he disappears beneath the waves forever).
Interpreting the painting as showing the fall of Icarus enables us to make
sense of all the elements in it, unlike the other interpretations mentioned above.
It provides the best available interpretation by explaining why each element of
the painting is there; thus the ship sailing by and the farmer who looks only at
the ground show the human trait of indifference to great achievement. Moreover,
it also adds ethical and aesthetic depth to our understanding of the painting by
bringing out both its celebration of greatness and the arguably sinful disregard
of it.
As legal scholar and philosopher Ronald Dworkin has maintained, such an
interpretative approach can also explain what might justify a judicial decision in
a hard legal case. In Dworkin’s view, when judges need to figure out what often
vague and abstract constitutional requirements, such as not depriving anyone of
‘equal protection of the law’, mean and how they may be applied to hard cases,
judges need to support their decisions by a similar interpretive process. For
example, they need to advance an account or theory of equal protection that
makes the best sense of salient legal precedents, coheres best with other bodies
of the law and makes the best moral sense of equal protection. Dworkin’s
approach, often called interpretivism, suggests that in addition to legal rules,
judges also need to rely on various principles for interpreting and applying the
rules, which often must be weighed against one another in order to come up with
the best interpretation of the law.14
J.S. Russell has provided an excellent example of how such intepretivism
might apply to sport.15 In an 1887 American Association baseball game between
Louisville and Brooklyn, a Louisville player, Reddy Mack, who had just scored,
jostled the Brooklyn catcher, interfering with his play and thereby allowing a
Louisville teammate to score as well. Mack may have reasoned that since the
rules only prohibited interference with a fielder by a base-runner, and since he
ceased to be a base-runner when he scored, his action did not constitute
interference under the rules. However, the umpire, Wesley Curry, called Mack
out for interfering with the catcher. Did he make the right call?
Russell argues that the call was correct since any other decision would have
risked turning baseball into a series of brawls. He explains that such a decision
is warranted by an important principle that underlies competitive sports such as
baseball, namely that ‘rules should be interpreted in a manner that the excellences
embodied in achieving the lusory goal of the game are not undermined but are
maintained and fostered.’16 Here, Russell is applying an overall theory of baseball
that identifies skills such as catching, running, hitting and throwing as the
primary skills tested during baseball games. Interference with fielders
undermines baseball as a test of such skills and so the interference rule should be
applied to runners after they have scored as well as while they are on the bases.
Interference also makes baseball an uglier game, taking away from the beauty of
crisp fielding and brilliant defence suggesting, as Cesar R. Torres has reminded
us, that aesthetic criteria as well as ethical standards play a role in determining
how a sport and its rules are best to be interpreted and understood.17 Thus, the

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account of just which skills are basic to baseball can be justified by its fit with the
rules, with baseball practice, and because it makes baseball a better game in a
variety of ways (including morally and aesthetically) if interference is understood
in the way suggested.
A number of other writers, including Nicholas Dixon, Angela Schneider and
Robert Butcher, Cesar R. Torres and Peter Hager along with J.S. Russell, have
developed interpretive approaches to sport. In a paper in which I tried to distinguish
this approach from narrow versions of formalism, I called it broad internalism
because it was wider in scope than narrow formalism (since it focuses on principles
as well as rules) and is internalist since one of its major goals is to resolve normative
issues in sport by developing theories that make the best sense of their internal
features (such as which skills are basic or fundamental to the sport).18
In the next section, we will examine a theory of sport based on the broad
internalist or interpretivist approach and then conclude by examining a major
criticism of broad internalism developed by a proponent of a revised form of
conventionalism, William J. Morgan.

Mutualism: The Mutual Quest for Excellence

Critics have attacked competition in athletics on a variety of grounds. For
example, they have argued it creates a kind of elitist nationalism – our team
against the world – that promotes an overemphasis on winning and consequent
degradation of the opponent. Opponents are seen not as persons but as mere
obstacles to success, a viewpoint that encourages disrespect and even enmity
towards them. Winners are glorified and those who do not win are regarded as
failures or ‘losers’. Results become the most important thing and the value of the
process of learning to compete is lost. More broadly, competition in this view
teaches us to be selfish or partisan.
Many broad internalists would argue that this picture of competitive sport,
while perhaps sometimes descriptively accurate, is normatively inadequate
because it does not fit key features of competitive sport. It may be descriptively
accurate in some contexts because some coaches and athletes sometimes do
regard opponents as mere obstacles, stress winning above all else, and see
competition in sport as a zero-sum game.
However, if we look at key features of competitive athletics, another account
may be ethically superior to the critical view we have just sketched out. As we
have seen, philosophers such as Bernard Suits have suggested that the constitutive
rules of sport create challenges to securing goals that would otherwise be much
easier to achieve. Scoring a goal according to the rules of football is much more
difficult and more challenging than merely placing a ball within a goal. An
account of sport that fits this feature of artificial obstacles created by the rules
regards sports as games of physical (and related mental or strategic) skill
designed to challenge the participants. A well-designed sport is one where the
challenges require complex skills for success, the use of various strategies and
the need to make good decisions in various game situations. A major goal of
participating, then, is to achieve excellence in meeting the challenge.

