Sports Participation: Gambling Situations and Learning Opportunities:
An Exploratory Investigation
Funded by: The Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre.
Submitted by: Glen Markle, PhD The Ontario Skills Training Group.
February 17, 2003.
TABLE of CONTENTS Pages 1.0 INTRODUCTION 4 1.1 Background to the Project: Some Working Assumptions 4 1.2 Project Goals and Deliverables: Revised 4
2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW: Report 5 2.1 General Concepts and Propositions: A Sociological Perspective 5 2.1.1 Self-Concept and Social Roles 5 • Self-Concept, Identity, and Self-Esteem 7 • Roles and Situations 7 • Role Salience 7 2.1.2 Development of Self-Concept: Socialization –a Learning Process 8 • Role Acquisition, Role Content, Significant Others 8 • Risk and the Risk Society 10 • Social Function of Games and Sports 12 2.1.3 Self-Concept and Motivation 14 • Self-Efficacy or Agency 14 • Self-Esteem and Self Presentation 15 • Consistency 16 • Self-Actualization 17 2.2 Sports Evidence: Self-Concept and Gambling 18 2.2.1 Sports Participation and Socialization 18 • Learning versus Selection 18 • Significant Others: Coaches and Media 20 • Levels of Participation: Elite Athletes and Expert Fans 21 2.2.2 Sports Identity, Salience, and the Motivation to Gamble 23 • The Work of Professor T.J. Curry: Ohio State University 23 • Figure 1: Role-Identity, Role-Performance Model 26
3.0 EXPERT INTERVIEWS: Report 27 3.1 The Experts and the Interview 27 3.1.1 Question 1a: Summary 29 Question 1b: Summary 30 3.1.2 Question 2: Summary 30 3.1.3 Question 3: Summary 34 3.1.4 Question 4: Summary 35 3.1.5 Question 5:Summary 36 3.1.6 Question 6: Summary 37 3.1.7 Question 7: Summary 38
4.0 WORKING ASSUMPTIONS: A Revised Perspective 39
5.0 THE MEASUREMENT of RISK: Additional Considerations 40 5.1 Brief History of Alternative Approaches 40 • Rational Model 42 • Discourse Model 42 • Nominal Model 42
2 • Perceptions Model 43 . Intuitive Approach 43 . Choice-Theoretic Approach 45 5.2 Application of Perceptions Model: An Operational Protocol 47 • Sports Risk Management Situational Choice Inventory 47 • Sports Risk Management Situational Assessment Inventory 49
6.0 FUTURE PROJECT PROPOSALS 50 6.1 Testing The Revised Perspective 50 • Measurement Instruments • Male Athletes: Role –Identities and Gambling 6.2 Coaches and Health Promoting Schools: 50 A Healthy Life Style Program 6.3 Sports Media in Relation to Sports Participation and Gambling 51 6.4 The Gambling Culture of the Sports Pub 51 6.5 Women Athletes and Gambling: Changing Role Perspectives
7.0 BUDGET SUMMARY 52
8.0 APPENDIX 1: Bibliography 53
9.0 APPENDIX 2: Interview Protocol and Transcripts 63
10.0 APPENDIX 3: Sports Identities Index 144
3 1.0 INTRODUCTION
It has been well documented that males are more likely to become problem gamblers than are females; it has also become increasingly evident that young male athletes might have an even greater propensity to become problem gamblers than do male non-athletes.
The Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre has provided a funding incentive to begin to explore a social learning approach to understanding this issue; that is, that gambling behaviours, risk-taking, and risk management might be learned through intensive and extensive participation in sports activities. Such activities then become a meaningful opportunity for appropriate prevention intervention.
1.1 Background to the Project: Some Working Assumptions
The Introduction to the proposal for this funding grant outlined the following working assumptions as guideline directions for exploration:
• In all cultures, sports and games model values and roles instrumental for everyday living. • In modern cultures, some of these roles and values played out in sports and games have to do with competition and achievement via knowledge/ skills and risk-taking- or gambling. • To the extent that competitive sports events provide various gambling situations and opportunities to take risks or not during the emergent play action, participation in them also provides an opportunity to learn to manage risk and to incorporate the role of risk-taker/gambler into the self-concept or identity. • Gambling and risk-taking by athletes outside the sports event might be explained by an individual propensity for self-presentation and maintenance; that is, athletes with a heightened gambling/risk-taking identity will actively seek out opportunities to demonstrate their risk taking and management competence.
1.2 Project Goals and Deliverables: Revised
In the original proposal “gambling situation” was a key concept. Consequently, the goals of the project were stated in terms of developing an operational protocol for defining gambling situations in sports events and for testing the protocol with a small sample of experts, players, and spectators.
Feedback from the review team at OPGRC questioned the inclusion of spectators at this time in the model and recommended that the project investigate not just “defining” gambling situations in sports events but also how to begin to “measure” these gambling situations. Accordingly, the literature review should also be expanded to investigate how risk has been measured. The investigator replied that interviews could be used to begin to describe gambling
4 situations and various response options and that appropriate statistical item analyses might be the subject of a future grant.
Accordingly, the revised goals of the project are:
• To report on attempts to substantiate the above working assumptions via literature review and select expert interviews. • To produce an operational protocol for measuring gambling situations in sports events.
2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW: Report
2.1 General Concepts and Propositions: A Sociological Perspective
Bio-psychological factors, “sensation-seeking” for example, do have utility for explaining a propensity to take risks and to gamble (Zukerman, 167, 168). However, Cooper, et al (33) concluded that their motivational model, which included personality and affect regulatory processes provided a highly general but incomplete account of risky behaviours. Such bio-psychological predispositions have limited power to explain the enormous variety of ways that individuals might express their gambling behaviours (Donnelly, 46). Gambling and risk-taking behaviour do occur in a context in which cultural values and socio-structural networks and opportunities all factor in on the individual decision process (Dickson, et al, 42). “ Risk is whatever is defined as risky at a particular time, in a particular place, by a particular group of people” ( Frey, 59, p139) Notwithstanding the ultimate potential for a comprehensive bio-psycho- sociological theory of human motivation (Gove, 76), this discussion will focus on the more limited part that sociology might play in our understanding of gambling behaviour among male athletes. A bibliography of literature reviewed for this report is reproduced as Appendix 1.
2.1.1 Self-Concept and Social Roles
For sociologists, gambling among male athletes might be investigated at three levels of analysis: culture, structure, and the person or self. (See Hays(80) for an attempt to clarify ambiguities among these levels.) It is the self that corresponds to personality for psychologists and it is at this level of investigation that sociologists might seek to understand the individual athlete’s motivation to gamble.
Gecas (65) has provided a comprehensive overview of the self-concept. There is a fundamental distinction between the concepts of “self” and “self-concept”. The distinction corresponds to two major schools of thought within the Symbolic Interactionist tradition in sociology: the Processual Interactionists and the Structural Interactionists. According to Gecas (65, p3.), the self, as process, “…is the process of reflexivity which emanates
5 from the dialectic between the I and Me”, and it is this reflexivity “…that develops in social interaction and is based on the social character of human language.” Furthermore, the self “…is itself not accessible to empirical investigation” (Gecas, 80, p3.)
For Structuralists, on the other hand, the self-concept “… is a product of this reflexive activity. It is the concept that the individual has of himself as a physical, social, and spiritual or moral being” (Gecas, 65, p3.) It is the self-concept, moreover, which is subject to empirical investigation via measurement and testable propositions.
More concretely, according to Turner (155, p2.), the person-the self- concept-“…consists of all the roles in an individual’s repertoire…” and “… is best described in terms of the roles that are still played when not called for and that color the way in which other roles are played.” Borrowing from Turner, Gordon (75, 405.) states that “roles are among the most basic structural components of both social systems and personal systems: the value aspects of roles connect person to culture, the normative aspects of roles provide motivation to conduct and structure to social action and the sense-making or interpretive aspects of roles determine much of personal cognition, attitudinal predispositions, memories, and plans.”
For Structuralists, then, the individual person or self-concept is constructed of social roles and it is this concept of role that links the person to social structure and to culture and that is amenable to empirical investigation. From a sociological perspective, to begin to understand the motivation to gamble and take risks among male athletes is to first conceptualize these behaviours in terms of role enactment or role performance (Gordon, 75, p405 distinguishes enactment as expected or normative behaviour and performance as actual behaviour) and as structural components of the athlete’s self-concept; that is, one might conceptualize a sports role and a general risk-manager role as structural components of the athlete’s self concept. In Turner’s terms (155, p2), one will also be interested in being able to investigate the extent to which one or both roles are played out even when not called for and how they colour the ways that other roles are played.
• Self-Concept , Identity, and Self-Esteem
Gecas(65, p4) defines the concept of “identity” as focusing “…on the meanings comprising the self as object, giv(ing) structure and content to self-concept, and anchor(ing) the self to social systems”. Callero(22, p486) talks about the “…meaning of self-in-role as one’s role identity” and (Callero, 23, p239)“when roles are used to define self and other…refer to such roles as identities.” One can
6 conceive of the athlete as having both a sports role-identity and a risk-manager role-identity.
Self-esteem has to do with the evaluative and emotional dimensions of self- concept (Gecas (65, P4). Most simplistically, the distinction between identities and self-esteem, as dimensions of self-concept, might be considered in terms of “what I think about who I am” and “what I feel about who I am”. The athlete might define himself as both an athlete/football player and as a gambler; and he might feel more or less favourably about himself in each role-identity.
• Roles and Situations
What the concept of role is to Structural Interactionists, the concept of situation is to the Processual Interactionists (Gecas, 65). (See Gonos, (74) for a discussion on situation versus frame, a variation in concept employed by the Goffman school of Interactionists). Both role identity and situation refer to the context in which meanings are defined and negotiated as consensual bases for action and interaction. Yet, they are not simply different labels for the same underlying concept. Gecas (65, p11) says that “the construction of identities for self and others in the situation is always a problematic activity based on a tenuous consensus of the participants. Role-taking becomes an important cognitive activity in this dialectal process.” According to Turner (155, p1) some roles might be “… put on and taken off like clothing without lasting personal effect. Other roles are difficult to put aside when a situation is changed…” “The question is whether the attitudes and behavior developed as an expression of one role carry over into other situations” (Turner 155, p1).
One’s definition of the situation, then, provides cues as to whether or not to enact a role as an expression of one’s identity.
• Role Salience
Whether or not a specific role identity will be enacted in a given situation depends to an important extent on the “salience” of that role within the overall constellation of roles in the individual’s self-concept. “Typically…the organization attributed to a self constructed of multiple identities (or role-identities) is hierarchical…Various identities thus are organized by the probability of their being invoked in a given situation or in a series of situations” (Stryker 143, p17). Stryker provides the example of lecturing as a behaviour which reflects an identity linked to the role of professor. Lecturing one’s children then is evidence of the salience of a professorial identity. To the extent that the athlete self-concept is constructed of both sports and risk-manager role- identities, then according to Stryker’s proposition each should be in a hierarchical relation to each other and to other roles. In fact, one might also conceptualize some of the components of each role-identity as overlapping in their applicability to different situations. This relative saliency of role-identities
7 implicates the probability of role enactment in different situations. For example, one might hypothesize that a salient sports role –identity, with competitive win at all cost value orientations, will carry over in to other situations, such as vocational roles and choices; similarly, one might hypothesize that a salient risk manager role-identity with gambling as a value orientation might be implicated in recreational or leisure roles and choices. Competition and gambling as salient overlapping value orientations, might find application in a variety of situations.
Stryker states that “…the relative salience of identities is a function of commitment to the roles to which the identities are attached. Commitment…is defined by the social and personal costs entailed in no longer fulfilling a role based on a given identity. These costs are understood as a function of the strength of ties to others in social networks, to which one relates by virtue of playing a role and having an identity.” (143, p19) These ties can be interactional and affective . Hence, one is interested in the nature of the athlete’s social networks and the extent to which they overlap with sports and gambler friends and significant others performing dual membership roles.
2.1.2 Development of Self-Concept: Socialization–a Learning Process
The development of self-concept, or more specifically the acquisition of role- identities, and self -esteem, and the organization of role-identities into a salience hierarchy frame of reference, is a life-long learning process, termed socialization by sociologists. Socialization occurs both in the on-going interactions of everyday living and through more explicit initiatives. (Gordon,75; Gecas, 65; Demo, 41; Thornton, et al, 150).
• Role Acquisition , Role Content, Significant Others
Gordon (75, p409) has produced a stage-development model of the contemporary life cycle ( of urban, white, middleclass Americans). The model covers the individual life cycle from infancy to disability/death and describes the most important significant others at each role stage and the major value-theme dilemmas that are held “… to characterize the person’s most important role relationships and probable self-conceptions.” (Gordon,75, p408). What is particularly interesting about the model is that it depicts the most general value theme as a bipolar dichotomy between Security and Challenge and describes more specific interpretations for these two value themes at each stage in the cycle. According to Gordon (75, p409), “…traditional American culture has trained females to focus on …” security values or orientations. For males, on the other hand, the socialization effort has been more concerned with“…some version of adventurous, competitive, and thus risky challenge.”(Gordon, 75, p 409). Gordon also comments that “with the event of the women’s liberation movement, both sexes are slowly but perceptively learning to handle both sides of
8 these value dilemmas, and thus are becoming more complete persons.” (Gordon, 75, p409). Presumably then, as the infant matures, the actual relative outcome of the value dilemma for both males and females will fall somewhere in between, depending on the relative influence of the significant others, and other circumstances.
At infancy (0-12 months), for example, the principal significant other involved with the socialization effort is the mother; for females, the major specific security value has had to do with affect gratification; for males, the major specific challenge value has to do with sensorimotor experiencing. A particular father who is actively involved with his infant daughter at this stage might conceivably have more influence in promoting sensorimotor experiences with his daughter.
As the infant matures, additional significant others begin to play a role in the socialization process, first the father, then other family siblings and playmates. In later childhood, (6-11) when many youth are beginning to become actively involved in organized sports, one notes that teachers (one also includes coaches) become involved as significant others. At this stage, the major specific security value for females has to do with peer relationships; for males, the major specific challenge value has to do with evaluated abilities.
It seems evident that as the infant matures and additional significant others are added to the socialization mix, then these significant others might have more or less importance in their influences on the socialization process ( See Hoelter, 84; Wade, 160).
What is particularly interesting in Gordon’s model is the inclusion of a specific variant of risky challenge at each stage of socialization for males (in traditional Western cultures). Hargreaves et al (78) has linked the development of risk- taking in children to reformulations of Piaget’s learning stage theory and Wade(160) has investigated the relative importance of various significant others on the risky behaviors of youth. To the extent that Gordon’s comprehensive developmental model, which outlines a risky challenge for males at each stage, has empirical validity, then one begins to have a better focus for understanding the repeated finding that males gamble more than females. Gender is a proxy variable; but it does appear to correlate with some significant socialization differences for males and females quite possibly having to do with the acquisition of risk values and a risk role-identity. According to Mitchell, et al (113, p220) “…masculine identity is frequently imbibed with risk…Young men are viewed as archetypal risk takers and…actively pursue risk and risk taking as a means of achieving pleasure, excitement and status among peers.” Frey(59, p140) also has noted that “ risk is an integral part of North American value structure and normative behavior. Risk-taking has generally been valued positively; and it has been very much a part of the definition of what is masculine, particularly if
9 risk action was taken in the pursuit of success, achievement, and upward mobility. In sport, taking risks to win is more highly valued than playing it safe.”
However, notable in its exclusion from Gordon’s list of significant others is the impact of mass media. Whether or not the mass media have been considered within traditional sociological theories to belong in this category, Short (130, p 720) has commented that “the influence of mass media on public perceptions of risks has been much discussed but little researched, and existing models of media effects have not been applied to this area…the media constitute a powerful force for value and behavior change.” Gamson, et al (64) has provided a thorough overview of the impact of mass media on the social construction of reality, that is, on the social construction of meaning. D’Angelo (39) concluded that the media contribute to sports gambling. More recently, McMullan, et al (111, p346) concluded from their study that “…the content of news sources by corporate and state managers were ideological insofar as they filtered definitions of gambling, screened out counter-narratives on the topic, determined what was socially thinkable about the issue, and used their elevated positions in a hierarchy of credibility to promote and legitimate their expansionary agendas.”
Clearly, as the infant matures and begins to attend to cartoon shows, action heroes, video games, sports events, and the everyday news reports of wars and tragic disasters, there are cumulative effects on the meanings of risk in relation to one’s role-identities.
• Risk and the Risk Society ` Over the last twenty years Sociologists have awakened to the need to include the concept of risk more formally within Sociological theory. In a 1984 Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association Short (130) reviewed the history of risk analysis and Sociology’s relation to it. He also provided suggestions for the development of the Sociology of risk. A few years later, Heimer (81, p491) commented that “…until quite recently no sociology of risk existed, in the sense of a community of scholars in dialogue with one another.” Her contribution to the cause has been a review of what experimental psychologists have done to investigate how people estimate risks and make risky choices.
Since then the concept of Risk Society has generated considerable critical debate. Among the most important writers are: Beck (9,10,11), Giddens (68,69,70), Douglas (48,49,50,51), Luhmann (1993), and Lupton(1999, 2002). One of the principal implications of this body of work is that “… as a consequence of the uncertainties of modern life, all individuals have become reflexive risk managers with the primary aim of minimizing danger…thinking in terms of risk assessment is a more or less ever present exercise.’’(Donnelly, 46, p16) Mitchell, et al (113) comment that “…risk-taking, risk management and how we talk about risk are an important part of our identity formation/reformation within late modernity”(p220)…and… “Everyday life is a complex interaction of active risk
10 taking and risk management. To be a normal young man in…requires the development of appropriate risk management strategies” (p 227). The notion that one must always be thinking in terms of risk assessment (as a more or less ever present exercise) would appear to have certain implications in terms of role- identity. The role-identity of risk manager becomes a salient cross-gender byproduct of post-modern everyday living.
