Violence in Sports

By Gregory Cermignano
Associate Professor of Accounting and Business Law
Widener University School of Business Administration

Violence in sports. Often these terms seem synonymous. A basketball player for the Baylor University Women's basketball team recently was caught on tape throwing a punch at an opponent after the opponent seemed to pull her down. We all remember the incident with Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield's ear. In an NCAA Men's tournament game on Friday, a post player accidentally caused an opponent to need 6 stitches. This seemed to be an accident. However, are violent acts – both intentional and seemingly unintentional – symptoms of something more? Are they symptoms of the culture? Does this violent conduct help the sport financially? Does it sell more tickets? Does it convince people to tune in on their televisions more frequently? It seems that in many instances people attend sporting events because of the violence. A problem seems to be, however, that these athletes and this conduct affect our kids. Whether athletes like it or not, many of our kids seem to choose them as their role models. Should the courts then step in any more than they do and police this conduct? What would the sports world say about this? Would it affect ticket and merchandise sales if athletes always acted as model citizens? These are questions for thought that we can discuss over the next few days, especially as the NCAA tournament continues.