Jack Bowen is the author of a book on sports and ethics and teaches high school ethics and philosophy classes. When it came time to fill out a support for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament for a pool at work this year, he wasn’t feeling well.
Given the scandals plaguing college basketball, including several teams and coaches that advanced to this week’s Round of 32, not filling a bracket was an ethicist’s form of quiet protest.
“I chose not to participate in the men’s category, but I am doing the women’s category. » Bowen » said, and he laughed at the questionable line he had drawn. “Now what have I done here?”
What are any of us doing here?
Every March, millions of Americans fill out brackets (more than 40 million people, by one count), cheer on the underdogs and watch TV. Others buy tickets to games, wear the jerseys of their favorite teams, and let the wins and losses dictate their mood.
Yet fans who closely follow college basketball know the insoluble connection between the game and corruption. Even those who come just for March Madness should know that the real madness isn’t always on the field.
A vast and frightening FBI investigation into college basketball recruiting continues to ensnare renowned universities and little-known crooks. This is why Louisiana State, for example, is playing without its head coach, Will Wade, and why Auburn recently had to assistant coach suspended and a former aide plead guilty to conspiracy to accept bribes.
This week, attorney Michael Avenatti was accused of trying to extort up to $25 million from Nike in exchange for hiding information he had about illicit payments to recruits. He has since revealed some allegations on Twitter. Among them: injured Oregon center Bol Bol had been paid to join the Ducks, he said. Oregon, one of 16 teams still in the tournament, denied the allegation.
“We go through periods of cleanup, where we all start to think something is wrong,” Jim Haney, executive director of the association. National Basketball Coaches Association, said. “College basketball is going through one of those times right now. In the best interest of the game, sometimes you have to go through this because you are not capable of doing it alone.
For fans, more than ever, this NCAA tournament serves as a taste test for our ungodly appetites.
It’s called “moral dissonance,” Bowen said, “when someone thinks, ‘My God, this is unethical, but I love it so much, and my friends and I We’re having such a good time cheering and cheering each other on that I’m going to join in.” anyway.'”
Steven Mintz, professor emeritus at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, who writes a blog called Wise ethicscalled it “ethical blindness.”
“Some people say, ‘We can live with that, just for the love of the game,'” Mintz said.
Such internal debates permeate our culture. Is it acceptable to dance to a Michael Jackson song, laugh at a Louis CK joke, watch a movie produced by Harvey Weinstein? Encourage football knowing what it can do to the players’ brains?
In that case, is it okay to fill in brackets, look for winners, and perhaps invest financially in programs that break the rules, knowing what we know while suspecting, perhaps reasonably, worse?
“We are faced with dilemmas and it is important for us to think about them,” said Shawn Klein, who teaches sports philosophy and ethics at Arizona State. “Even though our conclusions about how we should act don’t necessarily change how we act, it’s important that we are aware of the balance we have here.”
The topic of college basketball is an old one, refreshed by the latest news. Louisiana State has the familiar ingredients of a championship contender: a top point guard, a bunch of great students looking to leave for the NBA and a dash of scandal.
Seeded third in the East Region and led by interim coach Tony Benford, Louisiana State cruised past 14th-seeded Yale in the first round and then cruised past sixth-seeded Maryland , at the second. Next, it will face second-seeded Michigan State. A win could give Louisiana State a date Sunday with No. 1 Duke for a spot in the Final Four.
Louisiana State’s season started in tragic fashion, with the shooting death of one of his players, Wayde Sims, on the eve of pre-season training. Now it culminates in the most NCAA way possible, with each victory treated as either a heartwarming tale of redemption or a cautious tale of corruption.
“Whatever happened to ruin this LSU season, it’s all forgotten for now,” Baton Rouge Columnist Scott Rabalais wrote this weekend.
This could be a mantra for most teams at the annual tournament.
As Sports Illustrated highlighted Last week, the teams with the most Final Four appearances in history were North Carolina, UCLA, Kentucky, Duke and Kansas. But next on the list, if it were a university, would be “vacant” – the euphemism given to appearances later erased from the archives by scandal.
It’s easy to imagine Vacated making a future run in this year’s tournament.
A years-long FBI investigation was revealed to the public in late 2017, revealing the type of black market long alleged in college sports, particularly men’s basketball. At its heart were top men’s basketball programs, shoe manufacturers and prized recruits, and the sticky network of middlemen that linked so many of them. Ten men were arrested, including assistant coaches from four top programs.
The waves of the investigation continue to carry detritus to shore as the cases move through the court system. A year ago, Yahoo Sports reported that the FBI investigation involved at least 25 programs. Among them were six members of this year’s Round of 16, including three No. 1 seeds — Duke, North Carolina and Virginia — and second-seeded Kentucky.
So far, none have been publicly called out for transgressions directly related to the FBI case, but at least one entire region will be contested this weekend with teams playing under an ethical cloud.
Besides North Carolina, which avoided punishment by a massive case of academic fraud only by threading a legal needle, the rest of the four-team Midwest Region includes fifth-seeded Auburn, whose coach, Bruce Pearl, was fired by Tennessee in 2011 after lying during an NCAA investigation; Third-seeded Houston, coached by Kelvin Sampson, who spent years in exile after being kicked out of Oklahoma and Indiana for recruiting violations; and Kentucky, whose coach, John Calipari, led two programs were later forced to abandon their Final Four appearances.
Not all coaches and programs in this field have been tainted equally, but their mere presence at the top of the sport clouds them with suspicion. Compensating college athletes is a popular idea waved around like a magic wand, as if it will forgive rule violations in the current system and not create complex logistical and ethical problems of a different kind.
A small part of that conversation runs through the cheers surrounding the NCAA Tournament. It’s rarely discussed seriously on CBS, which pays the NCAA on average nearly a billion dollars a year to televise the tournament until 2032.
The issue for fans, especially at this time of year, is a question of complicity. Does supporting certain teams, or an entire company known for encouraging unethical behavior – including, some say, not sharing its financial riches with its workforce – condemn those who watch, applaud or fill in parentheses?
Klein, a philosophy professor at Arizona State, said we live in a “culture of outrage,” with societal pressures to disengage from anything that some find troubling.
“Knowing the moral status of every aspect of every institution and everything we participate in, and being able to strike the right balance in deciding whether or not we should interact with it, seems like an overburdened obligation,” Klein said. “It’s just not feasible.”
Team allegiances are “about identity,” he said, “part of how you see yourself,” much like a long-term relationship with family and friends. Fans of certain teams, even if those teams are clouded by controversy, tend to defend them, even if their vision is seen through glasses tinted with team colors.
“When something happens that you think is wrong, that you’re morally critical of, you don’t necessarily leave that relationship,” Klein said.
At some point, sure, maybe you will. But Haney, of the National Basketball Coaches Association, shares a similar view.
“Just like you can have a friend who did something to you, but because you like them, you love them, you stay with them,” Haney said. “You don’t turn your back on them, knowing that change is coming. »
“Fandom is not a rational pursuit from the start,” said Bowen, who helped write “Sport, ethics and leadership,” a notebook. “The joy is that it’s an emotional experience, a beautiful getaway. That’s what we want. But on the other hand, emotion hijacks reason all the time.
By the way, even though he didn’t attend his office for the men’s tournament, Bowen said he and his kids filled out the draws at home.
It is complicated. Perhaps, like the medium itself, no one understands exactly what is needed.