One of the principal criticisms of this orientation is, of course, the assumption that risk is by nature hazardous and to be avoided (See Cieslik (27) and Turner (153) for brief recent summaries of criticism). In fact, individuals voluntarily do take risks. Interestingly, one of the earlier theorists on voluntary risk-taking, in coining the concept of ”edgework” has linked it as a response to the alienating circumstances of modern employment-deskilled, routine and bureaucratized jobs characterized by the absence of spontaneity and of control. (Lyng, 107)
In short, while the post-modernists start from the position of everyday-life as being inherently risky with danger everywhere to be avoided, the voluntary risk- takers start from the position that much of everyday life is boring and routine and that voluntary risk-taking provides some compensatory relief. Both orientations would appear to have empirical validity, in some circumstances. For purposes here, however, this apparent contradiction does underline the increasing salience or significance of risk in our collective and individual identities; the concept of risk manager as a label needs to be expanded, nevertheless, to encompass both a play-safe/calculated risk-taker role-identity perspective and a gambler/ risk-seeker role-identity perspective. One question is whether individuals develop the capacity to enact either aspect depending on the demands of a specific situation; or whether, most individuals develop one of these aspects as a more salient role-identity to be enacted across a variety of situations. A second question is just how the risk-manager role-identity might overlap with a sports role-identity in the individual’s salience hierarchy.
• Social Function of Games and Sports
In summary, we currently live in a risk society with evident consequences for the construction of role-identities with risk management- an awareness and capacity to make choices between risk aversion and risk seeking-as a salient component; it is a society in which traditional socialization training has presented males with some specific variants on a risky-challenge value orientation, and in which mass media shape values toward risk and gambling via their constant bombardment of messages, advertising, and reportage.
In addition to these general and pervasive influences, one needs also to investigate the specific social function that play and participation in sport and games might have in constructing not only sport role-identities but also self- concepts with a salient risk-manager role identity.
11
According to Stone(140, p9), “it is the task of society to make the lives of its members meaningful. This is accomplished by bringing little children into a meaningful communication with adults and one another, and at the same time, by establishing their selves as objects so they can refer the other objects of their worlds to such established selves, thereby imbuing these worlds with significance. Play has a major part in the accomplishment of these tasks.”
Avedon and Sutton-Smith elaborate on what they term the sociogenic approach to the function of play, games and sport. “The emphasis is on the preparatory or training value of games” (5, p432) and “…games have empirical connections with antecedent states of anxiety… (induced by child training processes)…and with general cultural variables for which they might be thought to be a preparation.” (5, p433) (Avedon (4), Caillois(21), and Redl, et al( 120), have written on the dimensions and structure of games. ) In summarizing the empirical results of extensive cross-cultural investigations by Roberts and Sutton-Smith, Avedon and Sutton-Smith have made several generalizations relating the structure of games to a large number of cultural variables (5, pp 433-437):
• In cultures with games of chance, these games “…appeared to flourish in the presence of environmental, individual, and social uncertainty… a game of chance appeared to be a way of making up one’s mind, with the help of benevolent Fate, when life conditions were sufficiently uncertain that one had no better instrumental procedures for decision making.” Proponents of the Risk Society might inevitably predict a proliferation of such games of chance in the post- modern era. • In cultures with games of strategy, “…there were larger settlements, more complicated subsistence patterns, higher technology, higher levels of political integration, jurisdiction, social stratification…” In these more complex cultures “…it is not hard to envisage games of strategy as forms of social-system learning…” • The most complex industrial cultures possessed games of physical skill, chance, and strategy where “… the antecedent conditions for involvement in both chance and strategy appeared to be present.” • In summary, these findings “…make it difficult to resist the view that the games are embedded in macroscopic control systems; that games of physical skill still exist because of the role they play in cultural hunting and warfare (See (157) for a recent account of sport and games in Afghan culture), that games of chance exist because of the role they play in cultural divinatory decision-making processes, and games of strategy exist because of the role they play in cultural strategic decision making. The game is an expression of the larger system and perhaps a formative part of it also. • From such findings Roberts and Sutton-Smith presented their conflict- enculturation theory of games. According to this theory”…the motivation for game playing is the presence in the player of anxieties and conflicts induced by antecedent child training processes. The game is enjoyable to the player because it
12 consists in a symbolic statement of these conflicts, and because in the course of the buffered learning that the game provides, the player develops confidence and competence to handle the real life situations toward which the original anxieties point.”
It is important to note that these studies did not demonstrate cause and effect; they did not demonstrate that child training did induce game choices and participation; they did not demonstrate that game participation actually did prepare children for adult roles. In short they did not demonstrate any systematic connections between game playing and specific role-identity development (called “psychogenesis” by the authors ) and between game playing and adult skills or role performance (called “sociogenesis”).
On the other hand, since this research was conducted some forty years ago, there has been a significant investment in the production and consumption of learning games for use in education, business, and the military. Perhaps this lends credence to a belief in the efficacy of games and sport as vehicles for socialization which has been merely difficult to demonstrate with scientific rigor. Smith, et al (135, p124-126) have commented on a number of points bearing on this discussion of the socialization function of play and games in relation to gambling behaviours:
• “Often the games we play mirror, if only obliquely, our real lives, and in the context of play the suspense, conflict, and uncertainty of life becomes easier to manage.” • “…the ritualized play of several childhood games provides training for future gambling activity and in some cases may be seen as a kind of gambling in itself.” • “The combination of competition and chance, skill and luck, is characteristic of the games played by most Americans.” • “While young females play roles of cooperative and caring responsibility in many of their games, young males act out patterns of competitive and daring achievement, as can be seen in the popularity of athletics among boys.” • “Perhaps the idea of competition, influenced by varying degrees of skill tempered by chance, accounts for the popularity of certain gambling-like games among young boys and for the prevalence of gambling behavior among adult males.”
2.1.3 Self-Concept and Motivation
In summary, to this point we have briefly outlined a sociological perspective on the individual male athlete and gambling by discussing the sociologist’s approach to personality, namely self-concept and some of the related key concepts of role-identity and role salience. We have also explored some of the developmental socialization processes as ways and means to the acquisition of roles in the social construction of the person. In that exploration we touched on some of the processes by which risk-management –play–safe/calculated risk taking and gambling/ risk-seeking might become part of the salience hierarchy of individual role-identities.
13
In an attempt to understand male athletes in relation to gambling and risk in general, we need also to consider how sociologists approach motivation via the self-concept. According to Gecas (65, p17), there are three major motives associated with the self-concept: self-efficacy or agency, self-esteem or self- enhancement, and consistency.
• Self-Efficacy or Agency
That the self is an actor or originating agent as well as a reactor is crucial to the fundamental experience of self, these active properties being attributed historically within the Processual school of Symbolic Interactionism to the”I” aspect of the self. (Gecas, 65, p18). “The I is the locus of the creative, spontaneous, impulsive actions of the individual” (Lyng, 109, p 877). Apparently it is the notion of reflexivity, expressed as an internal “I-Me” dialogue or control- system enabling the self to take “… account not only of feedback about the self from the social environment, but also of self-views already incorporated into the identity standard.” (121, p61), which is the essence of agency.
According to Callero (23, p230) “the complaint that role theory is over deterministic and cannot account for personal agency is also a traditional criticism of structural conceptualizations of role…and so by refocusing role as resource “…roles now become a vehicle for agency.” In responding also to this traditional over-socialized concept of the person, Hays((80, 62) states that “…people are not mere automatons habitually following a precise and all-encompassing pattern dictated by social structure. In this sense, agency always implies that an array of alternative forms of behavior are possible, and that people make (conscious or unconscious) choices among those alternatives.” Agency or self-efficacy as the capacity to make choices focuses then on two central propositions: persons seek to create and maintain stable and coherent identities; and persons seek to maintain and enhance their self-images, preferring to evaluate themselves positively ( Elliott, 54; Robinson, et al, 123), “These two strivings are considered by many to be the central forces operating in the individual’s motivational system.” (54, p 207) “Although self-esteem and self-consistency are both important aspects of the self-concept, there is good theoretical reason to posit primacy for self- esteem…Empirical evidence for the primacy of the self-esteem is also available.”(54, 208)
• Self–Esteem and Self-Presentation
In Goffman’s (73) theory of self-presentation one is most interested to present to oneself and others a desired identity. According to Birrell ( 15, p365), “in action situations, when the interaction ritual is public, the actor generates character which reflects not only on self but has social significance because it reflects the values of the community. Such a situation exists in sporting events witnessed by
14 the public. In many situations, as in sport, assessment of character focuses on characteristics highly prized in the particular situation”…and in modern cultures.
Holtgraves (87, p79) states that “self-presentation may be a motivation to gamble to the extent that the activity of gambling implicates a desirable identity. Gambling is a form of risk-taking and tends to be valued within our culture; “…individual’s are concerned with presenting themselves as slightly risky…”(80. p 80) In Holtgrave’s review, according to Goffman it is only fateful activities (risk taking in general and gambling in particular) that can allow for the expression of character. “…it is only when the outcomes of an activity are consequential and problematic that character judgements are possible…Some of the bases for strong character implications in all fateful situations are courage, gameness, integrity and composure.”
Birrell and Holtgraves suggest that sports and gambling both provide opportunities to present role-identities and to have character-courage, gameness, integrity, composure –evaluated by self and others. The act of losing in both gambling and sports illustrates these opportunities to demonstrate character. ( Ball (8) reviews consequences of failure in sport in light of Goffman and others and Holtgraves also discusses how gamblers display character, even while losing (87, pp86-88) ).
• Consistency
Stryker (143) employs the concept of identity salience to support the prediction of choices that persons will make among behavioural options linked to alternative social roles. Leary, et al (100, p17), found support in two studies for the proposition “…that people prefer to engage in behaviors consistent with the salient aspects of their identities…” and that they “… play an active role (agency) in maintaining their identities through their choices of lines of action and the situations in which those behaviors are played out.” In the one study, Leary constructed indices to measure relative salience of personal and social identities in order to predict preferences for occupations with either personal rewards or socially relevant job outcomes. In their second study, they predicted that individuals high in personal identity salience would prefer individual sports as recreational activities; conversely, individuals high in social identity salience would prefer team sports as recreational activities.
Callero (22), has tested and found support for a number of propositions linking role-identity and role salience to role performance or behaviour:
• There was a positive correlation between the meaning of self-in-role (role-identity) and the relative salience of the role. • There was a positive correlation between the meaning of self-in-role and the number of interpersonal relationships contingent upon performance in the role.
15 • There was a positive correlation between the meaning of self-in-role and the expectations of others. • There was a positive correlation between the meaning of self-in-role and behaviour that defines the role (time spent/frequency).
An immediate implication for these findings concerns whether they have been or might be replicated in the areas of concern to this investigation; that is, with respect to athlete role-identities, social networks for interaction, internalization of the expectations of significant others, affect gratification, and actual gambling role enactment or performance (See Curry, et al 34, 35, 36, 37: to be discussed.)
• Self-Actualization
The above discussion on the motivational attributes of the self-concept has mainly to do with the maintenance of thoughts and feelings about self, about actively seeking ways to reinforce and protect established notions. The literature on voluntary risk-taking suggests, however, that individuals are also motivated to test established boundaries about themselves and others, to experiment, to recreate identities. According to Lyng , (107, p878), there are reports of “…feelings of self-determination and self-actualization …by people involved in all types of edgework.” “…people feel self-actualized when they experience a sense of direct person authorship in their actions, when their behavior is not coerced by the normative or structural constraints of their social environment.”…the idea of self-actualization serves to designate the essential condition of the edgework experience.”( Lyng’s analysis and coining of the term “edgework” is based on his investigation of the culture of sky divers).
Chantal, et al (26), found that persons with a high self-determined motivational profile, who engage in gambling for fun and a sense of choice, will also report a higher degree of gambling involvement.
According to Lyng (107, 872), moreover, “…when factors traditionally associated with skill situations (choice, familiarity, involvement, and competition) are introduced into chance settings, actors develop an illusion of control-that is, they behave as if they could exercise control over events that are actually chance determined…there is a motivation to master one’s environment, and a complete mastery would include the ability to beat the odds, that is to control chance events. The more difficult a problem is, the more competent one feels in being able to resolve it. The greatest satisfaction or feeling of competence would therefore result from being able to control the seemingly uncontrollable.”
In their investigation of the meanings that voluntary risk –takers give to their activities, Lupton, et al (106, p115) comment that it is often pursued “… for the sake of facing and conquering fear, displaying courage, seeking excitement and thrills and achieving self-actualization and a sense of personal
16 agency. It may also serve as a means of conforming to gender attributes that are valued by the participants, or, in contrast as a means of challenging gender stereotypes that are considered restrictive and limiting of one’s agency or potential.”
According to Lyng (107, p 872), however, edgeworkers have an aversion to gambling. “Since a pure gamble is an entirely chance determined enterprise, it holds little attraction for edgeworkers because it offers no opportunity for exercising control over the outcome…gambling cannot provide the illusion of control that is a key feature of edgework” (Lyng, 107, p872). Sports competition, on the other hand, would appear to provide athletes with the opportunity to self- actualize. Athletes who participate in individual and team competitions are keenly aware of the magic and euphoria that comes from realizing potential-the “sweet shot”, the “perfect pass”, the “world record”, the team championship.
One last point on this discussion on the motivational aspects of self-concept in relation to gambling and risk-taking in general is that motivation becomes internalized as motive statements and part of a role-identity. “If this identity is salient to the definition of one’s self…then these vocabulary- of- motive items may become influential as reflexive guides to future role selection and enactment.” (Curry, et al, 37, p258). For the scientific investigator such reasons given become the operational basis for inferring motivations about self-esteem maintenance, role-identity consistency, and self-actualization.
2.2 Sports Evidence: Self-Concept and Gambling
2.2.1 Sports Participation and Socialization
• Learning Versus Selection
There is some evidence to suggest that actual participation in sports functions as a vehicle for socialization. Dubois (52) employed a longitudinal research design to investigate changes in value orientations due to participation in league soccer play for instructional and competitive players. There were initial differences in value orientations between the two levels, none of which reflected an orientation to risk-taking versus playing safe, and some support for the socialization hypothesis that active participation in sports can change values. However, Dubois (52, 40) concludes somewhat ambivalently that “a test of the interaction and selection theories found that both appeared to be useful in explaining the differences in value orientations between the two groups of players and among players over time. However …support for the selection theory must be considered tentative at best.”
17 Donnelly, et al (47) has discussed the construction and confirmation of identity in sport subcultures, proposing a four stage contingency model: presocialization, selection and recruitment, socialization, and finally acceptance/ostracism. According to Donnelly, et al (47, p225), “before more accurate identity construction can occur, an individual must actually become a member of a specific sub-culture…socialization is an initially active but on-going stage wherein members undergo training in the characteristics of the sub-culture. They soon discover whether early conceptions of the subculture developed during the presocialization stage are accurate or misplaced. Members learn to adopt the values and perspectives of the group, taking on new roles and modifying others, and thus establishing valuable new identifications with the values and symbols of the group as a whole. In turn, these mechanisms function to cement in the actor a new concept of self, one that will continue to develop and guide the actor in his or her new substantial career.”
Frey (61) is most adamant about the primacy of selection over socialization effects. “…very strong societal support exists for sport participation because the belief that sport teaches proper values such as self-discipline, sportsmanship, and an appreciation for hard work, competition, and goal attainment…But despite strong cultural beliefs, there is little evidence to support the claims made for the contribution of sport to the socialization process…Athletes and non-athletes are comparable on various personality traits and value orientations. Sport participation has no general effect on self-image…The widespread conclusion …is that when an apparent socialization effect is found, it is usually the result of a selection process that attracts and retains children and youth in sport who already have or are comfortable with the values and behavioral traits that coaches demand and that lead to success in sport.”
Frey’s conclusions above support Donnelly’s stage model to the extent that recruitment selection precedes socialization and that once the athlete gets “in” then a process of confirmation and reinforcement takes place. According to Weiss (162) “… identity reinforcement can be found through membership of a sports group, a particular sporting role, a sports performance; or it can be experienced vicariously as a sport spectator-either live or via the media”. Once initially “in”, however, the athlete might also experience negative reinforcement. Donnelly, et al (47) talk about ostracism as the option to acceptance in the fourth stage of their model; Frey (61, p507) says that”…withdrawal takes place if the sport role is no longer crucial to identity…”
To illustrate this process, a number of sports page articles recently featured the exploits of a young talented professional hockey player for the Toronto Maple Leafs. In September 2002, prior to the start of the current NHL season schedule, under the headline Defender Learns His Lesson Well (24), these comments appeared: “ He was one of those kids who you could see in training camp had some nice skills, but he was a big risk taker.” In another story, in the same newspaper by a different writer about the same player, these comments
18 appeared under the story title: Leafs Glad Pilar Took Risk-This Time (90): “He was demoted Nov. 11 to help cure him of his gambling ways but there he was last night taking a risk, though a calculated one in extra time…at the start I took way too many chances and sometimes I got beat and they’d score at the other end… They told me I had to learn when to jump and when not to…But this time the risk was calculated…He… saw that two Tampa players were behind the net with teammate Mats Sundin and a third was level with where he was heading. Even if things went terribly wrong, he figured he could scramble back to his own end to prevent any damage. I picked a safe spot, he said. An unusual move, but one that paid off.” According to coach Quinn: “I’d rather have a guy with that kind of verve and try to hold him back a little bit…”
• Significant Others: Coaches and Media
The above stories illustrate two points about the role of the coach as a significant other in this selection process. The first point is that as a gatekeeper the coach has the power to open and close the gate in both directions, in and out; the second is that, at least with respect to elite level players, the risk role-identity of a player can be an important selection criterion. In the example above, the player as a risk-taker and gambler was deselected temporarily until he learned to become more of a calculated risk-taker, conditioned to play-safe most of the time. Thomas (149, p300) has commented also that “…the player is bound to play out decisions which coaches make. Such conforming behavior is an abdication of the opportunity to take chances in the game situation. The coach takes the risk…The player cannot risk venturing out on his own for to err is to be censured by crowds and coaches, to be benched for not following instructions, or to be traded for being uncooperative”
Lombardo (103, p1) says that “currently sport is dominated by the needs and interests of the coach, by a system that I will refer to as the Professional Model of Coaching.”. Frey makes similar points in discussing the historical change in focus from play to corporate sport (61, p508, 509). “As sport becomes institutionalized, particularly at the highest levels of amateur and professional competition, it has come to reflect the corporate/commodity model…the ethics of the business and corporate world tend to guide sport, not the principles of play and enjoyment…there is a developing industry of sport sciences for the primary goal of performance enhancement. The emphasis is on strategies, technical improvement, nutritional and psychological intervention, or any technique to manipulate or engineer the athlete to perform better.”
