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Legendary basketball coach John Wooden wrote in his memoirs, The Wisdom of Wooden, that his father was formative in instilling the values of sport and life.
“Basketball or any other sport can be great fun to play and entertaining to watch. However, it offers something more important. The lessons it provides—taught properly—apply directly to life. Many of those lessons are usually taught first by a good mother and father, but sports can help make them stick and add a few more.”
INTRODUCTION
Background
As the non-profit, independent entity recognized by Congress to administer the anti-doping program in the United States for the Olympic, Paralympic, and Pan Am Games sports, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s (USADA) mission is to preserve the integrity of competition, inspire a commitment to the core principles of true sport, and protect the rights of U.S. athletes to compete healthy and clean. USADA is equally dedicated to its four main areas of service: 1) the anti-doping testing and results management processes, 2) programs that deter and detect incidents of doping, 3) research that advances anti-doping science, and 4) education initiatives aimed at preventing doping altogether, rooted in building a culture of integrity and priceless life lessons learned through true sport.
Recognizing that doping, at its core, is not just a drug problem but also a values issue, USADA understands that cheating by doping is just one manifestation of a fundamental ethical problem—the willingness to win in sport at all costs. This attitude undermines the intrinsic value of sport, and all that it offers, and incurs serious health and social costs to all of those who participate. It is with this in mind that USADA envisions itself as a guardian of the values and life lessons learned through true sport.
The Value of Sport – A National Asset
We know that sport, at its best, can build character and promote the virtues of honesty, respect, selfless teamwork, dedication, and commitment to a greater cause. Sport lessons (good and bad) transcend the playing field, spilling over into the classroom, the business world, and the community, and contribute to shaping the character and culture of America’s citizens.
In acknowledging sport as a valuable national asset, we must be candid about the issues currently tearing at its fabric. There are those who place winning above all else and are willing to cheat for the sake of this goal. This willingness to prioritize winning, at the sacrifice of ethics and health, erodes our trust in sport and its inherent value. In the United States, there is no doubt that we face a doping problem. The question is, to what extent is this but one extreme symptom in our country of a greater epidemic—an ethics issue? As a nation, we should embrace the role that sport currently plays and can play in our society, and the issues it now faces, in order to determine how to ensure its enduring integrity and value.
Project & Objectives
In establishing a foundation for its educational footprint, USADA has implemented this research project in an effort to measure the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of the nation’s general population, as well as those of athletes competing in sport under the auspices of a national governing body [NGB], regarding the impact of sport in our society (see box). Due to the NGBs’ unique positions as regulatory and membership bodies, data from NGB participants is included to capture the formalized sport audience, which includes not only the most elite athletic levels of sanctioned competition, but also the developmental and organized youth programs for those who make sport a part of their lives. The results of this study will inform future education initiatives, serving USADA’s mission to inspire audiences about the values to be derived from a culture of true sport.
The survey was conducted by Discovery Education under its national research arm, on behalf of USADA, and as part of a partnership on the national USADA True Sport Awards program. Based on an online questionnaire, including closed-ended questions and open-ended input from youth as well as adult populations, the study looks at, among other things:
- participation levels nationwide,
- the values sport should reinforce versus those that it actually does,
- beliefs about issues/problems facing sport today,
- why people begin playing and conversely why they stop and when,
- what drives the pressure to cheat and the impact of the emphasis on winning,
- the responsibility sport figures have as role models, and
- whether sport is meeting society’s expectations.
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