Which is more important: to win or to play by the rules?

In sports from baseball to bicycling, a lot of effort goes into circumventing the rules. Golf is the only "pure" sport left as far as I'm concerned. Golfers are held to a level of sportsmanship that simply doesn't exist in other sports. A golfer who went into a tantrum a la Serena Williams or John McEnroe would never play in another PGA or LPGA event.
 

If you're playing a sport and you cheat to win, you didn't really win at the sport. You may have won the business end of it if you were paid a lot of money but not the sporting game. Like the trainer that cheated to give his horse an edge in the Kentucky Derby. The trainer has been suspended for two years, but as far as I know, the win stands, which isn't fair to the other horse owners. I'm sure the horses couldn't care less.

In business, you can cheat to win, and if you get caught, you just pay back a little of what you won and continue playing the game. It's pretty rare for someone to go to prison for white-collar crime.

The debate should be interesting. It's in seven days. I wonder if they're going to live stream it.
 
You know what is crazy is when we see videos of fathers attending Little League baseball or Pee Wee football games and they all run out on the field and start brawling with each other. I can't imagine what their kids think. I never gave a hoot about winning or losing. I just loved playing.
 
Last edited:
"Which is more important the chicken or the egg, (in the coming first department)"? :)
I'm in the learn to play the game well camp, rather than the winning at all costs camp, (as it were), though can see how professional sport can sometimes act against that ideal, and some pretty mean teams, pushing the rules to beyond breaking point, do succeed or even dominate some sports. However, even those teams get beat, and usually show they can accept defeat graciously. :)
 
In politics, sometimes the cheaters win, and then they claim that the ends justifies the means. Same with business where crime often pays and those who play by the rules get steamrolled. The rules are only enforced on the little guy because the rich have influence over law enforcement.

The debate is tomorrow, 7:00 central time. I still don't know if it's going to be livestreamed.
 
Last edited:
The debate was pretty lame and the audio sucked. I can understand having problems with video due to bandwidth issues with live streaming, and there were, but audio issues are inexcusable in this day and age. It sounded like they used the mic built into the camera instead of plugging into the PA mixer. WTF? That's just plain stupid.

Regarding the topic of debate, a factor in whether or not rules should be followed is, were they made by stupid people and are they nonsensical?

Many laws have been passed that are just plain stupid, like blue laws. In Colorado, there was a law that certain items couldn't be sold on Sundays, such as cooking utensils. I don't remember what else, but they used to partition off sections of grocery stores on Sundays so you couldn't access the items that weren't allowed to be sold. Joe Blow couldn't break the rules if you wanted to, but the grocers could have if they wanted to. I don't know if any did. That law was finally changed back in the '90s.

Then there are racist laws, like Jim Crow laws. People got the laws changed by breaking them.

It seemed like the general consensus, though, was that people should follow rules unless you feel they are unjust or immoral, in which case you break them and suffer the consequences. The problems arise when there are no consequences for breaking the rules, such as with a lot of Wall Street crimes and political crimes.

In other words, it wasn't a debate; it was an agreement. They should have had an anarchist presenting one side. That would have been more interesting.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top