The coach, then, as a risk manager and gate keeper, would appear to function differently depending on the level of play of the participants. At the recreational level, where the ongoing action approaches spontaneous play the gate keeper role is minimal as are the negative sanctions for gambling and risky- type play; at a more elite level, the risk-management role of the coach attends more to the gate keeper function of selecting players with the appropriate skills
19 and attitudes towards a gambling risk-taking style of play. The coach is in a position to define these expectations about risk. At a recreational level the coach is able to encourage risk-taking as a joyous, spontaneous element of participation; at the elite level, as the consequences of good and poor performance become more serious, the coach is more likely to discourage out and out gambling type play, while encouraging limited calculated risk-taking for certain players, as circumstances in the action dictate. As a function of the selection process, one might hypothesize that elite athletes are more likely to experience reinforcement for a play-safe or calculated risk taker role-identity as the more salient aspect of their risk management role-identity; recreational players, on the other hand, are more likely to experience reinforcement for a risk taker and gambler role-identity as a more salient aspect of their risk- manager role identity.
Frey (61) has also summarized evidence that the sports mass media socialize through image management , the manipulation of symbols, and commentary. To the extent that the focus is primarily with the performance of elite athletes and their coaches, this commercialization emphasizes performance as spectacle and entertainment. It creates modern day heroes out of elite players and coaches with enormous pressures to win at all costs. It reinforces the triumph of superb skills over chance and the Professional Model of Coaching.
• Levels of Participation: Elite Athletes and Expert Fans
LeUnes, et al (102) have summarized some of the evidence in attempts to find psychological traits that separate elite athletes from recreational level players. Self-confidence is apparently one consistent finding; elite athletes demonstrate a higher confidence in their own ability to perform and to perform at a level which is consistent with their assessment of their own potential. (102, p264). Sutton- Smith, et al (146, pp. 494-495) have stated that “ many studies have shown that persons of all ages scoring higher on need to achieve tend to have a preference for intermediate level risks in a variety of achievement situations …In a study of high need achievers in a gambling situation involving competitive bidding and ambiguity as to the competitor’s moves…found that high need achievers played an extremely cautious game. McClelland interpreted this latter finding as due to the dislike of high need achievers for chance situations in which they could not influence the outcome through their own skills and abilities. In games of pure chance they normally prefer the safest odds they can get. But it has been shown here that these same high need achievers also play it safe when strategic games are involved.”
Dubois( 52, p36) found significant differences in value orientations for competitive and instructional level players. The more elite level players valued winning and competing, playing in the maximum number of games, and being part of a team and with friends more than did their recreational level counterparts.
20 The valuation of winning, achieving, and competing with self-confidence are all consistent with the emergent concept of the elite athlete as someone with a salient role-identity that includes a priority on skilled performance with play- safe and calculated risk-taking as alternatives to out and out gambling responses in uncertain game situations.
While on one level of participation we have elite and recreational players, it is equally evident that we also have expert (and novice) fans and that the mass sports media play a significant role in the creation of such expertise. Edwards(53, p238) has pointed out that many more children become fans rather than athletes. “And like the athlete’s role, the fan’s role too has a predominantly male character… The fan is not merely a passive spectator. He is involved…The more common use of the term fan…an abbreviation of fanatic…as opposed to spectator, illustrates the dynamic, active quality intrinsic to this role.” D’Angelo (39) has documented how the sports media contribute to this expertise through their information dissemination function. “The media, especially newspapers, report sports gambling information in the form of point spreads and game odds. This information appears side by side with general sports reporting and sports statistics. The availability of sports information enhances the informational resources of sports bettors…”
Recreational players, then, can also participate in sports as expert fans. This overlay of roles might create a potent predisposition or inclination to seek out gambling activities. Curry, et al (34, pp 25, 26) stated that “among college athletes, time spent as a sports fan is likely to be associated with a peer culture that further increases exposure and opportunities for gambling...( Recall Stryker’s discussion on commitment in relation to role-identity salience and role performance)… In contrast, those athletes who invest little or no time as a sports fan may acquire a correspondingly small amount of knowledge and emotional enthusiasm for placing bets on unfamiliar teams, and they may be less likely to find themselves in places where gambling is encouraged.” With their sample of “lettered” college athletes, Curry, et al(34), found significant positive correlations with betting frequency and largest amount ever bet. They concluded that”…being an avid sports fan apparently encourages gambling among athletes.” (34, p33)
2.2.2 Sports Identity, Salience, and Motivation to Gamble: • The Work of Professor T.J. Curry, Ohio State University
Professor T. Curry and Associates at Ohio State University have provided the most relevant attempts to replicate the theoretical and empirical work of Stryker (143) and Callero(22) within the sports milieu. In a number of investigations, Curry et al have operationalized role-identity (self-in-role), utilized and tested alternative approaches to measuring role salience, and operationalized other concepts in the overall theoretical approach to the maintenance of self-
21 consistency; specifically, they have provided operational measures for commitment, fan involvement, motive statements, and role performance, including betting frequency and largest bet. The following briefly summarizes investigations to test a number of relevant hypotheses employing these concepts and operational measures.
• In the first study, Curry, et al (36) used a sample of 220 male college students with varying levels of sports participation. The investigators found significant positive correlations among sports role-identity, two measures of sports role salience, commitment, and sports role performance, in terms of enjoyment and time spent. The investigators also found that salience of the sport identity was surprisingly low, even for varsity athletes in the sample, and that the two operational measures, ranking and ratings, while correlated were not equivalent measures (Rankings created a forced-choice bias). Most interesting, and as expected, they also found that varsity athletes had the highest sport identity-role salience, the highest mean interpersonal commitment, the highest mean involvement of self-in role (role- identity), and the greatest time spent in the sports role (36, p286). In terms of future research, the investigators proposed to revise scoring for the self in role (role-identity) by employing Likert rather than T/F type statements and broadening the item domain to include expectations of others and sports spectating.
• In a second study, Curry et al, (35), employed a mixed gender sample of college students (149 female and 199 male) and replicated the pattern of relationships found in the first study. As expected, there was a significant difference in the salience of the sport role-identity for males and females. The investigators continued to conclude that “…further requirements are needed in measuring and conceptualizing identity under conditions of high salience(35, p369).
• In a third study, Curry, et al, (37) introduced the concept of motivation for participation in sports. They correlated sports-role identity (but not salience or commitment) with three principal motive statements, which were statistically reduced from a larger pool of motive statements. Their sample included American college athletes and Austrian student sport club members. For North American athletes, they found that role identity was related to competition and fitness as reasons for participating, but not for sociability. They concluded that the failure of the sociability motive to correlate with role-identity was that perhaps “…those who express purely social reasons for sport participation are less concerned about doing well in sport, less dedicated in their daily allotments of time to sport, less likely to see themselves as athletes…than are those who express competitive or fitness motivations for sport” (37, p 267). Dubois (52) found a similar emphasis on competition and winning for competitive level soccer players over instructional level players. One might expect recreational level players to be more likely to provide sociability type reasons for participating in sports.
22 • In a fourth study, Curry et al , (34), employed a mixed gender sample (223 female and 269 men) of “lettered” athletes from a large state university, a small secular liberal arts college and a small Baptist college. For this study, the investigators were curious about overlapping motives for gambling and sports. The principal role performance variables were betting frequency and largest amount ever bet on sports. The investigators also introduced extrinsic reward factors to the motive statement mix for participation in gambling and a self-report measure of athlete’s involvement in sports as a fan. They did not however report any measure for sport role-identity salience or commitment and employed a ranking procedure to measure religious role salience, despite earlier findings that a rating procedure provided less methodological bias.
Among their findings they found that males were more likely to be involved in gambling than were females, that both competition and extrinsic rewards as motive statements correlated positively with gambling, and that fan involvement was also positively correlated with gambling. The notion that fan involvement as an athlete correlates with gambling most likely ties in with the concept of commitment, as measured in earlier studies. However, they also found that role- identity as an athlete was not significantly correlated with either measure of gambling. (34, p 31).
This latter finding was completely counter to expectation and is critical to the focus in this exploratory investigation. Curry, et al (34, p32) concluded, however, that “ at least we have shown that identification with the role of athlete does not , in itself, appear to encourage gambling on sport.” For a number of reasons, this conclusion might be premature:
• First, from an earlier study Curry, et al (35) we know that gender correlates negatively with sports role identity and, in this study, with both measures of gambling. It remains possible that gender has suppressed a positive relationship for male athletes between role-identity and gambling. From the journal report it is not clear how Curry, et al have employed gender as a control variable in their multiple regression equation. They have not specified the nature of the standardized coefficients , whether partial, semi-partial, or whatever, that they have correlated with gambling behaviours.
• Secondly, the sample has consisted of “lettered” athletes. One expects that such elite athletes are much less inclined to have either the inclination or the time to be extensively involved in gambling activities. Curry et al have also considered the existence of severe sanctions against gambling for varsity level athletes. “ An interesting topic for future research is whether internalizing competitive motivation as an athlete effects gambling on sports later in life once the threat of possible sanctions has lessened and income has increased” (35, p 33). Is it possible that the nature of the study, which employed self -report measures, has induced varsity athletes to underestimate their self-involvement in sports, their sports role-identity, at the same time that they report being avid fans? Perhaps there is
23 a dissonance reducing process in the act of self-reporting which also suppresses any real relationship between sports role-identity and gambling?
• Thirdly, Curry, et al have repeatedly stressed the need for further refinements in conceptualizing and measuring identity under conditions of high salience (35, p369). One suspects that the measure of self-in-role employed as a measure of sports role-identity is too global or general. One hypothesis is that elite and recreational athletes and fans differ significantly in the extent to which they have incorporated risk-taking and gambling versus calculated risk-taking and play safe aspects of risk management as salient aspects of their risk-manager role identities. The sport-role identity instrument reported in one study (37, p262) consists of 10, 5-point Likert items. Only one of these items (“When I participate in sports, I do not care if I make mistakes”) would appear to tap into this overlap area of sports role-identity and risk-manager identity. One suggestion for refining the current role-identity instrument, in order to retest the hypothesized relationship between role-identity and gambling role-performance, might be to add additional items tapping the play-safe/gamble choice options of the risk-manager role-identity.
The procedures for measuring role-salience also require refinement. Although Curry did find support for his instrument vis a vis athletes, there were differences in the application of ranking versus rating in the scoring; moreover, the selection of other roles for purposes of comparison seems theoretically somewhat arbitrary. For Curry (35), sports identity salience has been established in relation to other roles of peer, kinship, religious, academic, and romantic. Callero (22) has reviewed this issue in suggesting modifications to the measurement of salience.
In correspondence with this investigator, Professor Curry has sent an early copy of his measurement instruments, called the Sports Identity Index. This set of measurements is attached to this report as Appendix 3. More recent articles refer to modifications to the original. (In addition, this investigator has also had e-mail correspondence with Professor T. Holtgraves of Ball State University who mailed a monograph of “Gambling as self-presentation” (87).)
Figure 1 below summarizes key concepts/variables from the Stryker, Callero, Leary, Curry investigations of hypotheses concerning role-identity, salience, social net-works (Commitment), fan involvement, and motive statements as correlates of role selection and performance. Future research on the subject of male athletes and gambling would propose to utilize this model to frame testable hypotheses about specific linkages.
Figure 1: Role-Identity, Role-Performance Model
24 Role-Identities Commitment Fan Involve Role Selections
Sports Participation: Risk Play Safe/Gamble Mgt Salience Motives Selection Sport Recreation: Gambling/Other Rec
Problem Gambling
3.0 EXPERT INTERVIEWS: Report
The purpose of a limited number of expert interviews was to try to further substantiate the initial working assumptions. In the course of doing the literature search it became clear some of the conclusions being drawn from the literature required further scrutiny. One of these areas included an abiding wish to substantiate the socialization function of sports as a medium for the social construction of athletes with risk-taking as a salient role-identity. Also requiring further exploration was the possibility that elite and recreational level players might maintain different aspects of risk management as a role identity; for elite athletes the orientation is more toward play-safe and calculated risks; for recreational athletes, risk-taking and gambling are more consistent parts of their role-identities. In addition, there was the emergent notion of the coach as a risk manager, but with different orientations to risk management depending on whether the level of play was elite or recreational.
At another level, more consistent with qualitative or phenomenological investigations into definitions of the situation, this investigator was also interested in the extent to which people can talk about gambling and playing safe , as they
25 have observed participation in the on-going action of sports events. The other purpose for this, of course, was to begin to generate an item pool descriptive of sports gambling situations, typical gambling and play safe optional responses, and the situational circumstances within which one or the other response might have a higher propensity for enactment or performance.
3.1 The Experts and The Interview
Experts selected for interview included a coach with extensive high school, university and Olympic level athlete experience, who also has a current mandate to certify coaching excellence; there was one professional academic with teaching and research responsibilities for the certification of Physical and Health Education high school teachers; there were two sport sociologists, one with an extensive research background in the risk of sports injury and a PhD candidate with an MA in the subject of sports injury; and there were also three former professional athletes, all of whom are currently engaged in risky type ventures: a hockey player who is currently a documentary film specialist, a former CFL Hall of Fame football player, who is now a sports pub owner where gambling pools are a regular customer event, and a former CFL football player with extensive sports marketing experience, as VP of Marketing for the Blue Jays when they won the World Series, and current projects including new sports advertising technology and the development of pitch and put golf courses.
The interview protocol included in Appendix 2 was modified over the course of the interviews in order to improve on question ambiguity and to probe emergent responses. The complete transcriptions for all of the interviews is also included as Appendix 2. The documentation below is an edited and summarized report of these transcripts, hopefully to better inform the overall discussion.
Overall, the interview protocol was a useful instrument for stimulating discussion and experiential reflection on the topic of risk-taking and gambling as part of sports participation. Former athletes and the coach were able to talk at length- part and parcel of the fact that two of them were conducted in pairs-and although able to provide some refined insights, at times these discussions became repetitive ( providing some consistency) and cluttered (not always) with unnecessary anecdote. (The interviewer assumes full responsibility –in some cases fuelling the discussion with own personal reflections.) As one might expect, the experiential reflections of the academics were filtered through that academic experience as well. So, for example, questions about what one learns through sports participation invoked the difficulty of separating out all of the individual’s other developmental experiences.
As a tool for generating examples of gambling situations, the protocol was able to generate general discussion. Again, as one might anticipate, individuals were able to talk more readily, with conviction and with passion about those sports in
26 which they have had the greatest direct experience. For example, none of the interviewees had much direct personal experience with soccer; on the other hand, boxing as a contact/individual competition was certainly able to galvanize conversation, although none had any direct experience as participants. One might assume that one’s ability to talk about boxing-more than soccer-, is a function of media coverage and fan involvement in a North American culture which traditionally has prioritized boxing for its entertainment value.
3.1.1 Question 1a: Summary
To the extent that competitive sports model important cultural values and themes in everyday life, one might expect the play action of competitive sports to provide opportunities “to gamble” or “play safe”-to manage risk. The media coverage of different sports events often alludes to gambling situations. Does this working assumption have some validity for you?
Comment:
In general, the comments provide some support for this “functionalist” interpretation of sports and society. Rather than substantiating the validity of the hypothesis, however, it is probably safer to conclude that comments reflect the beliefs and values –the conventional wisdom-that North Americans retain (Frey, 61). Consequently, interviewees commented on the theme of sports as learning for life; other comments reflect on the conflict in values promoted by sports, which is characteristic of a complex cultural system; and other comments , particularly in relation to media promotions, reflect on sports as actually bigger than life.
Examples:
Higgins: Well sport is a powerful educational tool because it takes life and presses it into a very intensive microcosm and we come to face ourselves very quickly.
Markle: The reality is, the microcosm of being …of playing professional sports or sports at any level-key level-is that it really is life, it really does…
27 Anderson: …I would support… that claim. How popular are extreme sports?...Look at the media…absolutely larger than life kinds of exploits…they’ve tried to take it and explode the whole human capacity to perform to such extremes to the limits. And it’s like we’ve supersized everything...our culture is into the super and the extraordinary. Are we creating an environment that sport is picking up on or that sport is creating?
Safai: Well it’s a bit problematic because within competitive sports you see competing values…fair play…win at all costs…played out on a day to day basis in competitive sport…Play it safe and gamble…you use that all the time in sport and we use it in a contradictory fashion depending upon the situation and, upon the context, upon the level.
Question 1b: Summary
A 2x2 typology of sports competitions is Contact vs Non-Contact and Team vs Individual play. Football and Hockey are examples of Contact/Team; Soccer and Basketball represent Non-Contact/Team; Boxing and Wrestling are examples of Contact/Individual; and Golf and Tennis can represent Non-Contact/Individual.
For at least one of each of the four types of sport competition try :
1. To define an action situation which provides the opportunity to gamble or to play safe.
2. To define a typical gambling response to the action situation.
3. To define a typical play safe response to the action situation.
Comment:
Comments reflected both broad strategic orientations as well as tactical decisions for the sports provided in the 2x2 typology. As the content of the interviews for this part of Q1 flowed into Q2, these comments are summarized below.
