尊厳 (Dignity)

Today as I was enthralled in 2 excellent March Madness basketball games (I got hooked again! This year's college basketball tournament has been especially good with close games and OT thrillers. Purdue just went through 2 OT games back-to-back in the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight! How crazy is that!) I was reminded that basketball players are trained by custom to lie about calls. It's so predictable whenever there's a close call that the referee has to make or especially on a "who-touched it last" out of bounds play.........As soon as the ball goes out of bounds or even before the ball has gone out yet, both teams' players start pointing towards their side, imploring the refs to award their ball to their side. Sometimes, it's a genuinely close call where it's hard to tell who touched the ball last. Often though, it becomes clear on replay who touched the ball last, and one of the players on a team knows without a doubt that they touched it last, but they immediately insist that it's their ball. In dodgeball we call that cheating. Unfortunately, this happens not only in basketball but almost all sports, especially mainstream sports that everyone watches.......The custom is to always insist that your team should be the beneficiary of the call, or if you did foul somebody, don't stop unless the ref calls it. It's kind of a loss of dignity in a sport.....If there's anything that I gained from my years playing dodgeball, it's an appreciation for a sport that polices itself, where competitors are encouraged and urged to tell the truth about whether they got hit or not. Some people do lie or cheat, but then they are ridiculed on the spot or get shunned later if video shows them having lied about it, and develop a reputation of cheating that sticks with them until they reverse that reputation by maintaining a steady streak of honesty. It develops a sense of dignity about a sport.....a sense that other people are also playing with the same objective as you, to play a fair game and determine the outcome through fair play. 

Now, I don't pretend that I don't lie.......I lie about being sick and not going into work once in a while, I lie to telephone marketers or people who ask me for change on the street......sometimes I lie without even needing to (I should fix that). But I don't lie about playing sports........sports should be played with some dignity; it should be a competition to see who the best is, not who can win because they got the benefit of the most calls by the referee through their imploring of the officials. There should be a sense of "If I'm the better player or better team, I don't need to cheat." Sometimes I'll even let the other team or player get a couple points on me just to keep them happy. 

And unfortunately, fans and kids see what they see on TV, these basketball players, football players, soccer players arguing and harassing the refs on every close call, many times lying about it, in a win-at-all-costs attitude, sacrificing their dignity of fair play, and they carry on the tradition of argue-all-calls, and that seeps into all other sports and games we play, even other arenas in life: cut this guy off in traffic, cheat on my taxes, screw this guy over in a business deal just so I can get ahead. 

My proposal is this (called "Dignity Rules"): Make all calls in sports determined by the players themselves. Call your own fouls in basketball. Call own penalties in football. No refs involved; the players settle it on the court between both teams somehow (sometimes it'll involve a "coin flip" or "shoot for it!" where someone takes a shot to determine if they're right or not, that's how it's settled on the pickup basketball court) and move on. Of course at first players will try to get away with stuff, not everyone will follow the Dignity Rules, and people will take advantage of others' kindness. But now we have the advantage of video, and people will see immediately who's lying, reputations will form, the blatant offenders will be called out and asked to improve their behavior, and eventually players will buy into the system. It's not going to be 100% perfect, sometimes people will still make the wrong call on themselves, or teams won't agree on something, but even nowadays the refs aren't even close to getting 100% right, and the players themselves usually know better than the refs. It works in dodgeball; it'd work in all other sports and send the right message about sport and life: it's about honesty and fair play, not doing your best to get away with it. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan