William Thierfelder wants to reverse the trend toward athletic competition without honor or restraint. He is the president of Belmont Abbey College, a tiny Catholic school near Charlotte, a somewhat obscure starting point for a crusade to alter what seems to be an ingrained feature of the American character.

Yet Thierfelder has the credentials to lead such a campaign, with lifetime of success in a variety of athletic endeavors. He was a national champion high-jumper and two-time All-American at the University of Maryland. He has a doctorate in sports psychology and has worked with hundreds of professional athletes. While CEO, he restored the York Barbell Company to profitability.

Still, to change the mindset of the nation is going to be a tremendous uphill battle, given the pervasiveness of poor sportsmanship:

  • Penn State football coach Joe Paterno has long been heralded for his principled refusal to lower recruiting standards. Yet it appears that those standards have been dropped, since his recruits now fill the police blotters regularly for serious crimes such as rape and assault, even murder.
  • Duke University’s basketball fans have established the gold standard among college sports enthusiasts. They employ irritating and obnoxious tactics, sometimes clever and sometimes juvenile, to gain additional home court advantage for their team by distracting the opposition.
  • In 2006, a backup punter at Northern Colorado University, hoping to gain the starting position, stabbed his rival in his kicking leg.

Some motivation for his campaign came while watching overzealous parents and coaches at a son’s fifth-grade basketball game. His son’s team was obviously overmatched by a team from a much larger school. With two minutes to go and his son’s team trailing by 32 points, the other team’s coach was “jumping up and screaming ‘Press! Press!'”

“Guess what happens?” he asked. “They press, they steal the ball, they score again, they’re up by 34 points. And all the parents in the stands are screaming in praise of their superhuman athletes…and I’m thinking, ‘Am I in the Twilight Zone?'”

Thierfelder wants to reintroduce the concept of virtue into athletic competition, and he wants athletic training to become an integral part of educating a complete individual. He calls his movement “Sports Properly Directed.” The name comes from a speech by Pope Pius XII called “Sport at the Service of the Spirit,” which begins, “Sport, properly directed, develops character, makes a man courageous, a generous loser, and a gracious victor. It refines the senses, gives intellectual penetration and steels the will to endurance.”

He created a Web site, called ReclaimTheGame.com, and has established awards and scholarships. He is remolding the Belmont Abbey athletic program according to his vision. “When I look at coaches for Belmont Abbey, I’m looking for coaches who are teachers and mentors first. I hope they’re world class in their abilities to coach, but that’s not enough for me. I’m looking for somebody who recognizes that [he has] been entrusted with the mind, body, and soul of [the athlete].”

The task before him seems impossible: Americans seem to like their athletes behaving badly. The taunting, the showboating, and the self-congratulatory end-zone dances are often the things that make the highlight reels.

Yet Thierfelder is a difficult person to bet against, given his past successes. He might turn out to be only a modern-day Don Quixote, tilting his lance insignificantly at the vast world of sports and beyond. But perhaps his campaign will take hold and make us a better nation. Even if he merely makes Belmont Abbey the most civil campus in America, he will have at least demonstrated that sports and loutish behavior need not be partners.

Jay Schalin is a senior writer for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh.