Scott Kretchmar

Competition, Redemption, and Hope

Zero-sum aspects of sport have generated a number of ethical concerns and a similar number of defenses or apologetics. The trick has been to find a middle position that neither overly gentrifies sport nor inappropriately emphasizes the significance of winning and losing. One such position would have us focus on the process of trying to win over the fact of having one. It would also ameliorate any harms associated with defeat by pointing out that benefits like achievement, excellence, and moral development are available to winner and loser alike. Relying on the notion of ‘frame’ introduced by Polanyi, I argue that this approach underplays the poignant drama of sport (including the sting of defeat) and thus, seeks redemption at too high a cost. I argue for a version of red-blooded competition that is justified more by transcendence than mitigation, more by a willingness to play again tomorrow than civility during any single contest. I analyze sport in terms of its receptivity to such repetition and find that epistemological uncertainty, enhanced by the presence of chance in sport, renders repeat engagements both sensible and attractive. I conclude that sport verdicts, unlike outcomes in war, business, and love, do not settle things. Rather they invite both winner and loser alike to ‘play again tomorrow’.

Complementary Kinesiology: Why It Is Not Wise to Choose Sides or Work Alone

In this essay I argue in favor of a holistic vision for our field under the heading of complementary kinesiology. I argue that battles over reified dichotomies and even compromise solutions have impeded our progress as a profession. I describe the theory of complementation as an alternative. I say it is a strange and paradoxical way of conceptualizing our values and our direction, one that is difficult to grasp intellectually. But I also suggest that it helps us see how and why there really are no “sides” in our profession and why “working alone” is not a viable option. I argue that complementation will allow us to be a more flexible, effective, and otherwise smarter field. Thus, I conclude that any difficulties inherent in understanding complementation are well worth the effort.

Movement and Play on Higher Education's Contested Terrain

Despite the inescapability and value of skilled movement and play in peoples lives, higher education has been reluctant to embrace either one. Motor activity in the context of games and play has been called nonintellectual, nonacademic, nonessential, and nonartistic. These four labels can be used to show how we lose four successive games in academe. These contests exist in the form of four dichotomies: (a) theory versus practice, (b) intellectual practice versus physical practice, (c) useful physical practice versus ornamental physical practice, and (d) ornamental physical practice that is art versus ornamental physical practice that is not art. This analysis shows that our field has two fundamental strategies at its disposal if it wants to fare better in this academic tournament. Physical education can agree to the games as they have been presented and try to get on the winning teams for one or more of the four contests. Or it can rebel against the rules of the tournament themselves and show either how ...

Dualisms, Dichotomies and Dead Ends: Limitations of Analytic Thinking about Sport

In this essay I attempt to show the limitations of analytic thinking and the kinds of dead ends into which such analyses may lead us in the philosophy of sport. As an alternative, I argue for a philosophy of complementation and compatibility in the face of what appear to be exclusive alternatives. This is a position that is sceptical of bifurcations and other simplified portrayals of reality but does not dismiss them entirely. A philosophy of complementation traffics in the realm of ambiguities, paradoxes, differences by degree, tendencies, mixtures, polarities, tensions, complexes, transitions and all other forms of messiness. I note that this position has been generated, in part, by work conducted in the empirical sciences and that complementation provides a paradigm that is useful across the academic disciplines. To show the ways in which analytic thinking leads to dead ends, I analyse the epistemological debate over ‘broad internalism’ engaged in by Russell (1999, 2004), Dixon (2003), Simon (2000, 2004) and Morgan (2004). Evidence for the claim that they reached a mostly unhelpful stalemate is based on the fact that they did not provide any third option and moreover that the analytic tools and ground rules they employ prevent its discovery. I suggest that all four authors are comfortable with the analytic tendency to bifurcate reality and require choices among exclusionary alternatives. I also claim that they treat reason as if it were generated by a ‘mind from nowhere’. Philosophical anthropology, I suggest, provides much-needed somatic grounding that would reign in excessively optimistic views of reason (Dixon, Simon and Russell) or excessively plastic interpretations of mind (Morgan). It can also provide evidence that could help us understand why hominids (even modern ones) are so attracted to dichotomies and why we have so much trouble in reconciling apparent incompatibilities.

