THE QATSPY® Quapaw Athletic Training Sportswear Performance, Your Outfitter Company
By: Charles W. Boatright, President of THE QATSPY®
The Significance of Sports in our Society– Sportsmanship is the Health/Fitness of a Society in Respect/Concern We have for Ourselves/Others
If we want to have the biggest impact on our society, we should concentrate on the characteristics, attributes, and traits of ONE WORD. That WORD is Sportsmanship that embodies qualities that we want to aspire to in our lives and create relationships, on and off the field of play.
Sportsmanship is one term that can provide us the skills needed to deal with the issues of life and our interactions with others, on and off the field, to develop relationships. Sportsmanship provides the best opportunity for all of us to reach our full potential.
Alabama’s Success on the Gridiron
Alabama, which has the most successful football program in more than a decade, was beaten by Ohio State, twice by Ole Miss, and by LSU. After each loss, Coach Nick Saban of Alabama, combed through game film trying to figure out how these teams beat his team and learned from those losses to develop a better coaching and training strategy and philosophy.
The only coach to have beaten Alabama in consecutive years was Ole Miss, Coached by Coach Hugh Freeze, who is now at the University of Auburn, Alabama’s arch rival in the Gridiron Bowl. What Ole Miss was able to accomplish was a feat that no one has done since. But in sports, the previous year’s championship is put on the line to prove who has the best game plan and team for that year.
Sportsmanship is what is Missing in Our Society
This is something that is missing in our current society in the efforts to deny others even the opportunity to participate on a level playing field in the freedom of speech and expression. We have people who want to be inclusive, but only in what we would consider scrimmage games as being inclusive. In other words, your own team, and not competing with other teams. If you only play scrimmage games during the year, you are going to have a team that no one wants to watch or attend.
If you want to prove that your ideas are the best, then compete with other ideas, even if you totally disagree with those competing ideas. By doing so, you will develop the best road-tested solutions and have the best team that others will respect. Denying others the opportunity to compete in debates of ideas is like turning the clock back to segregation. It was with debate that the scourge of slavery and segregation was defeated, and for good reasons.
Believe me, we don’t want to go backward by not giving other people the right and opportunity to participate with free speech and of freedom of expression. One way we won the fight for civil rights for all was through debate, interaction, and through education of life experiences.
We fought a War against a Regime that Opposed Views
We fought a War against a regime that didn’t allow for opposing views to be debated, that was called the Third Reich. If you think you are creating a utopia by suppressing opposing views, you’re NOT; you are recreating the Third Reich that The Greatest Generation fought to defeat. The Greatest Generation fighting their way through France wondered what they were fighting for. Once they got to the Concentration and death camps, they had no doubt for what they were fighting for. People in these camps didn’t fit the views of the Third Reich.
Might the Best Idea and View Win
I worked in the energy industry for over 33- years, and I discovered the best ideas that proved to work were those that were field-tested and went under the gauntlet of review by others. Don’t suppress opposing views, but instead compete with them on a level field with honest debate. If your idea is that significant, it will survive, or even improve.
I wrote a book, The SPORTS BIBLE, THE YELLOWSTONE PAPERS on Sports Psychology where I listed the attributes of Sportsmanship. Here are just some of just a few of those attributes that we all could use from sports and sportsmanship in our society- Sportsmanship includes such characteristics as humility, integrity, commitment, perseverance, respect, honor, honesty, fairness, sacrifice, responsibility, preparation, discipline, trustworthiness, and a hard work ethic, to name a few.
Our society that denied a sitting Judge, that was the guest of Stanford University, the right to express his views with respect isn’t a free society of expressing views. If you don’t agree with those views, then debate the merits of both views and why they are or aren’t valid.
This is why history is such a great avenue to use to test views and ideas. What was even more shocking in this case at Stanford University was this was a law class where they are supposed to be able to examine and cross examine the other side. If these law students start shouting in the courtroom their view, from my experience it won’t end well for their case or client.
Believe me, like King Solomon stated- There’s nothing new under the sun. This movement to suppress opposing views isn’t anything new that has failed in those societies. You don’t want to live in a society that suppresses other opposing views. Just study the Third Reich and the suppression of opposing views, then and now.
Sports and sportsmanship can teach us so much about the value of relationships that are a vital part of any society. Just look at the few attributes that I have bolded above concerning Sportsmanship.
San Diego State Basketball Team
Talking about Alabama, the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament faced off with No. 5 seed San Diego State last night (24Mar2023), where San Diego won with a score of 71 vs. Alabama 64. Looking at the players for San Diego State, I was thinking someone went to the San Diego Football linebacker and running backs corps and asked them who would like to play basketball.
San Diego State’s team was a more physical team in their game against Alabama. This is the very reason why we want a level playing field where everyone can compete to express their views. If we denied others that right, we wouldn’t have great games that we enjoy watching in both the women’s and men’s NCAA Basketball Tournaments.
Highlight
The Significance of Sports in our Society– Sportsmanship is the Health/Fitness of a Society in Respect/Concern We have for Ourselves/Others. Denying others the opportunity to compete in debates of ideas is like turning the clock back to segregation