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Although it is true that sports have winners and losers, and that winning the
game is the lusory goal, it does not follow that competition in athletics is a zero-
sum game or that opponents must be regarded as mere obstacles to one’s own
success. Rather, opponents are necessary to create the challenge in the first place.
In this view, athletic competition is at least partially cooperative; each participant
consents to create a challenge for the opponent so that each can try to meet the
challenge of the sport in pursuit of excellence. Athletic competition, then, should
be (and sometimes is) what I have called a mutual quest for excellence.19
While mutualists recognize that winning often is the major criterion for
success in meeting the challenge, they tend to question whether winning is
always the primary or most important element of success. For one thing, as
Dixon has pointed out, winning can be due to factors irrelevant to athletic
excellence including bad calls by officials and vastly inferior opponents.20 Should
a team take pride in playing badly but still beating a much weaker opponent?
Such a game is not only aesthetically deficient – it might be called ‘an ugly win’
– but also does not provide strong grounds for claims of just desserts since the
superior team did not come near to playing to its potential. Conversely, couldn’t
a losing team take a lot of pride in taking a much better opponent to the absolute
limit – for playing ‘beautifully’ and earning respect and praise?
Mutualists point out that opponents can each gain something from contests
regardless of who wins and loses. In the mutualist view, competitive sport is an
educational activity; both sides can learn from competing and develop better
strategies, techniques or learn to make better decisions in competition as the
result of post-game analysis. In this view, rather than being obstacles, let alone
enemies, opponents are cooperating with each other by providing a challenge so
that each side can learn and grow as a result of the challenge each provides to the
other. While only one side can win, each side can learn from competing (often
the losers learn more than the winners by profiting from their mistakes), and so
sports are not zero-sum games but mutually beneficial activities. Our competitors
are not obstacles or enemies, but facilitators in a mutual quest for excellence.
We now have what might be called a two-level theory of sport that provides an
ethically defensible account of athletic competition and a model we can use to
morally evaluate actual athletic practice. At one level, we have the broad
internalist or interpretivist approach to understanding sport, characterizing it
and justifying certain sorts of claims about it based on the criteria of fit and
normative acceptability. Mutualists claim their approach fits or explains key
features of sport, such as the challenges created by the constitutive rules. On a
normative level, we have an account of athletic competition, mutualism or the
mutual quest for excellence that arguably is ethically defensible and gives us
guidelines for how competition should be understood and conducted.
Moreover, this approach allows us to characterize sports and distinguish at
least paradigmatic cases of sports from other activities in a broader manner than
provided by narrow versions of formalism. Roughly, sports are games of physical
skill that have the features identified by Suits but (as Suits himself might not
have denied) are also regulated by principles presupposed by the idea of
unnecessary obstacles that constitute challenges.

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Furthermore, broad internalism grounds an ethical defence of competitive

sport by presenting it in its best light, namely, the mutualist approach. Broad
internalism and the mutualist account of athletic competition should be exposed
to critical inquiry; to the extent, however, that they survive extended examination,
they may well constitute a justified theory of competitive sport.

