Today, Carolina Journal Radio’s Mitch Kokai talks with Dr. William Thierfelder, President of Belmont Abbey College. Dr. Thierfelder recently addressed the John Locke Foundation’s Shaftesbury Society on the topic, “Sport in Society: Reclaiming the Game.” (Go here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)
Kokai: One of the things that struck me as very interesting in this speech was the whole idea that sports, as they play out in American life, American society, are not exactly what they were really supposed to do.
Thierfelder: Yes. Part of it is that, as we were talking in that discussion, sport has lost — and that’s why I say “reclaim the game” — I think it’s lost, sort of its underpinnings as to what it was about at one time. And we may not have even articulated it really well. We may not have said, hey, in the past, sport was a means for developing virtue. But that’s what it was. And when we weren’t doing virtue, we also recognized that it wasn’t virtue; it was vice. And we’ve lost that to some degree. And so today, things are very self-focused and very “me” oriented, and that causes — to me it’s a loss in a sense that sport affects the entire world, we’re all affected by it in some way, and to let that go and to not have an impact, not to have an influence on the sport world in the way that I think it was designed to be, in terms of the idea of developing virtue — there’s something wrong with that. And we need to address that.
Kokai: One of the first points you made is that pro sports basically are the poster child of vice, and that it’s not limited only to pro sports now — that you could see some of these vices all the way down in the peewee leagues.
Thierfelder: Yeah. And I premise it first by saying many of the — a majority of pro athletes that I know — are good, solid men and women. You know, just like you’d say, hey, these would be fantastic friends to have. However, media and technology and the Internet — it has a powerful influence, and it can be expediential in its weight, you know, in terms of what it carries. And so unfortunately, the media tends to focus in on the vice, and it becomes almost [that] that’s what it is — you know, it is all about vice — when in fact, the underpinnings, most of the people, that’s not true. But once it takes off in the pro ranks — pride, anger, lust, gluttony, envy, sloth, we go through the seven deadly sins — what you’ll find is that it drifts down to college, and you start to see the attitudes there. And then you see those attitudes at high school. And eventually you see it down to the youth level, which I don’t know for anybody else, but it becomes pretty dramatic when you see it. You’re thinking, “How did this happen? We need to do something about that.”
Kokai: Your background is as an Olympian in sports, and you have dealt with athletes. Tell us a little bit about the way that you have seen the evils of sport in working with athletes.
Thierfelder: Well as you said, I started out, my own background — I competed in track and field, I was a Division I coach. And then most of the businesses I’ve been associated with over my career have involved sport in some way: sports medicine, sports law, sports business. And you know, all through the years, I saw something happening over time, and I think it’s cultural. You know, sport just really reflects, I think, more of what’s going on in the general culture. But this idea of, really, selfishness, self-oriented…it goes back to kind of a relativistic way of seeing life. That it’s just — hey, if it’s good for you, then it’s good for you, and, you know, truth is just all relative. And because of that, I said, I’ve got to do something about this. What can I do? I’m one person. I might not be able to do very much, but I’ve got to try to do something. So, at the college, we’ve tried to make that the foundation. I don’t know if you want me to share that quote [I mentioned in my speech].
Kokai: Sure.
Thierfelder: The foundation, I think, of all sport should be the quote I’m about to give you. And it goes like this: “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. It is not merely physical development then. Sport, rightly understood, is an occupation of the whole man. And while perfecting the body is an instrument of the mind, it also makes the mind itself a more refined instrument for the search and communication of truth. It helps man to achieve that end to which all others must be subservient — the service and praise of his Creator.” Now, that takes sport from this most generic idea, this environment, and takes it to the very highest level. That is what sports should really be about, and we’re not doing that. I’m saying, okay, let me say something about this. Let me try to make a statement that gets other people — who by the way, as you can see, most people come up and say, I completely agree, that’s true — but what are we doing about it? You know, we all just agree that it’s not a good thing, but we don’t touch it. And it’s too big. It’s too big not to do something about it. So, I created that Web site that I mentioned earlier, which is www.reclaimthegame.com. And on that [site] I have that quote. We created a scholarship, we have an award given out annually, and then I do a weekly podcast myself called “Playing With Fire.” And the idea in that podcast is to show that, when we talk about this idea of virtue in sport, it’s not an either/or. It’s not, well, we’re going to have really good athletes or really world-class performance. Or, on the other side, we’re going to have goody-two-shoes. No, I’m saying world-class performance is a virtue, but there’s a whole host of other virtues. And we should have an expectation that all of those virtues are being developed. That’s what a coach should be: a teacher and mentor first, who is trying to impart and help form young people and eventually older people, into becoming what I believe they’ve been called to be, which is what God suggests — to double our talents. And, hopefully, that’s what we can do.
Kokai: You were not reading that quote off a piece of paper. You know that quote. One of the things that you mentioned in your presentation to the John Locke Foundation’s Shaftesbury Society is that it would be a good thing for more people to know and understand and live by that quote you recited. Why is that true?
Thierfelder: Well, I think it goes back to the language of virtue. I mentioned that in the talk that I gave. We are not using the words of virtue. So the problem is, we can say, hey, you know, sports should be a means for developing virtue. Sounds nice. What exactly does that mean because, today, we don’t talk about virtue. What are the virtues? So again, earlier I mentioned some of them. You have the intellectual, the moral, theological virtues. You have justice, temperance, fortitude. You have ones [that are] kind of annexed under those — gratitude, religion, affability. I mean, we go through lists and lists of virtues, but we tend not to use those words. And not only are we not using the words, but then a virtue means the habit of doing good — not the thought of doing good — it’s actually the doing of the good that is a virtue. And so how is that being inculcated and exhibited in sport today? And so if we don’t talk about it, we have no chance. So, the quote at least draws us to the idea that virtue is an important thing. We start to understand what is meant by virtue, and then we start to say, well, how should it become manifest? How should we be able to see it in what we’re doing as athletes, as coaches, as parents, fans, whatever it might be.
Kokai: You gave several examples, so I’ll ask you to pick one example of a way in which sport could operate differently than it does now that would improve the game, either in the way the game is played or the way the athletes and coaches and parents approach it.
Thierfelder: Well, I guess one that just jumped into my head as you were asking it — I think again, too often we separate these things out, meaning this idea of virtue, and then the idea of performing. So even when you see an NFL game, you know after the game, you notice people will kneel down in the middle of the field if they choose to. They’ll go over and they’ll say a prayer. But there’s not this sense that that’s going on through the game. It’s almost like, well, we can do vice during the game, and then afterwards we’re all going to kneel down and do virtue. And, no, that’s not how it should work.