3.1.2 Question 2: Summary
Are there situational factors in the action situation which are likely to predispose the athlete to make a gambling rather than a play safe response? We’ve talked about team and contact sports. Does playing with other team members predispose or make it easier for the athlete to take a gamble rather than to play safe? What about playing in a contact rather than a non-contact game? What other situational factors are likely to predispose the athlete to make a gambling rather than a play
28 safe response? What about: the importance of the game? the point in the game (begin, mid, end)? the current score (up, down, tied)
Comments:
Strategic Decisions:
Comments that reflected a strategic focus on gambling versus play safe were generally labeled as conservative/defensive or aggressive, respectively.
Higgins: (On soccer)…certainly I know that the play it safe aspect is to really play a defense game and wait for a break…then it becomes a strategy when you have assessed your talent relative to the other team, and so you take the chances that is not very aggressive offensively…so there is a risk being taken as a team strategy…
Anderson:…games that involve what we call invasion territory…give and go, creating space, shutting down space…There is something about the nature of the game and even the language that goes around that, that talk about invasion territory. It’s almost combative, in war terms…And people are socialized within that territory, game strategy… t o behave in certain ways…a culture that talks about it…high percentage versus low percentage…invasion-penetration…
Boland: The coach will set the tone whether you are going to be playing a very conservative game and wait for your chances or in fact you’re going to be playing an aggressive and wide –open game where you know that he has basically set the tone that allows you a little bit more green light opportunity than the red light.
Team versus Individual:
To the extent that team norms support gambling, then playing on a team can generate more risk-taking among certain players. Gambling or risk-taking might be a called play, in which case some positions or players will have responsibility to back up the gambler; in other cases, because of exceptional skills or experience, some players become designated or recognized risk-takers. On the other hand, where there are set plays with required individual assignments, players deviate at their peril; in other cases, necessary deviations- adjustments- from set assignments become a required gamble. In all cases, the emphasis in the comments is that what appears to be a gamble is really a very calculated risk.
Campbell: The linebacker position. It’s a gambling position…Because you’ve got back up. …if you’re the free safety and you go for the interception or go for the knock-down, you pretty well go for the knock-down because if you miss it… Boland: But isn’t it also the case in football where especially in a linebacker’s situation…is that all of a sudden they would gamble and by gambling they would see a hole, shoot through the hole, sack the quarterback. …they made a
29 calculation in their mind that they see an opening or they read a play or they see a movement, they go on their instincts of what’s in their heads or their experience, they sack the quarterback… Campbell: But that’s a called play…he didn’t do that on his own. Boland: See that’s where in football they liken it to a hundred yard war but in football also, they liken it to chess… Hockey is not a chess game…In my position as a forward it was not a gamble position. Defenseman’s a gambling position… You’re there for the offense and….if it’s two men in, it’s one man back. So if both your forwards in tight, you gotta pull back…if you know you’ve got an offensive defenseman like Paul Coffee, like Bobby Orr, if you’re on the ice with those guys and you’re a right winger and your right defenseman has got a reputation for gambling then you better make sure that you’re back…
Boland: Your leaders, your great stars have a little more leeway with the coach than your…less experienced…if the tone of he game is red and you’re a twenty-one year old rookie, you may see chances for risk-taking you won’t take because it’s not your place…
Campbell:…your star…is normally the quarterback or the halfback, the high priced player that’s the go to guy…if you need a play…normally your star is going to make that play and probably he has confidence in his risk taking…He’s been there, he’s done it, and his percentage is better than anyone else’ s and he’s the one who is going to do it.
Donnelly:… all the military research shows that soldiers take risks for their fellow soldiers-they don’t take it for anything else, not ideology, not for officers, not for anything. They take risks for their team mates and if there has been a real team bonding...there are really powerful bonds that encourage people to take risks…
Markle: …Football’s a game of templates and patterns, so it’s not a one man pattern, it’s a three or a four man pattern. Everyone has to run it…if you don’t run it out it screws up everything, so you can’t take risks.
Markle: …Offensively…you know what your assignment has to be, and sometimes as a tight end I get up to the line of scrimmage and I think there is just absolutely no way…there’s got to be an audible here…we’ve got to change this play …with your mate, with your offensive tackle…you actually change the blocking assignment… so I guess you take some risks by making those changes but if you don’t make the changes the outcome is inevitable…you fail.
Contact versus Non-Contact:
On the one hand, some of the comments reflect a rational awareness of the dangers inherent in contact sports, from the brutality of boxing to some of the nasty aspects of stick work, the puck, going into the corners, in hockey; on the
30 other hand, there are also comments from former players that if you really are aware of these dangers, then you can’t play the game. This underscores the whole objective/subjective dilemma in risk measurement and the need for risks to be perceived as such in order for social beings to act. The players in question were elite professionals at one time and this particular aspect of their identities might be an important difference in contrast with more casual recreational athletes. The other interesting dimension about contact sport, however, is not the risk of injury so much as it is the loss of face that comes from being intimidated. This psychological/emotional damage to self-esteem might be an even greater risk or gamble for participants in contact sports.
Donnelly: In a contact team situation…the major gambling decision that most players have to take at one time or another is whether to follow through with a course of action knowing you’re going to get creamed or whether to back off.
Higgins: …here’s where you really bring in the media stuff…(DC) who says one thing but then just overlays it with his constant support of physical violence and brutality… So you have the media promoting this kind of thing. So the risk is immense out t here. And of course one of them is that if you are a defensive player, is put your body in front of he puck…the thing often is to play it safe…come in high and take it on the pads…there is this element of risk of going into the corner and how aggressively you go after a loose puck…When the label from the media is that you’re some kind of chicken shit if you don’t fight…there are huge physical and psychological gambles out there…
Higgins: …(in boxing)…if you start wading in, you leave yourself vulnerable…you open yourself up to the really damaging hit…so there are huge possibilities in boxing when you have to gamble and it requires huge physical courage…
Campbell:…(about contact)…Never think about it… Boland: I agree. If you’re going to get it, you’re going to get it… Campbell:…and you like it… Boland:…if you’re in any way ,shape or form, if your decisions of play are based on whether you are risking your body, then you shouldn’t be playing that sport.
Markle: ...I don’t think that anybody…there may be exceptions …who were playing football at that level that we played that were afraid to get hit or afraid to hit…I was never , ever concerned about injury…ever concerned about my own physical security.
Anderson: So I wonder how much the body comes into it. I mean football players…there would be broken thumbs…you… straighten it out…back out on the field…The body… was sacrificed and those were wounds that you carried with pride…The ones that dug deep are the ones where we were that close and that day we didn’t rise to the occasion and we lost it.
31 Anderson:…(about basketball-non-contact)…I keep thinking about how awesome it must be to see Shaq O’Neill-the size and power of that particular individual…to some extent the risk may not be the kind of physical risk as it may be emotional/psychological, you know for him to walk down, as if he had no opposition at all…to be outsmarted or outmaneuvered or outplayed…the risk of guarding an awesome athlete has more to do with psycho-social…
The Score, The Point in the Game, The Importance of the Game:
Being behind in score but with still a possibility of catching up, late in the contest and running out of time, and being in a very important match are all situational factors that condition individual players and teams to take gambles. There is a conscious awareness of a need to change the tempo, get some momentum going, make a big play-which often requires a gamble or calculated risk of a high order.
Anderson: …(about football)…so its …less than a yard, do we kick it away or do we go for it? That kind of gamble depending on the situation in the game –how much time is left on the clock, how far ahead are they, is this a championship game? …what constitutes a calculated risk …a gamble that’s worth taking…or sometimes …do I gamble on this particular player coming through when I need them too...can I do something in a game that will ratchet up…the whole performance…the rest of the team…
Campbell: You get on the sideline and say, okay we’re getting killed. We’re down fourteen and two minutes left…we’ve got to do something…and so you’ve got to start, almost take gambles, risks of change in the tempo.
Boland: …if the stakes are higher…the adrenalin carries you…you take more gambles in the third period than you do in the first …you’re warmed up…in the first you’re just trying to get into the game…you don’t want to gamble at nine nothing, who cares?...(a tie)…now there’s a different story…then you go on experience…with all the calculation in your head decide that maybe the odds are such…
3.1.3 Question 3: Summary
Are there individual player factors which are likely to predispose the athlete to make a gambling rather than a play safe response?
Comment:
Confidence, experience, preparation! Group values!
32 Higgins: Sure. The most elemental one is confidence, self-esteem. The kid…who knows clearly that she’s not her performance..that her worth is not dependent upon how well she plays the game or whether she wins or loses…her worth is based on human values and when that is separated out then you are more predisposed to take risks because that’s where the excitement is in the game and that is what the game demands of me at the moment so I will take it and if I lose or if I take a chance and I fall on my face and I look badly, hey, that’s how it is..
Higgins: You get into a group, you gotta be awfully strong to stand aside from that group’s ethic.
Higgins: …the other one is previous experience…
Donnelly: That’s not clear at all…Whether any psychological test or biological test is refined enough to distinguish between whether you are a puncher or a counter puncher or an attack/defender in the same sport…
Markle: …you need to know that you have confidence that the quarterback is going to make that read and throw to that spot instead of deep because if he throws it deep its interception…so I guess there’s risk in there but they’re not really risks because you’ve done your homework, you’ve read the defense properly…I guess the risk is… calculated. You know your assignment and that’s it…
Markle: Confidence in your ability ,confidence to recover..you’ve got to be selfish as well..in that you don’t really care about the impact it has on the situations...
Campbell: A player that has good confidence and he has great talent…
3.1.4 Question 4: Summary
I am interested in how one becomes a risk-taker. (Given that athletes might already possess a predisposition to gamble –or take calculated risks ( biology or very early child development) -when they first begin to participate in these gambling/play safe opportunities in competitive sports,) - what does one actually learn about risk- taking from such intensive/extensive participation? What likely learning implications might there be for individual self-development? Salience of risk-taker role in identity formation? Selection in/out? Other?
Comment:
There was very little in the responses to this question(s) to substantiate the hypothesis that one learns to become a risk-taker/gambler through intensive and extensive participation in sports. Quite the contrary. There appeared to be
33 more, and in responses to the next question, to support the selection hypothesis and that how the athlete manages or approaches risk might be an important difference between elite and recreational athletes.
Higgins: …you have to learn that that sport done well helps people move through all kinds of abilities they didn’t necessarily bring in in the first place And when done badly, it simply becomes a weeding out process…but weeded out or selected out…I think that is real and necessary-and a part of life…so part of the learning here is to learn to take risks and to get the value that comes out of that and have all that kept in perspective of what it means in our life.
Donnelly: The only two things that I could think of that I actually felt that I learned from sports …was a real sense of perspective-don’t sweat the small stuff…and…when you think you’re completely drained of energy and resolve, you’ve probably got about 50% left… it wasn’t about relationships, wasn’t about value, wasn’t about achievement…
Safai: …as a woman playing a non-traditional sport…it’s a learning experience to go onto a field…and be able to hit someone to be able to run faster than you thought…or be able to score…I don’t think it’s identity development…but I certainly does contribute to sense of self, self-worth…
Boland: I think…you are a function of your gene pool, I think you are a function of your early upbringing, I think you are a function of your environment and then you become a function of yourself…you open yourself to watch, to learn, to observe, to calculate…
3.1.5 Question 5: Summary
However one might acquire a predisposition to gamble, how important is it for athletic performance? Does a predisposition to gamble in athletic competitions differentiate elite athletes from-say recreational athletes? What other factors differentiate elite from recreational athletes?
Comment:
It is the ability to take calculated risks when the situation demands, and not risk- taking for the sake of risk-taking, that is important for athletic performance. Again, it is the self-confidence that comes from experience and preparation that are critical to this ability to take calculated risks.
Higgins: …elite athletic performance…like elite performance in all of life and that is that the elite don’t take many chances. They are prepared to when they need to… in fact, t he elite are predisposed to be prepared and so they know what the situation demands; they’ve got that figured well in advance…they know what their
34 goals are; they know what the demands are to get there, and they will do everything needed in terms of preparing…
Higgins: Recreational stuff is fun-you can do a little bit of this..and you don’t prepare…preparation is really the big one…also the fascination with the activity, because nobody who wants the outcome will ever..stay with the preparation long enough to achieve it…the preparation that is required is also very rewarding…the one’s who love to practice, love to train…
Safai: …the difference there is for elite athletes is more dedication to the time commitment…to preparation, to training…Getting more and more experienced in a sport which then has an impact on how you perceive the risk….recreational athletes, its recreational. They’re not dedicating five hours a day to it.
Boland:…absolutely… Campbell: …well the elite players recognize…the situation… Boland: …the opportunity… Campbell:…the opportunity and the situation and ..they want it on them…they prefer it on themselves than on anybody else because they recognize it...they know what to do with it….
Markle: …people that take risks, in the past and have overcome not succeeding, have taken risks and been successful, the greater the propensity for these prople to come up with the big play…these guys are not as vulnerable to a lack of confidence…
3.1.6 Question 6: Summary
What is the role of the coach in relation to managing opportunities to gamble or play safe prior to, and during athletic competitions? Does that coaching role vary for recreational versus elite level players?
Comment:
There was a consensus on the concept of the coach as risk manager and mediator or gatekeeper. How the coach approaches risk management does appear to differ depending on whether the level of play is elite or recreational; the closer the actual game gets to pure play, the less is the onus on the coach to micro manage everything from conditioning to strategy and tactics ; the closer to pure play (“pick up”) , the more the coach can encourage spontaneous activity, including gambling and risk-taking that might not pay-off.
Higgins:…one of the key roles of coaches…is to be meaning makers…the coach plays a very significant role in helping people to learn to deal with…the whole aspect of risk-taking, challenging ourselves-going to levels that we haven’t gone to
35 before, and being prepared to deal with whatever comes out of it…and it does vary much between recreational and elite level athlete players because at the recreational level…we’re having fun…part of the role of coach of low level sport…is to remind people…it’s about play…
Anderson: …that’s a good term, that risk management is…we need to build a whole team…balanced offense, defense…the goals are different…in a recreational league they are more concerned about opportunities for young people to experience the joy of movement…
Safai:…they are one of the chief mediators between how an athlete and a team and a team itself approach risk, risk taking…I like the way you say risk manager. I think that pinpoints exactly what you are trying to do…manage the level of risk personally, interpersonally, and intrapersonally…
Boland: …in the lower leagues there’s more emphasis on the enjoyment of play and so… there is not penalties to be paid if in fact you lose your gamble…you’re out to have fun…you’re allowed the opportunity to learn and grow from your own mistakes as a ten year old…
3.1.7 Question 7: Summary
In your experience, are you aware of any predisposition for athletes in general-and elite athletes in particular- to seek out gambling or risky ventures in other life situations, such as work, family, or other recreational pursuits? Why? Why not?
Comment:
Among the former athlete interviewees, in particular, the responses to this question were basically to recognize that some super stars (Pete Rose, Michael Jordan, Jaromir Jagr, Nate Newton, Hollywood Henderson) have been reported to be major gamblers. On the other hand, they also seemed genuinely unaware or unable to explain why athletes might have some additional propensity to gamble. In other words, media reporting of the gambling exploits of a few is in no way representative of what most athletes might have as recreational choices. If there is a propensity for athletes, perhaps it has something to do with a need for action, the thrill of competition, of lost recognition? There is also acknowledgement of the importance and influence of the group-for young male athletes the opportunities to gamble available in sports pubs.
Higgins:…One of the things that I think athletes do take away is that sooner or later some coaches help them get it clear…that it isn’t worth the risk…invest in the preparation…they learn about commitment, investment of time, preparation and what one is really capable of…
36
Anderson:…I had a number of my Phys Ed students who were really big time into hockey pools and it became., sort of entertainment…hanging around with a bunch of other guys where this has become a very popular thing…when they hang out down at the… (pub)…they’re watching gambling and betting in sporting events…and there’s an invitation, a temptation to be a participant in that kind of activity…and it tends to be male and it tends to be around drinking and sporting events and sports pubs..females?...is it happening over here in the women’s rowing team? I don’t think so…
Campbell:… It’s just the action I guess, isn’t it? Is it the action? Boland: You’re going to get an adrenalin kick…It’s the thrill. The thrill of winning…
Markle: …I don’t think there’s a connection…I would be surprised if there was...missing the action…I know some athletes…who once there careers are over miss the spotlight…can I have your autograph...miss the action…
4.0 WORKING ASSUMPTIONS: A Revised Perspective
The literature review and expert interviews provide suggestions for revising the working assumptions that formed the model for guiding this exploratory investigation.
• In most cultures there are sports and games that correlate with and perhaps function to model values and roles instrumental for everyday living. • In modern cultures, some of the roles and values played out in sports and games have to do with competition and achievement via a combination of strategy, knowledge and skills, and risk-management- from calculated risk-taking to gambling. • In modern cultures traditional child rearing and socialization processes have focused on different value orientations for males and females; while this might be changing , as one consequence of the “post-modern” risk-society, it would appear that males are more likely than females to have developed role-identities with risk- management as a salient component of their self-concepts. • While competitive sports events provide various opportunities to gamble or play safe during the emergent play action, games and sports are more likely to function as a social selection and reinforcement for antecedent role-identities than as a socialization process; in short, it would appear that significant components of a sports role-identity and a risk-manager role-identity are already constructed as part of self-concept at the time that individuals commence to participate in organized sports. • Coaches, as significant others, function as risk-managers and gate-keepers in this selection process; at elite levels of participation the selection criteria attend to skills competence and are rigidly inelastic with respect to play-safe/calculated risk taking as performance expectations of the athletes’ role-identity; at recreational levels of
37 participation the selection criteria place much less emphasis on skills performance and are much more elastic with respect to risk-taking and gambling as performance expectations of the athletes role-identity. • On-going participation at an elite level or recreational level will mutually reinforce consistent athletic and risk-manager role-identities. (“I am an elite player; I want to win by applying my skills, by playing safe and taking calculated risks only when necessary”) (“I am a recreational level player; I don’t need to win all the time; I just enjoy playing and often take risks and gamble without any real concern for the consequences”.) • Elite and recreational level athletes are likely to seek other role opportunities that are consistent with their sports-role and risk-manager role identities; elite athletes are less likely to seek opportunities in other role situations, such as vocational choice and recreation, that are consistent with risk-taking and gambling; recreational athletes and fans are more likely to seek out other role situations, such as vocational choice and recreation, that are consistent with risk-taking and gambling. • To the extent that self-esteem maintenance and enhancement is a more powerful motivational force than is role-identity consistency, then elite and recreational athletes and fans will seek gambling roles in order to demonstrate “character”.