A Conventionalist Critique of Broad Internalism

The broad internalist or interpretivist approach to sport sketched out above can
be criticized on a variety of grounds. For example, mutualism can and has been
criticized on the grounds that winning requires special skills that are hard to
master and so should be given significantly more weight than mutualists such as
myself have acknowledged.21 However, in the space remaining, I will focus on a
recent defence of conventionalism, and consequent critique of broad internalism,
developed by William J. Morgan that raises fundamental questions about
justification, not only in sport but more generally as well. Morgan’s critique can
be divided into two separate lines of argument, a defence of what might be called
‘critical conventionalism’ and a critique of what he takes to be the ahistorical or
transcendent and realist implications of broad internalism, at least when it is
interpreted in an overly rationalistic direction.22
Conventionalism was criticized above as ethically deficient. Just because a
convention exists as part of a social practice does not mean it is ethically defensible.
Morgan acknowledges that this criticism applies to one kind of convention, what
he calls ‘coordinating conventions’, but argues that the critics have failed to
recognize a second sort of convention to which the criticism does not apply.
Coordinating conventions, as the name implies, allow people to coordinate their
actions and engage in socially cooperative behaviour. For example, a convention
of playground basketball in much of the United States is that the players do not
call trivial fouls on their opponents but that hard fouls – especially dangerous
ones – should be called and indeed avoided by the players themselves. However,
an alternative convention might have been in force to the effect that no fouls, no
matter how hard or dangerous, should be called in playground or ‘pickup’ games.
The criticism against conventionalism is that it does not contain the theoretical
resources to allow us to decide which convention is morally better.
However, there is a second kind of convention, Morgan argues, that avoids
this criticism. Morgan calls them ‘deep conventions’. According to Morgan, ‘deep
conventions play a central role in determining the point and purpose of athletic
undertakings in certain contexts, in particular communities, at specific times. In
other words, their main function is the normative … one of establishing the
worth and value of sport.’23 These deep conventions allow conventionalists to be
critical of existing practices if they conclude that the surface or coordinating
conventions that are prevalent in actual practice violate or undermine the deep
conventions of a particular sporting community.
An example cited by Morgan is the difference between the professional ideal
of sport in the contemporary United States and the ideal dominant at least among
the upper class in late 19th-century and early 20th-century England and the

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United States. In the latter view, allegedly alien to modern competitive athletics,
sport is a gentlemanly activity that would be spoiled by such ungentlemanly
behaviour as having paid coaches or engaging in intense supervised training.
Even the need to rely on officials to make calls would undermine this ethos of the
game since no true gentleman would try to take advantage of the rules or cheat.
To paraphrase Morgan in a way I hope he would find sympathetic, these two
paradigms of sport each provide a framework within which we can reason about
the purpose, value and ethics of sport. The deep conventions of each paradigm
determine what counts as a reason. Thus, under the professional paradigm, a
basketball coach might be criticized for not being good at ‘working’ referees, but
on the earlier paradigm failing to work referees would be a virtue, not a weakness.
Thus, deep conventionalism, as I will call it, allows for critical reflection within
specific sporting practices. However, it does not allow for adjudication across
paradigms. As Morgan maintains, such disputes between advocates of different
paradigms is ‘at best rival disputants talking past one another rather than
profitably to one another’.24 Thus, deep conventionalism can allow for critical
discourse within a specific historical, cultural or social context but rejects what
Morgan regards as the sin of going transcendental, or occupying a ‘view from
nowhere’ in the attempt to reach a universal theory of sport justifiable to every
rational person.
Deep conventionalists would probably resist calling their approach a theory of
sport, since they might maintain that even what counts as a sport may differ (if
only subtly) from context to context. Similarly, what makes sport valuable and
what counts as a defensible ethical resolution to ethical issues in sport is relative
to specific social-historical frameworks. Thus, different theories of sport might
apply in different times and places.
According to the deep conventionalist argument, broad internalists have been
too quick to reject conventionalism, because they ignore deep conventions and
are too quick to go transcendent in appealing to abstract intepretations of sport
that they allegedly accept because of the reasons in their favour, since they fail to
see that what counts as a reason ultimately depends on socio-historical contexts.
What can a broad internalist say in reply?

A Broad Internalist Response to Deep Conventionalism

In what follows, I will suggest two lines of argument broad internalists can
develop in reply to Morgan’s critique. Although I speak for myself, my suggestions
are, I believe, compatible with the position of other interpretivists such as Russell
and Dixon.25
First, broad internalists should ask if the deep conventions cited by Morgan
are substantially different from the principles cited by broad internalists, such as
Russell’s principle that rules should be interpreted so as to protect and foster the
primary skills and challenges of a sport. Like principles, deep conventions are
not formal rules of a sport, often need to be weighed against one another and
present a normative conception of how sports should be understood and carried
out. Deep conventions, like principles but unlike surface or coordinating