Gaming Up Life: Considerations for Game Expansions

Those of us who have been involved with sport philosophy for a number of years have learned much from Bernard Suits. For this, we owe him a debt of gratitude. His definition of games has been regarded as the gold standard against which other such efforts are judged. Even his occasional detractors did not so much attack his definition as question his broader project, one of discovering a phenomenon’s necessary and sufficient conditions. Suits, in a playful but pointed way, called these critics “terminal Wittgensteinians.” Much to his credit, Suits drew normative attention to games when much previous literature focused on the value of play. He saw gaming behavior not only as a logical outcome of human progress, but also as humankind’s most potent antidote for boredom and malaise. He expanded previous discussions on the juxtaposition of work and play to the more inclusive and complex interrelationships among work, games, and play. He did this, and so much more, in his own inimitable way—with his keen sense of humor fully at play. I remember asking myself as a young professor how unusual it was to read a serious philosophy text that provoked uncontrollable laughter . . . for the right reasons! However, for those who knew Suits in person, and for others who got to know him only through words spoken by the Grasshopper, he was a very funny person. In many ways he acted out what he preached. When life became a little tedious, he gamed it up. When the prospect of writing a dreary text on definitions seemed, well, a little dreary, he decided to game it up too. Thus, in The Grasshopper, he added a story line, paradoxes, scintillating dialogue, teases, false leads, old jokes, dozens of allusions to popular and classical literature, resurrections, mysteries, and bawdy metaphors to the core argument. One gets the sense that he put all of these additional literary hurdles in his way just to see if he could write a serious treatise under these more difficult conditions. He employed the lusory attitude, in short, when writing his own lusory text. I believe that Suits was right about the role of the so-called lusory attitude in promoting the good life. We seek and enjoy artificial challenges both formally and informally. Formal gaming tendencies produce free-standing, culturally recognized activities like baseball and soccer. Informal routes to gaming can be found

A phenomenology of competition

In this essay, I attempt to use Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology for purposes of describing central features of competition. While not accepting all theoretical aspects of this methodology, I employ its central strategies to see how well (if at all) it works. In carrying out the phenomenological analysis, I examine noetic and noematic correlates of competitive projects including the factors of plurality, normativity, disputation, temporality, and comparability. I finish by reviewing three forms of pseudo or defective competition. I conclude that eidetic analyses like the one produced in this essay have utility in spite of their significant limitations.

Calling the beautiful game ugly: A response to Davis

In a previous article (Kretchmar 2005), I identified problems in a certain species of games and traced these harms to something I called a ‘game flaw’. Unfortunately, ‘the beautiful game’ is a member of that species. I say it is unfortunate because Paul Davis (2006), when taking me to task for providing an argument that, in his terms, was ‘not especially compelling’, focused on the game of soccer (hereafter, football). The issue over which we contended is one of ‘time management’– that is, how game initiation, duration and closure are structured. I suggest that two basic methods for managing such requirements are available. Games take place during a stipulated amount of time or for a specified number of events. In my original article, I identified four fundamental problems that may accompany time-regulated games. In this essay, I attempt to fortify those claims against Daviss criticisms.

Sociology, History, and Philosophy in The Research Quarterly

The accounts of our subdiscipline’s contributions to The Research Quarterly are similar. Sociology, history, and philosophy operate at some distance from the biological sciences. The research methods used by scholars in each of our domains address distinctive issues related to objectivity and, thus, validity. Our contributions to The Research Quarterly have been modest, numbering about 240 articles, or slightly over 3 per volume. In short, we have enjoyed only a minority presence in The Research Quarterly during its 75 years of existence. Our stories, however, also diverge in important ways. Our research methods are different, and our relationships with our parent disciplines are not the same. In addition, our perceptions of The Research Quarterly as a potential repository for our respective publications vary considerably.

A Response to Gaffney: Teammates and the Games they Play

In this essay I endorse Gaffney’s paradoxical analysis that supports the right over the good, ‘horizontal commitments’ to teammates over ‘vertical loyalties’ to the cause of winning. However, I attempt to present two friendly amendments—by adding a second factor to the vertical element (i.e., playing well, meeting the demands of the test) and by showing that a virtue ethics approach is needed in certain situations. I conclude that Gaffney’s deontological stance serves him well in the Hope Solo case, but might not be as effective in other circumstances.

An Integrated Approach to an Undergraduate Kinesiology Curriculum: A Case Study about Stalling in Wrestling.

JOPERD • Volume 79 No. 9 • November/December 2008 K inesiology is a broad fi eld that draws from numerous domains, including physics, physiology, psychology, and philosophy. Consequently, kinesiology undergraduates are exposed to coursework in biomechanics, exercise physiology, sport psychology, ethics, and other disciplines. While mastery of this coursework is challenging enough, the integration of these elements proves even more formidable. More often than not, professors from each specialty emphasize discipline-specifi c content within their respective silos of expertise. This move toward a domain-specifi c kinesiology education has had a mixed impact. While it has enhanced the quality of information provided to undergraduates, it has simultaneously discouraged cross-disciplinary integration. In a typical college curriculum of four or fi ve years, undergraduates are presented with a variety of pieces to the kinesiology “puzzle.” Although each piece is undoubtedly valuable, educators offer little or no instruction on how the elements should be assembled. As a result, undergraduates are left with chunks of disjointed information connected only by the notion that each one is somehow related to sport or some other form of physical activity. The disconnectedness of the academic undergraduate experience can be demonstrated by attempting to apply information from each discipline to any common sport phenomenon. For example, one can use the various knowledge domains of kinesiology to explain the controversial tactic of stalling in the sport of wrestling. As the name An Integrated Approach to an Undergraduate Kinesiology Curriculum A Case Study About Stalling in Wrestling