5.0 THE MEASUREMENT of RISK: Additional Considerations
5.1 Brief History of Alternative Approaches
“The topic of risk is most often discussed in the literature on environmental, health, and technical hazards” (59, p136) However, risk analysis has had a long history. (Indeed, one might go back at least to the Garden of Eden for an early account of consumer decision making under conditions of uncertainty.) It was not until the seventeenth century, however, that “…explicit formulations of the concept of risk were introduced with the development of probability theory.”(114, p61) Apparently, at that time, risks were defined as “the probability of an event occurring combined with an accounting for the losses and gains that the event would present if it came to pass.”(114, p 61) Attention was focused equally on the probabilities of benefits as compared with risks of harm. Economics as a discipline originated in the calculations of the risks of investment incurred in long-distance trading relations with the new colonies. “One might argue that industrial hazards and risks of the capitalist mode of production were a central component of Karl Marx’s political economy.”(153, p10) At that time, hygienists and public health investigators understood the health risks of early capitalism and urban industrialization. “…pollution is historically the mode by which humans have understood social risk.” (153, p10)
As a result, “the prevailing paradigm of risk analysis is thus driven by hazards and risks associated with advances in science and technology.” (130, p712) Today a burgeoning risk industry crosses into many disciplines such as engineering, toxicology, biostatistics, and actuarial science, with risk professionals who engage
38 in the assessment, regulation, and management of risks. Methods historically associated with the natural sciences assume that risks can be calculated objectively as the study of external quantifiable phenomena. Alternatively, and more recently, sociologists investigating implications of the Risk Society have employed subjective and qualitative methods in order to understand the meanings of risk in every day life. (113, p221).
Consequently, one might conceptualize deviations from this ideal scientific model in two directions: from objective to subjective observation; and from quantitative to qualitative data collection/measurement. This emergent 2x2 model provides a means for reviewing examples of how a few different disciplines have approached the measurement of risk.
Objective Subjective
Rational Perceptions Quantitative
Nominal Discourse Qualitative
The Rational Model above is represented by cost-benefit methods as employed in such disciplines as economic investment analysis and policy analysis. With these approaches a number of alternative methods utilize a standard unit of measurement, typically currency, to evaluate various choice options in terms of aggregated benefits and costs over time. Each model employs a different decision rule, defined a priori. For example, one of the simplest models is to minimize costs by choosing the option with the lowest aggregate costs: more sophisticated models are to choose the option with the highest internal rate of return; or choose the option with greatest net benefits.
While cost-benefit analysis is traditionally employed ex ante as a basis for decision making it has also been used to evaluate outcomes after the fact. In government circles for example, one typically needs to know not only did the program work, did it achieve its objectives, but did it achieve them in a cost-effective manner. Here the question is whether the particular program is worth risking public tax dollars to run again?
Economic investment analysis might also employ sophisticated multivariate forecasting models and trend analyses in order to evaluate future likely outcomes,
39 today; actuarial science employs automobile accident statistics for different age cohorts in order to build risk probability models, ultimately as a rational basis for establishing differential premiums; and epidemiological studies in the health sciences measure the incidence and prevalence of various diseases in order, for example, to evaluate target priorities for intervention.
The Discourse Model, in direct contrast employs qualitative methods to gather the subjective meanings of risk, as an everyday experience. In justifying the use of semi-structured interviews to get young people to talk about their personal experiences of risk. Mitchell, et al commented that “…although the young people frequently found themselves immersed within discourses characterized by risk, how they made sense of these could and often did differ to expert or institutional definitions of risk and risky behaviour.” (113, p230). The Discourse Model, then, is much less about tools for decision making than it is about understanding from a particular phenomenological point of view.
The Nominal Model is perhaps recognizable when we qualify or judge some objectively observable behaviour as “bad”, or “at risk”. Smoking and drinking alcohol and having unprotected casual sex are bad and will put “you at risk”. Often one is interested in assigning individuals with quantitative scores on a particular measurement instrument , using objective methods, to a categorical framework used for “treatment” decisions. For example, the CPGI is an objective instrument for obtaining a quantitative score on an individual’s gambling behaviour. Cut-off values for the scores are then used to assign respondents to one of four categories or levels of “at risk” behaviour. By assigning numeric values of “1”to “4” to each of these categories , one is assuming at least an ordinal level of measurement. But the numerals might also remain as nominal labels, placing the respondent, more or less at risk, with an appropriate level of intervention.
As a second example, Zuckerman, et al (167,168) correlated generalized risk- taking in six areas (drinking, drugs, sex, driving, smoking, and gambling) with impulsive sensation seeking, aggression and sociability. Presumably the risk- taking behaviours were measured quantitatively via frequency, or volume/amounts. The point is that each of the behaviours has been prejudged or qualified as “risky” behaviours, in advance of the application of quantitative measurement instruments.
What has been called the Perceptions Model here employs quantitative tools to measure subjective assessments of risk. This particular model is used extensively in the social sciences and bears the most discussion. According to Karni (95, p249), “…subjective probabilities are meant to quantify the beliefs of an individual in the truth of a proposition or, equivalently, in the realization of an event.” Two alternative approaches are the intuitive approach and the choice-theoretic approach. (95, p 249).
40 • The Intuitive Approach
The intuitive approach holds that beliefs exist prior to and independently of any choice behaviour, that, in effect, probability derives directly from individual intuition and is prior to objective experience.
To illustrate this approach, Slovic (132) employed psychometric techniques (psycho-physical scaling and multivariate analysis) to produce quantitative representations or cognitive maps of risk attitudes and perceptions. Various groups of respondents were required to make quantitative judgements about the current and desired riskiness of diverse hazards and the desired level of regulation of each. The results of applying these techniques enabled Slovic to present rank ordering of perceived risk for 30 activities and technologies. For example, Nuclear Power has been ranked 1 in perceived riskiness by The League of Women Voters and College Students, 8 by Active Club Members, and 20 by Experts.
In another study Slovic (133) had youth respond to a series of questionnaires relating to risky activities faced by youth, such as drinking alcohol, taking drugs, and smoking cigarettes. With respect to smoking, respondents were asked to consider a number of statements about the effects of a person’s smoking one package of cigarettes each day, starting at age 16; for example: “ There is really no risk at all for the first few years.” Response options ranged from Strongly Agree to Don’t Know/No Opinion. The assignment of numeric values to these verbal anchors permits statistical manipulation. While Slovic presented the mean scores for each item independently to compare for different levels of smokers, scores across all items might also have been summed in weighted or unweighted format in order to obtain a more reliable overall index. See (159) for a discussion on some of the perils of qualitative smoking measures.
In the area of motor sport racing, Fuller, et al (63) interviewed spectators, race officials, race teams, and safety managers to compare the risk of a fatal injury to a participant in climbing, horse riding, rugby, and swimming with the risk of a fatality to a race driver. Respondents used a 3-point scale of higher risk(+), equivalent risk (0), and lower risk(-).
In a similar area, having to do with risk driving in adolescence, Harre et al (79) measured the perceived acceptability of nine reckless or illegal driving behaviours. For example, subjects were required to rate running red lights on a six-point scale ranging from “never OK” to “always OK”. (See Deery (40) for a discussion on factors that influence hazard and risk perception among young novice drivers.)
In the area of consumer products, Wogalter et al (165) exposed respondents to a list of 72 products and had them rate each product on 8 scales, such as: “How hazardous is this product…?”, from (0) Not At All Hazardous to (8) Extremely Hazardous and “How likely are you to receive any injury with this product…?”, from(0) Never to(8) Extremely Likely.
41
A final important application of the intuitive approach is the development of personality scales to measure risk propensity as a possible personality trait. Stewart, et al (138) reviewed some of this literature in their study to compare the risk propensity of entrepreneurs and managers. They commented that “…Big Five personality theory …suggests that risk propensity is a facet of the trait of extraversion.” (138, p2). One personality instrument for measuring risk propensity as a personality trait is the Jackson Personality Inventory (JPI). (138, p4). The Risk Taking Scale is one of sixteen scales in the JPI. It “…was designed to assess the willingness to commit to a decision that could lead to success or failure and the corresponding outcomes…It contains components of social, physical, monetary, and ethical risk taking…”(138, p4). Several studies have reported acceptable reliability and validity results for the JPI.
Jenkins (93) developed the Risk Behaviors Scale as a multidimensional measure of risk behaviours among young adults and Kontos (98) developed a Risk-Taking Behaviors Scale and a Risk of Injury in Sport Scale.
• The Choice-Theoretic Approach
The choice-theoretic approach holds that beliefs exist only as they are manifest in actual choices. (95, 249). The classic approach to operationalizing a person’s belief under this model is to propose a bet, and then to see what the lowest odds are he will accept.
An excellent example of this approach is Donker et al (45) who utilized questions on lotteries in a large household survey. The survey consisted of eight questions: three of the questions are termed probability equivalence questions. More specifically, the exact question is:
Imagine you have won $X in a game. You can now choose between keeping the $X, or having a lottery ticket with a certain chance to win $20X. How high would that chance to win $20X have to be such that you would prefer the lottery ticket to keeping the $X, that you had already won?
I would prefer the lottery ticket if the chance to win the $20X would be at least…
Additional questions had an increasing amount as an alternative win.
In another five questions, respondents made a choice between two lotteries. An example of this type of question is:
The following questions present similar choices concerning amounts of money. Some of the amounts are certain for you to have, others you can win in a lottery. We would like to know which choice you would make.
42 Q. We toss a coin once. You may choose one of the following options:
You receive $10 with either head or tails. With heads you receive $20, with tails you don’t receive anything at all.
Both of the two types of questions contain a risky, or high variance, and a safe, or low variance option.
Forlani (57) employed a business simulation and nested experimental research design to investigate the influence of decision domain and perceived outcome control on manager’s high risk decisions.
Hsee, et al (89) utilized similar risk-choice questions to demonstrate differences in risk preference between Americans and Chinese . The investigators were able to compute a Risk Preference Index based on individual choices across all questions (89, p169).
Harre, et al (79) also employed this approach to measure attitudes toward risky driving. Respondents were asked the safest speed a driver could go in good conditions in 50 km/hr and 100 km/hr limits for urban roads and highways. The scale for the 50 km/hr zone went up in increments of 10 to faster than 80 km.
Erb, et al (55) used a straight forward approach involving scenarios having to do with Holiday Travel, Saving Jobs, Buying a Used Car, and Betting on Horses. For example, Buying a Used Car:
Mr. Z needs a new car. Two used-car salesmen have each made him a different offer. The first salesman offers him a car, sale price $5000 with a year’s guarantee for major spare parts. For another model of the same type, the second salesman does not offer him a guarantee, but offers a price which is $700 lower.
Which choice would you make?
Car with Guarantee 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Car Without Guarantee
What is your degree of confidence in the decision you have just made?
Not At All Confident 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Completely Confident
The choice-theoretic approach has also been used in the construction of a popular personality trait inventory. “The Kogan-Wallach Choice Dilemmas Questionnaire (CDQ) measures a generalized consistently cautious or risky outlook affecting a person’s judgments in a variety of situations.” (138, p3-4). “The CDQ contains 12 scenarios that describe a person who is faced with a choice of pursuing a risky course of action with high return or pursuing a less risky decision where the return is less. In each case, the respondent is asked to advise the person in the scenario by
43 indicating what probability of success (1,3,5,7, or 9 in 10) would be sufficient to warrant the choice of the risky alternative…most researchers have summed the scores across the scenarios to derive a risk propensity measure.” (138, p4). The CDQ has been criticized for its projected assessments of risk, which differ from actual behaviour, for its failure (underlying factor structure) to measure a unitary disposition and for its low reliability.
In summary, this review has simply provided examples of alternative approaches to measuring risk. All of the approaches contain assumptions, some of them quite sophisticated mathematically, and various advantages and disadvantages depending on the specific application. A much more thorough review would make these assumptions, advantages and disadvantages, more explicit. Heimer’s(81) important paper, for example, explores contributions to sociological theory of the Perceptions Model and the “heuristics” that people employ in thinking about risk.
5.2 Application of the Perceptions Model: An Operational Protocol
One of the revised goals for this project is as follows:
To produce an operational protocol for measuring gambling situations in sports events.
This goal can be approached on two levels. Firstly, we are interested in being able to measure how different individuals will choose among alternative gamble versus play-safe options in various play action scenarios, that represent real game situations. The operational protocol discussed below employs the choice-theoretic approach for this initial development
Secondly, we are interested in being able to measure how different individuals assess the degree of risk across these same play action scenarios. This initial development employs the intuitive approach to risk measurement.
A challenge for both of these perspectives is to develop measurement procedures or protocols which have general applicability not only for players but also for coaches, fans, and those who have had very little interest (non-participants) in competitive sports. The discussion that follows is really some preliminary ideas that require further testing and refinement.
• A Sports Risk Management Situational Choice Inventory
The analysis of Expert Interviews, discussed earlier in this report, suggested that two situational dimensions for classifying sports and games, team versus individual participation and contact versus non-contact, have implications for what people talk about in terms of defining play action situations that provide opportunities to gamble or play safe. In general, to the extent that norms of team play provide for
44 others to cover up, then there are greater opportunities for individuals to gamble; moreover, contact sports place an additional premium on the risk of physical injury, as well as psychological injury due to intimidation..
Other situational determinants of the play action situation that were seen to impact on any choice decisions to gamble or play safe included the importance of the game in terms of the consequences of a win/loss for positional status; the point in the game in terms of duration, beginning, middle, end, holes or rounds left, etcetera; and the closeness of scoring in the competition. Other factors seen to impact on the choice decision were perceptions of the coach’s expectations, for example in promoting an overall aggressive/offensive or a conservative/defensive strategy, the amount of player experience, and expectations incumbent on specific positions or players with successful track records, the “go to “players and “stars”..
Variation across these multiple dimensions creates a framework or domain for generating play action scenarios with play safe and/or gambling response choices; that is, the play action itself and the response options can remain constant ; what varies are the situational factors which influence the overall perception of riskiness in the situation and, consequently, the decision to gamble or to play safe.
These situational factors are itemized below and generate 288 possible Scenarios. The protocol is a model for generating potential item Scenarios: additional item analysis would be required to select actual Items for inclusion in a useful inventory.
Levels
1) Player Composition: Team vs Individual 2 2) Physical Requirements: Body Contact vs Non-Contact 2 3) Coach Orientation: Aggressive vs Conservative 2 4) Player Disposition: Experienced vs Inexperienced 2 5) Game Importance: Important vs Not Important 2 6) Game Score Status: Behind vs Tied vs Ahead 3 7) Game Duration Status: Early vs Mid-way vs Late 3 288
Example. Situation: “Third and 2”. Play Safe Option: Punt the ball. Gamble Option: Quarterback Sneak
Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3….Scenario 72
1) Football Football Football Football 2) Football Football Football Football 3) Aggressive Aggressive Aggressive Conservative 4) Experienced Experienced Experienced Inexperienced
45 5) Important Important Important Not-Important 6) Behind Behind Behind Ahead 7) Early Mid-way Late Late
Potential Definition of the Situation (eg: Scenario 1):
It is the first quarter of a football contest, the outcome of which will determine first place position and a bye into the semi-finals. Coach Smith has prepared an aggressive offensive and defensive game plan and your team has an experienced quarterback at the helm. At this point in the game your team is behind by one touchdown , you are in your own end of the field and it is third down with two yards to go for a first down.
Potential Q: As a player (coach, fan) observing this situation, what do you think is the best thing to do:
1) Punt the Ball 2) Quarterback Sneak
Scoring: Code all Gambling options as “1”and Play Safe as “0”, sum for total potential score (0-288). ( Add: Don’t Know/No Choice?)
Obviously the total item pool can be increased by adding additional examples of situations for any specific game (for example: Passing Situation, Go for Interception vs Knock the Ball Down) and/or adding additional variety in the example of games for the principle categories (eg Hockey-Team, Contact).
• A Sports Risk Management Situational Assessment Inventory
Each of the above scenarios provides a gambling versus a play safe option and, thus, the opportunity to measure a respondent’s propensity to make one or the other response. One can also obtain the respondent’s perception of the amount of risk in each of the scenarios.
Potential Q:
With the information provided to you about this sports situation, how would you evaluate the amount of risk involved for any player forced to make a play-safe or a gambling type response?
Using a range in values from “0” representing ABSOLUTELY NO RISK to “100” representing ABSOLUTELY MAXIMUM RISK, place the value you think is appropriate for each scenario in the space provided.
46
Scoring: The above procedure enables all of the selected scenarios to be rank ordered in ascending or descending order, and to be grouped or classified for example from “Extremely Low” to “Extremely High” in perceived level of risk. Presumably, one might also compute a summary index or measure for each individual over all of that individual’s responses.
6.0 FUTURE PROJECTS
A number of potential future projects derive from this exploratory Investigation.
6.1 Testing the Revised Perspective: Figure 1.
Figure 1 provides a model for specifying testable hypotheses involving Concepts derived from the work of Stryker, Callero, and particularly Curry as it applies to athletes and gambling.
• Measurement Tools
Curry has developed and begun to refine operational instrumentation for role- identity, role-salience, commitment, expectations of others, role(fan) involvement, and motive statements. Since 1995, these instruments have been used more extensively by Professor Weiss at the University of Vienna (through personal correspondence with Professor Curry), and require additional refinements. The operational protocol for measuring play-safe versus gambling choices during sports participation, begun during this current investigation, needs to be formalized through additional item analyses procedures. A similar inventory needs to be constructed for measuring gambling versus non-gambling recreational choices. Ultimately, one will be interested in the extent to which refined measures of sports role-identity, role-salience, commitment, fan involvement, and motive statements correlate with play-safe versus gambling choices during sports participation, and how this latter also correlates with gambling versus non-gambling recreational choices, and ultimately with problem gambling severity.