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 Theories of Sport  95

conventions, have ethical force. Like principles, deep conventions provide an

interpretation that seeks to present sport in its morally best light.
Given that deep conventions so closely resemble principles (or are principles),
does deep conventionalism even differ significantly from broad internalism?
Morgan surely would reply that conventions, unlike principles, are wedded to
particular historical contexts and so are contextual in a way principles are not.
Principles allegedly are abstract and ahistorical and emerge from a process of
reflection that transcends the particular social and historical circumstances from
which it starts – a shift towards an impossible to achieve a ‘view from nowhere’.
However, broad internalism, at least as I understand it, need not be committed
to such an ahistorical or transcendent approach. As I have suggested elsewhere,
we can start from discourse in a particular historical context with the goal that
continued discussion among interlocutors with diverse viewpoints might
promote a consensus among advocates who were at one time in disagreement.
Thus, discussion starts in a particular historical context but can transcend it and
work towards universality. The discussion always takes place in a historical
context. However, if a consensus reached through rational discourse survives
extended criticism from significantly differing perspectives over an extended
period of time, that surely gives us good (although not infallible) reason to
believe the theory of sport in question is in fact truly warranted or justified. I
have called this position ‘justificatory realism’ since it holds that in such
circumstances we have good grounds for thinking we agree on a theory because
there truly is compelling evidence in its favour rather than thinking there is
compelling evidence in its favour only because we already accept it.26
This suggests that debate between proponents of different paradigms of sport
need not be incommensurable in the way deep conventionalists such as Morgan
suggest. Although the point needs further development than can be given here,
it surely is plausible to think that proponents of the amateur or gentlemanly
paradigm can understand the importance of the pursuit of excellence and
learning about oneself and others through the crucible of competition. On the
other hand, proponents of the modern or professional model surely can
understand the idea of competitors as facilitators rather than enemies or obstacles
and the importance of respecting the deepest values of the game.
Two examples illustrate this point. After losing the 2013 PGA Sony Open in
spite of firing a wonderful 63 in the last round, Tim Clark said in a post-round
interview, ‘I gave it all I had, and he [Russell Henley] just played phenomenal …
He just never seemed to put a foot wrong, and when he did, he made those par
putts … When a guy plays that well and beats you, you just have to be happy for
them.’ Similarly, after the University of Michigan’s men’s basketball team had
their 2013 undefeated streak snapped 56-53, their point guard, whose last-second
shot for a tie rimmed out of the basket, said in an interview, ‘I enjoyed playing
against one of the best defenders in the country (Aaron Craft) and learned from
it.’27 Incidents such as these, and many others, suggest that even at many of the
highest levels of sport, we don’t deal with pure or isolated paradigms but, just as
interpretivism suggests, seek to balance competing principles from different
sources into the overall best theory of sport.

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Theories of sport, then, should provide us with a characterization that helps us

to identify sports, that explains why they arouse such interest and passionate
attachment and contains normative resources for the ethical and aesthetic
assessment of athletic competition and the moral issues that arise within them.
Our discussion suggests that narrow versions of formalism and conventionalism
do less well at such tasks, particularly the task of ethical and aesthetic assessment,
than what we have called broad internalism (interpretivism), which I have
argued supports a mutualist approach to competitive success. Deep or critical
conventionalism, however, also claims our allegiance as a worthy theory of
sport. While broad internalists, as indicated, have important replies to criticisms
arising from deep conventionalism, further debate as to the scope and nature of
the best theory is sure to continue and can only advance our understanding of
sports and the values that underlie them.

Notes
1 Although this issue will not be fully discussed here, we will examine the claim that
paradigms of sport differ from context to context in our examination of deep
conventionalism.
2 For discussion, see Nicholas Dixon, ‘The Ethics of Supporting Sports Teams’, Journal
of Applied Philosophy 18 (2001): 149– 58.
3 This does not mean, as we will see, that internalists are committed to the existence of
a code of values or ethics unique to sport and independent of other ethical approaches,
but rather only to the claim that there are values that need to be presupposed if we
are to make the best sense of sporting practice, particularly athletic competition.
4 Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia (Peterborough, ON: Broadview
Press, 2005) with a new introduction by Thomas Hurka. Suits’ book was originally
published by the University of Toronto Press and first appeared in 1978.
5 Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, 55.
6 Suits himself discusses many possible counterexamples and objections in his book.
7 Restorative rules, which I would classify as a kind of constitutive rule, define what
should be done in case of rule violations. For example, foul shots are awarded in
basketball as compensation for disallowed forms of physical contact and time in the
penalty box serves a similar function for rule violations in ice hockey.
8 See H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) for his
account of law as what he calls the union of primary and secondary rules. The Rule
of Recognition is a secondary rule. Secondary rules allow for identification,
modification and change, and adjudication of the primary rules, such as the rules of
criminal law.
9 James Keating distinguished between sports a recreational activity governed by the
norm of generosity towards opponents, and competitive athletics, governed by
competitiveness and adherence to the rules, in his ‘Sportsmanship as a Moral
Category’, Ethics 75 (1964): 25– 35. The discussion of broad internalism later in this
paper suggests that Keating’s distinction is inadequate, since some broad principles
of ethical competition apply to sporting practice across the board.
10 For an influential account of conventionalism, see Fred D’Agostino, ‘The Ethos of
Games’, in Philosophic Inquiry in Sport, 2nd ed, ed., William J. Morgan and Klaus V.
Meier (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1995), 42– 9.
11 See, for example, my similar criticism of formalism in Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport, 3rd
ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2010), 46– 8.

