Attend any high school basketball game, and you’re likely to experience the following cultural phenomenon: following a shot by a young player that misses the rim and backboard altogether, a considerable portion of the crowd—children and adults alike—join together with one common goal: to humiliate the young player, chanting “Airball!” at a deafening level.
When I bring this up in conversation, with an air of concern in my voice, people most often defend the practice. They do so with some version of cultural relativism along the lines of, “It’s just a part of basketball. It’s what’s done. Everyone does it.” It actually provides a great springboard for demonstrating the emptiness of relativism: At the time of slavery, that’s what everyone did. “It’s just what we do,” is relevant for an anthropologist who reports the practices of certain cultures. But the question of interest here is, “Should we do it?”
Should we aim to humiliate youth athletes (or any athletes, for that matter)? This seems like a rare instance in which we can all agree. Certainly, the burden of proof is on those who think we ought to belittle youth athletes. I’ve yet to encounter any argument worth considering.
And so, we can make some progress and do away with the “Airball!” chant. If you feel the need to yell something, how about yelling, in that rhythmic fashion so common to crowd cheers, That’s good De-fense! [clap, clap, clap-clap-clap].
From here, we encounter the potential slipperiness of determining which cheers pass the ethics test. It turns out, there’s a pretty simple principle that we can apply:
Cheer only to celebrate your team and/or the successes of the athletes.
This prevents us from having to consider the multitude of chants on a case-by-case basis. It rules out chants that highlight players’ personal lives, their failures on the court, and anything aimed at humiliating someone and causing him to fail. Instead, it turns our focus to all that is good in sport and allows us to celebrate the successes and the athletes.
At the school where I teach, we strive to adhere to this principle (implicitly, at least). It creates a tremendous environment for all attending while still adding that sense of support to our teams—even more so, as our athletes know that their school is explicitly focused on them, versus on mocking and demeaning the competitor.
At our Homecoming water polo match a few years back, we were losing at halftime by 4 goals. The student section chanted: “I…I believe…I believe that…I believe that we…I believe that we will win!…I believe that we will win!…” It was a powerful moment for my players (and myself)—to see their classmates backing them, putting themselves out there, and literally sharing in their belief in our team. We ended up winning the game, and I have no doubt this played a role in that outcome.
Being a fan, we tend to get carried away at sporting events—this is part of the fun of fanaticism. Letting the mentality of the mob take you over provides part of the rush that fanatics enjoy. Imagine the joy experienced at a European Soccer Match, belting out “Ole, ole, ole, ole!” along with 100,000 other impassioned comrades. Though, clearly, the mob can also ignite one’s fanaticism negatively, causing us to behave in ways we would otherwise wouldn’t: where else would we band together to mock a child for failing?
Aligning our values with our actions rarely presents a challenge—failing to do so here would be the moral equivalent of basketball’s “Airball.” That’s Good Lo-gic [clap, clap, clap-clap-clap].