• Male Athletes and Gambling
Following refinement of the above measurement tools, it will be possible to submit proposal(s) designed to test hypotheses derived from Figure 1.
6.2 Coaches and Health Promoting Schools: A Healthy Life Style Program.
During the Expert Interviews it became evident that coaches have an opportunity as “Risk Managers” and “meaning makers” to help athletes learn about risk taking in a positive, balanced approach to life style choices.
47
Andy Higgins and Andy Anderson ( Director National Coaching Institute and former Canadian Olympic and University Coach, and Professor O.I.S.E , Physical and Health Education, respectively) have expressed interest in exploring this subject with a view to potential program development.
6.3 Sports Media in Relation to Sports Participation and Gambling.
The sports media provide not only an information about gambling resource but also they promote gambling and risk taking values , both overtly and covertly. There have been a number of studies in the past in other countries which have examined this issue, mainly from the perspective of newspaper, magazine, and television. In more years, there has also been a proliforation of video games and gambling via the internet. These media are an important source of the cultural values and ambiguity that one must recognize in any program for problem gambling prevention and intervention. One useful initiative in this regard is an exploratory review of the sports media in Ontario (Canada) in relation to fan and athlete gambling activities.
6.4 The Gambling Culture of the Sports Pub
It is evident that sports pubs provide an opportunity for athletes and fans to participate in gambling activities. Have there been other studies that have investigated the nature of the sports pub, the who, the what, the how and when of gambling activities of young athletes, in particular, in these pub settings? An exploratory literature review and personal interviews would serve to document current understanding and to help specify additional specific areas of enquiry.
6.5 Women athletes and Gambling: Changing Role Perspectives?
The evidence has been that females have much less predisposition to gamble than do males. Curry found that females had a much less salient sports role-identity. Yet, more and more females are participating in organized sports, mainly at a recreational level, where they also participate in the sports pub culture. Female elite athletes and teams are being given much more extensive media coverage, for example, during the Olympic Games but also when elite female hockey players and golfers begin to compete with their male counterparts. The evidence has suggested that sports participation per se does not produce gamblers; however, to the extent that female recreational athletes become fans in following their elite role models and participate in sports pubs , as a venue for fan involvement, then one might hypothesize a changing role perspective. Do recreational female athletes have at least as much propensity to gamble in these venues as do their male counterparts? An exploratory literature review is needed to investigate
48 understanding about more recent changes in women’s sport’s culture in relation to gambling and risk-taking in general.
7.0 BUDGET SUMMARY
Expected Actual
Personnel * $8100.00 $11,475.00
Literature Review ($2700.00) ($4050.00)
Interviews ($4050.00) ($675.00)
Transcribe Interview Tapes ($0.0) ($2700.00)
Report Preparation ($1350.00) ($4050.00)
Travel $150.00 $50.00
Equipment: Tape recorder $150.00 $15.00 And cassettes
Miscellaneous $100.00 $0.00
Total Budget $8500.00 $11,540.00
* 6 Hour days @ $45.00per hour
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8.0 APPENDIX 1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Sports Participation: Gambling Situations and Learning Opportunities
50
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9.0 APPENDIX 2. INTERVIEW PROTOCOL and TRANSCRIPTS
59
Sports Participation and Gambling Opportunities.
1. To the extent that competitive sports model important cultural values and themes in everyday life, one might expect the play action of competitive sports to provide opportunities to “gamble” or “play safe”- to manage risk. The media coverage of different sports events often allude to gambling situations. Does this working assumption have some validity for you?
A 2x2 typology of sports competitions is Contact vs Non-Contact and Team vs Individual play. Football and Hockey are examples of Contact/Team; Soccer and Basketball represent Non- Contact/Team; Boxing and Wrestling are examples of Contact/Individual; and Golf and Tennis can represent Non-Contact/Individual.
For at least one of each of the four types of sport competition try :
4. To define an action situation which provides the opportunity to gamble or to play safe.
5. To define a typical gambling response to the action situation.
6. To define a typical play safe response to the action situation.
2. Are there situational factors in the action situation which are likely to predispose the athlete to make a gambling rather than a play safe response? We’ve talked about team and contact sports. Does playing with other team members predispose or make it easier for the athlete to take a gamble rather than to play safe? What about playing in a contact rather than a non-contact game? What other situational factors are likely to predispose the athlete to make a gambling rather than a play safe response? What about: the importance of the game? the point in the game (begin, mid, end)? the current score (up, down, tied)?
3. Are there individual player factors which are likely to predispose the athlete to make a gambling rather than a play safe response?
4. I am interested in how one becomes a risk-taker. ( Given that athletes might already possess a predisposition to gamble –or take calculated risks ( biology or very early child development) -when they first begin to participate in these gambling/play safe opportunities in competitive sports,) - what does one actually learn about risk-taking from such intensive/extensive participation? What likely
60 learning implications might there be for individual self-development? Salience of risk-taker role in identity formation? Selection in/out? Other?
5. However one might acquire a predisposition to gamble, how important is it for athletic performance? Does a predisposition to gamble in athletic competitions differentiate elite athletes from-say recreational athletes? What other factors differentiate elite from recreational athletes?
6. What is the role of the coach in relation to managing opportunities to gamble or play safe prior to, and during athletic competitions? Does that coaching role vary for recreational versus elite level players?
7. In your experience, are you aware of any predisposition for athletes in general-and elite athletes in particular- to seek out gambling or risky ventures in other life situations, such as work, family, or other recreational pursuits? Why? Why not?
Andy Higgins Executive Director (Ontario), National Coaching Institute. Former High School and University Physical and Health Educator and Canadian Olympic Track and Field Coach.
Interviewed by: Glen Markle Interview Date: November 19, 2002.
Glen: I am chatting today with Andy Higgins who is Executive Director of the National Coaching Institute here in Toronto. Andy, I have a basic working assumption, which is:
(Ed. Note: The following question and initial part of the response/discussion were not recorded, by accident).
To the extent that competitive sports model important cultural values and themes in everyday life, one might expect the play action of competitive sports to provide opportunities to “gamble” or “play safe”-to manage risk. The media coverage of different sports events often allude to gambling situations. Does this assumption have any validity for you?
Andy: (In progress) We have so many youth, so many young people that are just exceptional. The vast majority of them are, like the vast majority of ….ordinary… people, but there are so many who are making huge contributions – bright, but we don’t see that. It’s the same thing in sport. So that’s my take on the second part. The first part of it is: I think that sport is a powerful educational experience for people so who runs it is everything and so once again, we’ve got a lot of confusion about sport in which of all the people who participate, the vast majority are very young and are playing games that are most visible as commercial entertainment sport – NFL, NBA, NHL, baseball, those things, that look like sport but aren’t, and that drive values that are most often and increasingly really negative – anti-human. They bring the wrong, not useful approaches to what
61 competition is really all about. And therefore, the potential to drive down real misunderstandings about what sports can be about, I think, is terrific. I think that down at the bottom, and one of the great things about sport is, that in a sense, it has inherent in it, a bit of a gamble. There is risk taking. But when sport is presented and driven, and supervised with the right kind of people – coaches who espouse positive values – then what is taught is risk-taking in the most positive ways. Because nothing ventured is nothing gained, we’ve got to step into the fray often, we’ve got to take a chance. But it is done in a healthy approach, and of course the thing about sport is, what a great learning for life, because it is only a game. But because of the way that it can be structured it can have huge import at the moment, that we are in it, and so, you know, once you start to keep score, well, what are we trying to do? Score more points. Win the game. But it is how that is gone about that makes everything so the gamble that come about. And I think of a guy that you may, or may not have played football with. But you had to be around – Larry DeRochier. Glen: yes Andy: And I coached Larry as a high jumper and it was one of these - it was a classic sport situation. And this is in your category of individual and non contact, right? But it is the ultimate in many regards because it’s truly individual in that it there is no interaction. It is not like wrestling or tennis or those kinds. There is no real interaction. You do your own thing totally uninterrupted physically by your opponents. And so on. So I was at an Ontario championship and there was a kid from Richview in the competition. Glen: John Hunter Andy: You got it. … who was, on any given day, his personal best was about 4 or 5 inches better than Larry’s. And so this should have been a “no brainer” except it’s not ideal jumping conditions and so they both jump. I think it was probably the only height that Hunter … came in at 6 feet. And so Larry makes it on his first attempt. And the next height is 6”1’. And Hunter passed him. And so on a win or lose basis, Larry had to make the next height anyways because he had a miss somewhere, whatever. So he said “should I pass?” and I said, “no, don’t pass, jump it”. He said, “why, what have I got to gain?”. I said, “what you’ve got to gain is the possibility that he is not going to make the next height. These are really bad jumping conditions. Six –two is six-two but it ain’t six-two. So anyhow Larry makes it on his, I think his second attempt or something like that – 6”1’. And the bar goes to 6’2” and they both miss three times! And Larry is Ontario Junior Champion – in Cobourg. That was a gamble. The gamble he took was expending a lot of extra energy on a height that was going to be meaningless…potentially. But the other side of the coin was, putting up a height that the other guy now had to better, and under difficult situations might not, which was really a long shot. But as it turned out that day, it paid off. Glen: I didn’t know Larry was an Ontario high jumper. He did want to become a football player and he did play varsity football and I do remember the game when he tore his anterior cruciate ligaments in his knee. He was a pretty good pass receiver. He was a pretty good all round athlete. Andy: Hey, he was a pretty good athlete. Glen: That was why he was a football player on the team. But he got blind-sided. Andy: But yet, I think that there is this kind of gamble. You see it at the high school level and so on. But I flipped on last night to Monday night football and I got there just a few minutes before they
62 get themselves into a third and extremely long situation on the first drive of the game. And the punter, typical punter, doesn’t have a football body and, you know, got dinky little shoulder pads and one bar kind of thing. They bring back just before the snap count begins, they bring back a back and he stands right behind the kicker so your first instinct is “onside kick” maybe. But then what happens is, it comes back and he goes behind the kicker and the kicker puts the ball back like this, and this guy’s gone like crazy. Except he didn’t give him the ball. He puts it behind his back. Everybody is going like mad, and then they pull a couple of linemen, late, and they go to the left and it was third and 17 and they made like 27 yards to get a first down drive for the touchdown. A huge gamble. Glen: Well that kicker that didn’t look like a football player was probably a pretty decent soccer player and could still run like hell. Andy: And he could run. But I see these situations in sport all the time and it is a risk. You are putting something on the line; you are taking a significant chance and what’s inherent in this is, it seems to me, is this one of, getting as much information as you can, being as prepared as you can, and knowing that, in a sense, there are no guarantees but in this situation this is what I have to do. I‘ve been just reading Shackleton’s Way . Sir Ernest Shackleton is the great explorer of the Antarctic who got into huge difficulty. He may be one of our ultimate models of leadership. But one of the things he did is, as options narrowed down he was prepared to take greater risks. As the options narrow you have to sometimes take greater risk Those are a gamble. But it keeps coming back to me that sport is an incredibly powerful educational tool. And I was just cleaning up stuff here from a number of previous meetings and so on and I came across a piece of paper that I had a note on and this is some thing that I have been talking about for over 30 years now, and that is that sport – I have often said it to get people’s attention, that sport isn’t good for people; that sport is NOT good for our young people. Which definitely gets their attention when you are speaking to coaches or physical educators , but that I point out isn’t bad either, it’s whatever we’re going to make it. So when I speak to somebody in a more academic sense, I say that sport is value neutral. And again it is what we make of it. And so it can be whatever we want to do with it. Charlie Frances showed us the power it has to influence people’s lives – negatively. And he used their human weaknesses against them – their needs, their insecurities, their need to be accepted to/get recognition/money – whatever he was selling, all of it. And people buy into that. And of course, with a positive leader you can also get people to buy into the possibility that sport is only a wonderful place in which to challenge ourselves, learn about ourselves, and become more than we were going into the activity in terms learning values, all of that. But more importantly, learning about what we are really capable of doing, testing our limits, our ability to handle difficult situations. And in amongst, it seems to me, is a big one, and that’s dealing with risk, which seems to me is why there is such an immense attraction these days to a lot of sports that have big challenge/big risk in them because it has been taken out of our society. There is nothing left that challenges anybody. So we get these fake ones. So the idea that gambling is in there. I think of all the athletes…I coached in the high school system for 10 years. I played football for too many years and I coached it for too many after that than I should have. But the point is that I coached that game, I played it, I coached and played basketball for a long time – played it for a lot longer than I coached it and track and field, wrestling, cross country running. And I look at all those activities and I see in them all possibilities. And of all the people that I ever coached at the high school, university and international level, I never saw a tendency to do the unhealthy, societal aspects of gambling
63 among all the young people that I ever coached. I saw people do some of the craziest, fun things - you know, like bet a quarter on something of real significance if you will to a bunch of people (laughs) but guys would be all out there putting a quarter in a pool – for fun, if you will, more than anything else. It was like making a joke, the other side of that coin. And yet I have seen some serious gambling problems in people and they are always related, in the ones I’ve seen, to immense personal insecurities and the need for identifying oneself with something that is “big deal” and exciting, which sport can be if it’s positioned correctly. So I know, we all know that, Michael Jordan, as an example, is/was – and probably still is, a pretty big deal gambler. I think at that level it is part of getting hooked on excitement because at some level the individual hasn’t found satisfaction. He doesn’t need the money – that isn’t why he is gambling. He isn’t buying loto 6/49 tickets like all the sad and unemployed people are doing because they really have come to believe the advertising that says “here is the answer to your dreams” and that kind of stuff. You know, lightning storm starts and all kinds of people don’t even get off the street and if the chance of getting hit by lightening you know statistically are greater than winning the lottery, why do they do that? So, my take on the gambling and sport is, that I don’t believe that sport, even in its worst situations, sets up the negative aspects of gambling. I think that there are certain people who come into sport who bring a tendency in that direction. Glen: Okay, so we have covered a lot of turf already. We have talked about football. We’ve talked a little bit about track, in which I know you have a lot of experience. I‘ve set up a little typology of sports games that I want to try to use. I am not certain that we are going to find that there is more gambling or less gambling in one type of activity than another but anyway, for the sense of organization. And one dimension has to do with contact versus non contact sports and the other has to do with team versus individual. So as an example of contact and team, we talked about football. Hockey would be another one that is very popular. So contact and individual, we would have what? …boxing and wrestling. Andy: Yep – all the martial arts. Glen: Hey. And non contact and team, examples I have here are basketball and soccer. Not that there isn’t contact in those games but the rules are set up to minimize actual contact. Andy: Exactly Glen: And then the final has to with individual and non contact and examples might be golf and tennis. Although both those games can be team sports as well as individual sports. Andy: Yep Glen: So part of what I want to do here is test the extent to which people can start to talk about gambling situations in these different sports. Ones about football are fairly common. Can you find one in soccer? Can you identify a gambling situation, for example, in soccer, which is a team, non contact sport? Andy: In the sport? You’ve got to take a gamble, you’ve got to take a chance? Glen: Well, no, you’ve got an option of gambling or playing it safe. Andy: Yeh. That’s what I mean, exactly. Well, I think one of the ways in that game – and I don’t understand it totally, I mean I am not a big – I am becoming a fan of the game – but I certainly know that the “play it safe” aspect is to really play a defense game and wait for a break. And teams do that, and from a spectator point of view it is awfully dull kind of soccer. From a coach
64 in a non entertainment aspect of it – like an international game or we’re not playing out there in commercial entertainment sport – the name of the game is to win, to move towards medals or that kind of thing, then it becomes a strategy when you have assessed your talent relative to the other team, and so you take the chances that it is not very aggressive offensively. So you have a little breakdown and they score a goal and now you are in real deep trouble because you don’t have that kind of thing. So there is a risk being taken as a team strategy. I think on the other hand, of course, is the gamble that some teams take, and that is the aggressive moving the ball into the other end which means that you can turn it over, if you will, and yet they don’t have the same control you do in football. But, in a sense you do turn it over and they just bring it back to you but you keep attacking the goal on the possibility or on the assumption that what you are going to do is score more goals than they are. Or that you are going to get a couple of goals up and then you can afford to be defensive. So they play this attacking kind of game when maybe they don’t have all the talent to do it but they are counting on sort of brazenness and everything else and sometimes it pays off. I think individuals sometimes will penetrate deeper with a ball than they should – like a defensive player, a mid fielder will take the ball a little deeper than they should because they are trying to create an imbalance and of course the gamble is/ the risk is that the ball moves quickly and now they end up with an odd man advantage moving the other way. And it is a game, very much like basketball, although there are more bodies in a way. But in basketball all you are trying to do is the same thing: create an odd man advantage. As soon as you have an odd man advantage it’s almost impossible to stop it unless somebody makes a mistake on the offense. So I see those kinds of risks are being taken, you know, in the game all the time. And there is strategy risk. And at the same time in each of those games, you can play it safe, sometimes, in going up against somebody that’s a better jumper, stronger, quicker, whatever, to head the ball often come out of those situations in the air, as we see – off balance, which means you aren’t going to land on your feet and you there’s no guarantee, you know, you get a hand down - that can be disastrous to wrist, elbows, shoulders, etc. So and tackling the ball, which often engages a whole lot more than the ball, is a risky kind of thing. To play safe is, is to come in standing up, and make like it, but to get out maneuvered and out run. So I think there are layers and degrees of risk in each of those games. Glen: Do the same comments apply to hockey and contact team sport as opposed to non contact, soccer…? Andy: But in hockey the contact is very much a part of the game and of course, today the game is sick…use of the stick… Glen: What does the contact add to the gambling situation/risk taking? Andy: Well, I think that in some regards, the physical gambling, the physical risk, absolutely does. And then of course what happens is this, here’s where you really bring in the media stuff. And so you get idiots, as I said, on TV Ontario the philosophical cancer of Canadian sport, Don Cherry, who says one thing but then just overlays it with his constant support of physical violence and brutality. So you have the media promoting this kind of thing. So the risk is immense out there. And of course one of them is that if you are a defensive player, is put your body in front of the puck – I mean, forget about putting your body in front of bodies, it’s put your body in front of the puck, which is a lethal weapon coming at 100 mph – it’s a piece of frozen rubber. So there are immense risks out there. Of course, the thing often is to play it safe and that is, come in high and take it on the pads and the other, shots coming in, get down in front of it and smother