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12 J.S. Russell argues for a duty of coaches to try to correct obviously bad calls in favour
of their team in his essay ‘Coaching and Undeserved Competitive Success’, in The
Ethics of Coaching Sports: Moral, Social and Legal Issues, ed., Robert L. Simon (Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 2013), 103– 20.
13 I first heard this example when it was employed by Arthur Danto in a lecture on
aesthetics in an exact place or time I can’t remember but any error in drawing out its
implications is my responsibility alone.
14 See, for example, Dworkin’s essay ‘Hard Cases’ in his Taking Rights Seriously
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).
15 J.S. Russell, ‘Are Rules All an Umpire Has to Work With?’, Journal of the Philosophy of
Sport 36 (1999): 27– 49.
16 Ibid., 35.
17 Cesar R. Torres, ‘Furthering Interpretivism’s Integrity: Bringing Together Ethics and
Aesthetics’, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 39 (2012): 299– 319.
18 Robert L. Simon, ‘Internalism and Internal Values of Sport’, Journal of the Philosophy of
Sport 27 (2000): 1–16.
19 In his contribution to this volume, J.S. Russell argues that sport often does not live up
to this mutualist ideal and that sport has internal features that can and too often do
promote unethical behaviour.
20 Nicholas Dixon, ‘On Winning and Athletic Superiority’, Journal of the Philosophy of
Sport 26 (1999): 10– 26.
21 For example, see Scott Kretchmar, ‘Competition, Redemption, and Hope’, Journal of
the Philosophy of Sport 39 (2012): 101–16 as well as Scott Kretchmar and Tim L. Elcombe,
‘In Defense of Competition and Winning: Revisiting Athletic Tests and Contests’, in
Ethics in Sport, 2nd ed, ed. William J. Morgan (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2007),
181– 94.
22 For recent statements of this position, see William J. Morgan, ‘Broad Internalism,
Deep Conventions, Moral Entrepeneurs, and Sport’, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport
39 (2012): 65–100; and idem ‘Interpretivism, Conventionalism and the Ethical Coach’,
in The Ethics of Coaching Sports: Moral, Social and Legal Issues, ed., Robert L. Simon
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2013), 61– 77.
23 Morgan, ‘Broad Internalism, Deep Conventions, Moral Entrepeneurs’, 72.
24 See ibid., 71.
25 I am especially indebted to discussions with Russell and the opportunity to read an
unpublished paper of his on deep conventionalism. I also criticize Morgan’s critical
or deep conventionalism, although on somewhat different grounds, in my paper
‘Internalism’ to appear in Mike McNamee and William J. Morgan, eds., Routledge
Handbook of the Philosophy of Sport, forthcoming.
26 I have developed this view in my paper ‘From Ethnocentrism to Realism: Does
Discourse Ethics Bridge the Gap?’, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 31 (2004): 122– 41.
27 The quotation from Tim Clark’s interview can be found at ‘Russell Henley, in His
First PGA Event as a Rookie, Delivers Record Performance’, FoxNews.com, 14 February,
2013 <http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2013/01/14/russell-henley-in-his-first-pga-
event-as-rookie-delivers-record-performance/#ixzz2R1U280cx> (accessed 15 March,
2013). I believe I heard Michigan’s Trey Burke’s comments in a live interview but he
expresses almost identical views in Nick Baumgardner, ‘Michigan’s Trey Burke Says
He Loves Playing Against Aaron Craft, but the Game Can’t Be 1-on-1’, MLive.com, 5
February, 2013 <http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/index.ssf/2013/02/michigans_
trey_burke_says_he_l.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_
campaign=Feed%3A+annarbor-sports+%28Ann+Arbor+News+Sports+-+MLive.
com%29> (accessed 15 March, 2013).

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