Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Sports Violence

In antique societies, athletics and especially competitive experience games always have been rough, but aggression in the past was tempered by an insistence that playing hard, playing to win, did not countenance playing to cheat and to hurt. One of the very first nations that expressed athletic ideals, were the Greeks. As enunciated by Pindar, the athletic ideal incorporated courage and stamina with modesty, dignity, and fair-mindedness, those elusive qualities the Greeks called Aidos. As sports became more specialized, the general populace increasingly withdrew into spectatorship. Sports history reveals that although Greek sports had increasingly marred by corruption and bribes, nonetheless they flourished in an era which witnessed the rapid expansion of stadiums and arenas under the Roman Empire. While the Roman Empire, violence in sports became the commonly accepted principle and spectators not only endorsed it, but also embraced it as a collective norm.

In modern years sports violence has come to be to be perceived as a collective problem. Commissions have been appointed in Canada and England to study violence among hockey players and soccer fans. Numerous examples of violence in pro sports exist today, as counties like the United States, Canada, Greece, Italy and Germany, narrative court cases have been heard which concern the victims of violence perpetrators. Newspapers, magazines and television programs portray bloodied athletes and riotous fans at hockey, boxing, football, soccer, baseball, and basketball games with what appears to be expanding regularity. But are sports violence incidents verily increasing, and if so, what is the reason of such a negative increase? Or does the heightened collective attention and media focus on sports violence reflect not an growth in the incidence or severity of aggression, but greater collective concern with moral issues and political discourse?

Baseball Training Equipment

Contrary to beloved belief, there appears to be growing disappointment with sports violence. Changes in sports rules, developments in the construct of equipment, and even the corporal characteristics of modern sports arenas evolved in an endeavor to sell out violence or its consequences. But still, among athletic supervision teams, government officials, fans and athletes themselves, there is an ambivalence attitude towards sports violence. The ambivalence takes the form of justifying the existence of violence in sports, but not taking personal accountability for it. Coaches and managers tend to blame fans, saying that violence is what attracts people into stadiums, as the risk entailed makes the game more "interesting". Athletes frequently admit that they are opposed to violence, but it is thinkable, of them by coaches. Fans expound it by attributing aggressiveness to athletes and to situational aspects of the game. Spectators view violence as an potential part of some sports as one cannot play games like hockey or football, without accepting the necessity of violent action.

Sports Violence

Nevertheless, collective concept tends to focus more and more on sports violence as major advances in the technologies used have increased media coverage making information available to a vast global audience. Thus, modern critics tend to consider sports violence as a worldwide phenomenon with very disturbing hereafter policy and collective outcomes.

Sports Violence