65 it. So there are elements of risk. And it is the same thing. There is this element of risk of going into the corner and how you go into the corner and how aggressively you go after a loose puck. All of these things and yet, the physical violence is encouraged, fighting is encouraged and what do you do about that kind of stuff? When the label from the media is that you’re some kind of a chicken shit if you don’t fight and yet the intelligent thing is to walk away from it, often. And yet, if you do, the way the game is run today and is allowed to be run, is that you often get hit from behind. And so it seems to me that there are huge physical and psychological gambles out there all the time by players unless you establish yourself as Gretszky did. You are essentially beyond that. And then the team hires someone to look after you. Glen: Do boxing and wrestling as contact with individual to individual contests present any different specs on that? Andy: They are really different sports. Boxing isn’t and I put wrestling over there a whole lot closer to the martial arts and so on, where the object is, there is a huge amount of strategy and it can be very physical but it’s not about damaging the other persons central nervous system which is the ultimate intent in boxing. And so both, but both require, all of those require, physical courage. You know, I wrestled and I know what happens in there. It’s a whole lot higher level today than that it was then but how many times did you go in for a take down and ran into an elbow or a knee on the way in, you know, that you really didn’t think was going to be there, and it wasn’t a matter of somebody was fending you off with the elbow or the knee, it was that they were using the arm or trying to get the leg out of the way of your attack to the leg but that’s what you ran into in the process. So that kind of thing happens. Whereas in boxing, you literally have to move into a situation where you are going to take blows to be able to deliver a blow. It’s not possible to deliver a blow and not get within range of the other blow unless you have extremely long reach. Glen: Can you think of a situation during the ongoing, round by round action in boxing that an individual boxer has an opportunity either to gamble/to take a risk or to play it safe? Andy: Sure. Well I think that there comes a point in boxing when you can play it safe and hope for the big opening, hope for the opportunity and possibly come out of it with a loss but not get beaten up. Or to go for the win, which means you’ve got to step in and make up for the points you have given away, you have lost because the other person was a better boxer or what ever the situation may be. Glen: So you’re down on points and you’re running out of time… Andy: Absolutely. And now you have to step in and take some serious chances on taking a blow that’s damaging. Glen: Down on points and running out of time seems to apply to all these … Andy: Sure, it’s the same in wrestling where there comes a point when you have to be aggressive and you have to wade right in and of course the difference is, in wrestling, is that your chances of getting really damaged are not the same as they are in boxing. In wrestling the other person has the ability to just continually evade you whereas in boxing if there is only a couple of rounds left, well when you wade in, yes, if it is late in the last round the person can simply evade you and so on. But the truth is, two or three rounds, if you start wading in, the other person now realizes that
66 you cannot evade for three rounds or whatever. So what will often happen is, if you are wading in, you leave yourself vulnerable and the other person knows that and will take advantage of it. So that is what you have got to face, is the possibility that in going for broke, you open yourself up to the really damaging hit and the other person, on the other hand, has no problem with it because he has every possibility to defend himself but when the opening is there (claps) “boom”. So I think there are huge possibilities in boxing when you have to gamble and it requires huge physical courage or too many hits in the head in the first place. Glen: What about tennis and golf as individual, non contact games or sports where in fact there may not be a clock on the competition. Do these also present opportunities to gamble or to play safe? Andy: I think golf is – I have become such a fan of golfers. I have so much respect for their ability to hold it together and perform under what we all know is immense pressure. And the thing about golf is it gives you so much time to think about it, which is where the pressure comes. I coach track and field. Pole vault and high jump are classics. They put the bar up; tell you what the height is, “oh my God, I’ve never jumped this high before”, and then they give you time to think about it. Well they don’t give you a lot of time, but you get time to think about it. Where with golf you get immense amounts of time to think about it from one shot to the next as you walk up to the shot. So the classics we’ve seen so many times, in the last few years is Tiger Woods, who is an immense gambler when it’s demanded. And that is, you can play the safe shot, which is two shots – I lay it up on the course here and I put it up onto the green and I am going to get a par. But I don’t need a par right now; what I need is a birdie. And how often have we seen him go across water, go over trees that many players would never do and what he is doing, if you will, is what I think of, and I’ve talked about earlier, and that is, he has assessed the situation, he looks at his own skills and talents and his own preparation and he knows that it is not as big a gamble as it is for other people. It is still a gamble. If he executes really, really well he is going to be okay. Glen: A shot in the Canadian Open, from the bunker where he, that iron where he was six feet from the pin... Andy: Exactly. That kind of thing, that kind of very calculated risk is there. But sometimes you will see him and other golfers when it’s not even so much calculated, it’s a matter of “I don’t have any other possibilities here” and they aren’t content. They didn’t come to make some money. They came to win. So they got no option. If you come to win but to attempt this shot and they’ll attempt it. And that I think takes a lot of character because often it’s a difference between hanging in and settling for second or if you missed a shot, all of a sudden being fifth, sixth, seventh or significantly way back, but they will go for it. And that is, I think, one of the real values in sport. Tennis has different kinds of gambles and I think the gambles there are where you are forced by what’s happening, by the other person’s competence or whatever, to start playing shots that aren’t your greatest strength. To sometimes go for the corner because the other person is so mobile that putting the ball foot inside the sideline and a solid foot inside the baseline is going to get run down, so now you’ve got to go for the absolute corners. Glen: like in baseball - pitcher and batter competition
67 Andy: Yah. Or you’ll find the player being forced to have to come to the net which is not his game but if he doesn’t come to the net he is going to get hammered on the baseline. That kind of thing… so, all of a sudden, you’re forced strategically to take a gamble on something. I think these situations are really what makes sports so interesting, not just for people to watch but for all of us to play is when the people who bring us along in the game, help us understand that what is really happening out there is that we are being challenged as people to discover our own strength, to deal with our own weaknesses and to find out what we are really capable of doing. And we never know what we are capable of doing until we are put in a situation where we have to deal with it. Glen: I want to come back to this whole…one of the things that I am very interested in, are your thoughts on what you think athletes learn from participating in these kinds of situations where they are confronted with an option of taking a gamble or playing safe, but before, are there individual player factors which are likely to predispose the athlete to the gambling rather than a play safe response?
Andy: Sure. The most elemental one is confidence, self-esteem. The kid that knows clearly, the young person, the adult, who knows clearly that she’s not her performance That her worth is not dependent upon how well she plays the game or whether she wins or loses or any of that. Her worth is based on human values “I’m a worthwhile human being” and when that is separated out then you are more predisposed to take risks in the game because that’s where the excitement is in the game and that is what the game demands of me at this moment so I will take it and if I lose or if I take a chance and I fall on my face and I look badly, hey, that’s how it is. So that is the very first one: that you know, the really confident youngster who comes from a home and knows that he’s okay or somebody who comes into a good situation. Contrast the kids that came into the University of Toronto track program and those that ended up in Charlie’s program. Our kids achieved a pretty high level, they graduated from university and moved on into life. Charlie’s program turned a lot of kids into cheaters, liars and then they had to deal with that for the rest of their life. It looked like a good thing at moment – getting medals. What happened in there? So many of those kids in a different situation, had they known they had it – you know, very few of us have enough confidence. You get into a group, you gotta be awfully strong to stand aside from that group’s ethic. And there were kids that walked out of Charlie’s group and we had one kid walk out of our group into his. And she paid for it – she’ll pay for it forever, you know, in terms of what she’s got to live with. So that is the first one but I think there is another one, that are likely to predispose athletes and that is, you know - all the things that grow out of that - the lack of confidence But I think the other one is previous experiences and that’s the value of well shaped and well interpreted. I think the real role of a good coach is to make meaning out of situation, help people understand what happened or what’s going on here. And so when people have had really positive experiences with taking some risks, in other words, even if they didn’t win in the gamble they took in the game, someone helps them understand that that was a good thing to do out there. “You displayed real courage and it was the only option you had and it was great that you went for it and it’s not the end of the world”. They are going to be more prepared to take a risk in a game as opposed to somebody who will play it safe. Now if you take a risk in a game and you have a coach hollering at you, “What the hell are you doing out there, Markle?” well I want to tell, you know what happens, you’re learning that as a kid. So how we approach risk is very much determined I think
68 by our own inherent, not inherent but our shapes … confidences from our families, and our previous experiences. Glen: What about situational factors? We talked about time, running out of time and being behind in a points situation. Are there any other kinds of situational factors that may be consistent … that cross all these different sports…or do they really depend on the particular game itself? Andy: Well, I think one that goes across everything is the meaning attached to that particular game. Take the extreme, a pick-up game of anything – touch football with a bunch of buddies, I mean a guy will throw a pass in a situation he wouldn’t throw a pass in a champion game of whatever nature. So there is that kind of element. In pick-up basketball, guys take shots that they wouldn’t take in a game where a person was really taking score and there was – you know, some kind of a bobble… like silly little press thing that you would never wear in line – that kind of thing. So that kind of situation is to a large degree – and is why when we take that to the next level, at the ultimate level of competition – the best competitors are the ones who understand. They want to win because they prepared for it and this is an ultimate test of themselves, but they also know that it is a game and it isn’t in life. And that perspective…so in a sense the game at a deep emotional level has this almost paradoxical, two aspects to it. One is: this is unbelievably important and I will give everything I can. I will lay my body on the line in this game. And at the same time, there is a deep sense that it is only a game and it doesn’t therefore matter. So they bring that pick-up game kind of value – they understand this – but because there is so much…this ain’t gonna happen again, it’s what the best guys, it’s what a Daley Thompson or a David Stein brought to Olympic games: This thing ain’t gonna happen again, I get this one shot. I may not get another. And therefore it has huge meaning and at the same time this is one hell of an exciting competition. These guys are great. There is a ton of energy here in the stadium and they’re really, really enjoying it because they know clearly that no matter what happens, they’re OK with who they are. So I think the situations are really so often dependent upon the meaning we attach to the situation. Glen: Well, we touched on…we actually didn’t call it play but again, and we’re getting a bit ahead of the game here, but one of the things I think I hear you saying – and I want to go back to and talk about elite athletes in relation to gambling, is however, that the closer the game is to a pure play situation the more likely you’re to find the players engaging in gambling, risky, more spontaneous types of things, of actions. Andy: Yes, yes Glen: Can we come back to that? Put that on hold for a few minutes? Andy: Sure. Glen: Does one learn to gamble in any specific action situation as a result of ongoing, intensive, extensive participation in athletic competitions? Is this a learning experience or are you almost born with a predisposition to gamble and that what happens in sports competition is that if you can’t gamble or take calculated risks successfully you’re going to be weeded out. Andy: I think to a degree that is really true ………….
Andy: Does this really predispose people to the possibility of gambling?
69 Glen: Well, no, no, there are two parts to that I guess. What does ongoing participation, both intensively and extensively in sports that present gambling opportunities do.. Do people learn from this and what kinds of things do they learn? And the other part of that question is that they don’t learn anything really… it’s a function of sports, it operates as a sort of a selection mechanism. Either you’ve got it or you ain’t. One of those things is the ability to gamble, to take risks if it’s required in a situation. And if you don’t have it when you get in, you’re going to find out quickly and you’re going to lose and get out. Andy: I think that it’s really true – that you have to learn that sport done well helps people move through to all kinds of abilities or levels of abilities they didn’t necessarily bring in in the first place. And when done badly, it simply becomes a weeding out process. And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some of us who enter into activities that just weren’t meant for us anyhow so we do get weeded out. Weeded out or selected out or however you want to call it, but I think that is a real and necessary – and a part of life. It’s like finding out – no, I don’t like that kind of food, I don’t like to dance, I prefer whatever. I don’t like contact sports but I love sport and here are the kinds I love. But I think that this idea of risk taking is important to moving ourselves forward as people. That we have to take risks. That if we don’t take risks, we stay right where we are, in whatever it is. In a sense, we have to take risks intellectually with our ways of thinking if we are going to see a bigger picture. We have to take a chance that the way I see things isn’t the best way to see things. And that may be a small issue but I tell you, you know this, and as a life-time educator, you walk into a room and it’s risky often to put an idea out. Or take a statement of what I really believe on a topic in an educational setting and yet only by doing that are we ever going to have our thinking challenged, get better by it, to learn the same way we do in a game, that I am not the way I think, etc. So part of the learning here is to learn to take risks and to get the value that comes out of that and have all this kept in perspective of what it means on our life. But there is an element of gambling and risk-taking in sport that is unhealthy and is not useful to the individual or the group and good coaches support this understanding of what it is all about. You see kids doing that often in lower organized sport only to get attention and to get that big kick. And that’s the kid that, if somebody doesn’t work with him or her, is going to end up doing the same thing in other aspects of their life. Glen: What relationship does a predisposition to gamble have to elite athletic performance? Andy: Well I think there’s a …I don’t know if there is a big element to it. There is an element in it, depending on the game. But elite athletic performance seems to me to be very much like an elite academic performance and elite performance in all of life and that is that the elite don’t take many chances. They are prepared to when they need to.
Tape side 2
Andy: So they are predisposed to be gamblers. In fact the elite are predisposed to be prepared and so they know what the situation demands; they’ve got that figured well in advance. In other words, they know what their goals are; they know what the demands are to get there, and they will do
70 everything needed in terms of preparing to make sure that there are an absolute minimum of unthought of exigencies that might arise along the way to get there. Now here’s, I think, where the ability to gamble comes in. And that is, when something does come up and they’re facing the situation and they still have that clear goal in mind, ‘cause they’ve got it there, which is why they prepared so hard, then they will take the gamble they need to take and usually one is required at that point. I go back to Shakleton again. He’d prepared in absolute detail. And yet when the time came that they had no option – or they had a very safe option - to stay there and hold or act, he sized it all up and acted, which was a huge gamble particularly when they left, and a small boy, Elephant Island for 700 miles of south Atlantic Ocean in the winter time to try and find south Georgia. Glen: Is this attention to preparation to detail… is this, apart from the obvious, skill differences, one of the things that differentiates elite from recreational athletes? Andy: Well I think preparation in athletics is a big one. Recreational stuff is fun – you can do a little bit of this; a little bit of that and you don’t prepare. I mean preparation is really the big one and of course I think that in that one, of course, is also the fascination with the activity, because nobody who only wants the outcome will ever do, can’t stay with the preparation long enough to achieve it. The only ones that really achieve it are the ones who are so fascinated by the whole process that the preparation that is required is also a very rewarding, ongoing experience because you’ve got to do so much of it for such a long period of time. The ones who love to practice, love to train, love to do those things. That doesn’t mean there are days when you aren’t very happy doing what you’re doing but in the overall picture that thing is there so…preparation that whole thing is what is exciting, rewarding, and so on, and why they don’t need the…. The ones who don’t prepare often, who get themselves involved, somewhat, in high performance or elite situations, are the ones who do that only to put themselves out on a limb so they get the big thrill of the big gamble. And so they this big thrill because they….and they need to go find it again. I learned in counselling/therapy kind of training, a great phrase, that I use all the time and it says: “We can’t get enough of what we don’t need”. So you just can’t get enough of those big thrills because it isn’t what you need. And what the individual needs is that ongoing, deeper satisfaction. It’s like sugar candy as opposed to meat and potatoes.
Glen: What do you see as the role of the coach in relation to managing opportunities to gamble or play safe prior to and during actual competition? Andy: Well I’ve talked a little bit about it but I think the coach is central to all of this and I repeat what I said earlier that one of the key roles I see, of coaches is to be “meaning makers”. The “meaning maker” is the one who can help the youngster process what just happened. And of course, one of the most significant meaning making roles that we have as coaches and coaches I mean the best parent’s coach, the best manager’s coach, the best teacher’s coach – but the first and the biggest one we have to do in our society today increasingly is to help kids make meaning out of what society looks upon, and what most their peers look upon, as a failure. ‘Cause what is in a learning experience. And if we don’t fail, we don’t learn. We still continue to do what we can do. And the classic is, the simplest and most obvious one is high jumping. You put the bar a certain height and you jump over it. You jump over it again and again. Whatever the height might be. The only way that you are going to learn to be more effective is to put the bar up where it
71 challenges you and you’re going to knock it down a few times. In other words you are going to fail to make the height. The way that we respond to that, and so on, is the ways in which a coach helps to make meaning out of the situation. And that is that we focus on what we did and how we felt, what happened and how did we respond to this new height. All of these things that are making meaning out of it. And of course there comes a day when we’ve done this kind of thing, where we now are able in a competition to even experience what we’ve been feeling, which is very, very, good today – I’m jumping very well – and therefore, because the situation presents itself, and you know you’re prepared, and you have to do this, and you want the bobble you came to get, and what you do is you pass a height that you’ve never jumped before, to go to the height that you’ve got to take the jump at. That is an immense, if you will, gamble, and yet the truth is, it is an immense opportunity to really test yourself. And so this is the kind of stuff we do prior to competition. During competition, it’s the time to go out and say: “ Well Glen, this is the one that we have prepared for, for the last six years, whatever, this is it. Enjoy it. Get focused and do what you can do because this is it.” And so, again, it’s helping refocus and remind the person what it is about, whatever, what’s the value in this, that kind of thing. And of course, when it’s over, the real role that the coach plays is helping the person once again make meaning out of it and keep it in perspective. Put the great success in perspective. Celebrate it and remember that this is sport and so where we go in life from here on in, and that kind of stuff. Or if you take the big gamble and it happens to be in a visible situation in major games or whatever, then the coach’s role is to make sure that the athlete is (and fails to win that one) is to help the athlete relax and get in perspective and be prepared to deal with those idiots in the media who have never done anything – they’re all wanna be’s. It would be neat if more of them were “used to be’s” but they aren’t and so they are going to come there with a lot of very stupid questions. And you have to be prepared for them. So the coach plays a very significant role in helping people learn to deal with, actually deal with, and process, the whole aspect of risk-taking, challenging ourselves – going to levels that we haven’t gone to before, and being prepared to deal with whatever comes out of it. And yeh, it does vary very much between recreational and elite level athlete players, because at the recreational level – what are we doing out here? We’re having fun anyhow. And so it’s very easy then to laugh things off. And often at a recreational level, what we see more and more, is epitomized for me, when I, after ten years away, went back to work at the University of Toronto, and had only the year before stopped playing senior A basketball in the city. So the game -I love the game - also play the game at any opportunity. So I had a lot of spare time in that first year so I would head down to the gym to play pick-up basketball. So my first experience down there was absolutely mind blowing because the game I’d played, as much as it could be awfully competitive, if that was what it was, and there was ego stuff but people called their own fouls and it was pick-up basketball. I arrive down here and half the people on the floor were living in a fantasy world. They thought it was an NBA try out camp and you called the foul that was committed on you. So now, the big ego going to the basket misses a shot because the going is heavy in there with bodies, is calling “foul”. So often today in recreational sport, part of the role of the coach of low level sport, if you will, is to remind people of what this is all about – It’s about play. This is pure play. Keep it in perspective and help people get their own insecurities that are tied to their ego in perspective as opposed to what it might have been a generation ago or two, where play really was play. As I learned in a big open space beside the country store that my father ran in his first business, where on Wednesday afternoons when the train came in, in the summer months – this big six by six
72 mile township of subsistence level farmers and whatever, woodcutters, all kinds of people, poor people during the war, that he would, always on Wednesday, my father had ice cream come in from Thunder Bay. Well often it got there in liquid form. So everybody would come in and my father was giving away ice cream and there would be a softball game or something and the older guys were playing horseshoes. But in the softball games, I learned that from my father. People would be kids out there, old guys and some young stud who wasn’t quite old enough to get to the war yet, or whatever. My old man was one that kept perspective. And he’d run around and do a little pop fly in the infield. You know, he’d run out at the last minute and take off his hat and catch it in his hat or try to catch it in his hat. ..laugh and giggle. The sense that the game was only about fun. Well that has changed. So often the role of the coach changes too, as cultural and social values change. Glen: So my sense is…I guess this was sort of the predisposition that I was coming in with. I think it kind of piggy backs on what you’ve been saying. The further we get from pure play toward sport and game as serious business, then the more the coaches role becomes one of manager of risk. You’ve got coaches putting in a lot of time prior to the actual event – making sure the athletes are in good shape, scouting, preparing game plans. During the actual conduct of the game, at this high level, coaches actually making key decisions – no longer left to the players. Maybe that is at the professional level. Andy: Yah, even at the college/ high school level, the coaches are calling plays! You know, in college football, the coaches are calling the plays, sending them in! What kind of an experience is this for… Glen: Well, again, what does it mean? Andy: What it means is, to me, is that we’ve got people out there who shouldn’t be out there. Our biggest challenge at the schools level – high schools and universities levels – is that there is not a clear philosophy of why sport exists in the educational system. I asked that question of my first principle in 1961:”what’s the philosophy of sport?” He thought I was talking Swahili. He had no idea what the hell I was talking about. And so he said: “What’s good for the kids”. Not convinced. But there is no philosophy. And so until we accept – this is what the struggle at U of T is – they haven’t for years and years and years. They have a bunch of…academics running the place – that are extremely deluded about the value of what they do and pass off the dissemination and regurgitation of information as education, and it’s not. If we look historically at education – we look at even the best Ivy schools – they’re looking for well rounded people. That’s who they want to bring in and they want those to be turned out. Well sport is a powerful educational tool because it takes life and presses it into a very intensive microcosm and we come to face ourselves very quickly. So it has this huge potential in an educational institution when our coaches are there – and seen as there – as educators. That does not mean that we do not try and win the game. Of course we are going to keep score – but how do you go about that and how do we go about sort of winning any game? By preparing at the highest level we can, by keeping it in context – understanding that this is only an aspect of my life. By the way, so is the case with academics, who am I, what are my values. Academics can inform that - that is why we should have more philosophy and meaningful psychology. And so it’s yes, and there’s degrees or levels…When we move to the next level, which is not sport, but is commercial entertainment that looks like sport, then we see these huge dilemmas of incredible preparation and of course now we get into these struggles of human values. If you listen
73 carefully to football, there isn’t any doubt in anybody’s mind – never talked about this for a long time but now it seems to be talked about – we’re out there to try and injure the quarterback…if we can injure the quarterback – this kind of stuff. It’s about physical intimidation in terms of trying to win the game. But at the same time there are all of these other nonsensical things out there and they too, aren’t clear about what they’re doing, because it’s just grown, and that is, they’ve got to fill the stands and sell television. But exciting football depends on the quarterback. And so they get caught in this one of – why are we promoting this kind of thing? So the game is a business, and it is a business for the players in spite of the fact that a whole lot of them still have that boyish element within them, that child-like element that loves to play the game…in spite of the fact that they know it’s a business. They’ve got a manager who’s making millions and they’re making millions, etc. but they still get caught up in that one and you see it. You see it in my favourite team’s quarterback and that’s Brett Farr who is just a big kid out there having a hell of a good time And it doesn’t mean he isn’t intense but his intensity in this game is part of the fun. I mean you see that in little kids in the game. They get really intense, yet they’re having a good time. So there are all of these contradictions. But I couldn’t agree with you more, that the further we meld away from homo ludens to the business of the game, the more it becomes … the gambles are bigger, and the risks are bigger, and therefore the amount of preparation time that is put into it to try and eliminate all the risk and gambles increases and the seriousness of it increases and the tragic part of it is, that we come here to the huge paradox. And that the amount of time, energy, money and social resources invested up here are so huge and the value to society is absolutely minimal and often negative. And yet down here where the value to society can be immense, by helping people through playful sport, challenging sport become more cooperative in that competitive environment- which is truly a cooperative one because I will never find out how good I am unless you are prepared to be over there challenging me with how good can you be. And it’s in that struggle with, that kind of stuff. So all the other things that can be learned in this milieu, in terms of just pure play and the joy of just being physically active has a huge impact on health and well-being throughout life. Minimum value, minimum energy, minimum participation. Glen: We talked about play. We talked about the learning that goes on as a result of participating in sport and sport where there are these situations presented where one can gamble or play safe. We talked about the role of the coach and how that varies depending on whether we’re dealing with elite or recreational level of athletes. And we also mentioned Michael Jordan. One of the things I’m interested in hearing you comment on is the whole idea of what athletes do outside the arena, in other areas of work or after their career is finished, or in their family life or in other recreational pursuits. Does any of this have a carry over effect? Andy: I think it does. I think it has immense carry-over effect. I would contrast all the young men, as an example, that you played football with at the University of Toronto. We go right across Canada with rarest of exceptions. Who in a sense is part of that program and who came out of it and what they’ve done in life. And contrast that with the huge numbers of social misfits and socially incapable who have come out of the MC2A Division 1, the big, big football schools – the Nebraska’s and Colorado’s, and Alabama’s – they’re endless, you know. We’ll put in four years, been used by a system, even though it results in a degree, it’s useless. It’s a useless piece of paper because there isn’t a course in there that is of any great value and many are hokey to start with. And they flaunt, wave the flag for that rare kid that comes through the program that came
74 from a great home and was altogether anyhow. So the impact is, yes, there is a huge carry-over value. If the values are strong and the program is about: first year student and then you happen to be playing football, or you’re here to play football and fill the stands and bring alumni money and TV money and other kind of money to the university. I mean we see that. We see that it’s a violent sport in a violent milieu and people are treated violently and like a product. It’s not an accident that coming out of that US system we see so much assault and battery, rape, murder and so on. This is quite a few years ago because I think I might still have been at UofT but it doesn’t matter. It won’t have changed dramatically. But Colorado at that time had twenty-two felons on their team. Twenty-two people with rape, aggravated assault, armed robbery, this kind of stuff. They had twenty-two of them on the team! Glen: …probationary program for them (chuckle). Andy: But you know where that came from. It came from where they came from and the help they didn’t get as people because they were outstanding athletes and anything they did was put up with because they were helping the senior elementary school have a better football program and the coach could win, and the school could fly its flag and that at the high school level and at the university level – and some of them went to the pros. And we’ve seen it. We’ve seen what’s come out of the pros. Glen: Let me throw this at you. As a result of this ongoing, life-long participation in sport when athletes develop a self-esteem, a self concept as risk takers – they’re confident, outgoing types - it’s all condoned in the arena – ongoing sports participation, what it takes to be successful.. Once you are outside that arena, do you have any sense that the athlete actually has to actually seek out opportunities that sort of reflect back these same things for his self- image to reinforce that self confidence, that risk-taker “I am a risk taker so I go out and engage in risky-type activities”? I’m maybe putting words in your mouth. Andy: No, no. I think that, in the same way that we talked about risk, if you will. If you’re really gifted and you show up at a fairly big meet, sometimes you can perform fairly well. One of the things that I think athletes do take away is that sooner or later some coaches help them get it clear: that it isn’t worth the risk. In other words, invest in the preparation and I think that’s the biggest thing that athletes take away. I can think of a lot of different young men that I coached, personally, and I am sure that this happens in many, many situations, who were gifted students in a school system that is designed for the mediocre to get by. And so the gifted do nothing and get very, very high marks. Where they learned about life was in sport where you can’t get away with that because it’s really measurable and so they learn about commitment, investment of time, preparation and what one is really capable of and in the sense that it is not about what school is about – measuring you against everybody else. It’s in the end, there is a standard out there, that if you want to look at it, is ultimately the world record, if you will or in a team sport, it is the highest level of play – in hockey we can look at “the greats”: the Gretsky or a Hull, and you look at how the game is played. Not as measurable as something like track and field but in that standard it is really still about: this is about, “how good can you become?, you see. And I had a principle in an alternative high school – sixty kids, the principal was one of the two teachers. His name was Bob. That’s what the kids called him. And he did that for my daughter who had been getting A’s at Malvern until she left after grade 12 to go out play and sing with her
75 band. She discovered that she was going to get emphysema before she got discovered and had become great and decided that what she had to do was go back because she had been taken into a studio to have a record made – as a demo. So she went back to school. She had to do grade 13 – goes to an alternative high school. And the principal there said, on her first essay: “Donna, I have only known you for a month, but for you this is a piece of crap.” He said, “This is a good essay for any other kid probably here but for you this is a piece of crap. I guarantee you probably wrote this in one sitting and it might have been at breakfast”…which is basically what she did, going to Malvern. She wrote all her essays usually at breakfast. She was really creative – still a very creative women. And so he said to her – he did this to her…he’s talking to her and crumples it all up. He says,“We’re going to pretend it didn’t happen and you’re going to stop at the library on your way home and you’re going to get these two books and you will bring me a first draft in ten days.” And he taught her how to write but he demanded of her that she be what she was capable of being. And I think that, that is the kind of thing that happens in sport and so the vast majority of young men and women who come out the other end, certainly in our Canadian culture, and by the way, to a large degree in the American culture too, except those huge factories of sport – the Division 1 schools and particularly men’s sport - the worst are football and basketball - it that they learn about preparation, eliminating the possibility for big risk and big gambles but they also learn in that process, that there are gambles and there are risks that you have to take and that they develop the self-esteem to do that so that as they go forward…it’s why so many of them end up a leaders in what they do. They are capable of seeing the big picture. They know the kind of long term, hard work you have to do to get there and therefore they can sell that to other people – they model it in their own way of doing things. And they’ve had experience with risk and they know that: yes, this is business, but the truth is, in the end, it’s only business, we ain’t talking about human life. And so when the time comes and they need to, they will take risks. But their preparation has made that a minimal possibility. Glen: Andy, you have been very generous with your time. I appreciate it. It’s been interesting and enlightening and … Andy: Well, it’s about something I care pretty deeply about. So, I mean I can get pretty engaged in this…which is .. Glen: Well, I’m going through a little process myself here because as someone who played through a lot of injuries, particularly in high school, and persevered with that, so it’s sort of reawakening a lot of that early kind of thing for me: what was it all about back then and would I do it now, now that I’m old and lost a lot of feathers. So it’s been interesting. In the introduction, though, I asked you to chat a bit about the coaching clinic and I had you on the pause button. Could you just take a few seconds to just go over that. What is the coaching – not the clinic – the Coaching Institute? Andy: Well, the National Coaching Institute here in Toronto, which is called the Ontario one, because we do, we unlike the other seven in the country, run outreach programs. But we are the top end, sort of the expert coach level of the 3 M National Coaching Certification Program. There are five levels and we are dealing with levels four and five. So we are dealing with expert coaches at whatever stage of development they work in the high performance streams. And we have coaches here working in our stream who are working - and will always work - with developmental level kids, youngsters in sport. And we have Olympic level coaches and everything in between – high school coaches, university coaches – in our program. And we run
76 outreaches – I’ve got outreaches in Windsor, Ottawa, Kingston, St. Catherines, Waterloo/Guelph – where we are meeting the needs of coaches for real professional development in their sport. Glen: Great, thanks for your time.
Professor Andy Anderson. Physical Health Educator. Department of Teaching Curriculum and Learning The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
Interviewed by: Glen Markle. Date: December 3, 2002.
Glen: We are going to be talking about sports and gambling and Professor Anderson has agreed to talk with me although this is not his particular academic area of pursuit but he does have some interest in the topic. Perhaps before we get started you could tell me a little bit about what you do in the faculty here. Andy: My role specifically is to teach teachers how to teach health and physical education in the public school system preparing our graduates to work largely urban settings – mostly in Toronto, although our students go all over the place. I also teach a graduate course on health promoting schools and in that capacity I work with graduate students, masters and doctoral students, in supervising their thesis preparation, and so on. And my own research tends to focus on health- promoting schools. There’s a bumper sticker to describe what I’m trying to get across, the notion that health is much more than a course of study. It really is a form of intelligence from which we can problem-solve and think differently about the school structures and organization itself. So that’s my primary area of interest and publication right now. One of the health concerns has been around gambling so I have been paying some mild interest and waiting for it to blossom. Any way’s that me. Glen: Great. Well again, I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me. The basic working assumption/hypothosis I have here is that competitive sports model important cultural values and themes in everyday life and because of that one might expect the play action of competitive sports to provide opportunities to gamble or to play safe…to learn to manage risk. We often hear in the media, read in the media coverage alluding to gambling and risk taking. Is that a working hypothesis/ assumption something that you’re familiar with? Is it a fair one to start with? Andy: Yes, let me give you what I would support… that claim. How popular are extreme sports? How popular is the notion of almost survivor sports where you have these eco-challenges where people are biking, running, kyacking.. you know, repelling down rock faces. I mean they’re trying to take the experience of sport and explode it out into all sorts of different dimensions, and we’re having a lot more media coverage of these sort of adventure-oriented athletic pursuits that have gone beyond – I shouldn’t say “beyond” - but in a different direction from getting a medal. It’s finishing. It’s being part of the experience. It’s the process of preparation; it’s the teamwork that goes into it. The mountain biking kinds of things, the kayaking, some of the stuff that people are doing to cross deserts and all these kinds of
77 interesting things that are happening. And these are getting a lot of play in the public view. So there is some interest in that. Look at the media, the movies that are out about some of these absolutely larger-than-life kinds of exploits that people are engaging in and, to some extent we are capturing –which I don’t know what category you’d put it into but they’ve tried to take it and explode the human capacity to perform to such extremes that these gargantuan oversized extremes to the limits. And it’s like we’ve super-sized everything. I mean our culture is into “the super” and the extraordinary. Are we creating an environment that sport is picking up on or that sport is creating? I don’t know. But it’s all part of a big package that’s going on. Glen:Big bucks Andy: Oh yah. Glen: You brought up the whole concept of extreme sports and hopefully we can come back to that. I’ve developed a little typology based on contact, non-contact; team/individual – two by two typology here. Some of the more popular sports that have been around for years, so for example, football and hockey are contact/team. Basketball/soccer are non- contact – at least the rules…team Andy: Yes Glen: Individual/contact – boxing, wrestling. And individual, non-contact – tennis, golf, and again, those could also be team sports. So one of the things that I am interested in is, is the extent to which people can think about one of those particular games or sports and actually identify an action situation that provides an opportunity to gamble or to play safe. Like in football, can you describe or define for me a situation in the game of football that would provide the opportunity to gamble or to play safe. Andy: You mean in the actual context of the game, so it’s third, or, it’s Canadian football so it’s second and it’s less than a yard, do we kick it away or do we go for it. That kind of gamble depending on the situation in the game – how much time is left on the clock, how far ahead are they, is this a championship game?...all those kinds of factors. What constitutes a calculated risk, if you like, a gamble that’s worth taking. So those in my mind, or sometimes it’s a player – do I gamble on this particular player coming through when I need them to, depending on how they’ve been playing or need to be playing, or brought up to a level of play. Can I do something in a game that will ratchet it up with the whole performance with the rest of the team? A certain player having an opportunity to score and this represents a milestone in their career – pumps the whole team up. So there are certain, if you like, I think I could call them almost “strategic” gambles – that there’s a chance of unsuccessfulness but the payoffs may be so great that it’s worth the try. Glen: Okay, what about basketball or soccer, and the difference is that they’re both team – football and basketball or soccer - are both team games but in one there is extreme contact, let’s say, and the other, it’s there but it’s against the rules. So in basketball or soccer are there also opportunities to gamble or to play safe? Can you give me a situation in either basketball or soccer? Andy: I suspect playing …depending on the score, is it time to play safe? Have we got a comfortable lead if we fall back into a defensive situation whereas the other team is maybe thinking of some sort of strategic move that they need to take break things open, kind of thing. Glen: So it’s a time/points thing – where we are in the game and what is the score. Andy: Yah. There have been situations when key players have been given key roles, not very often prior to a situation. Hence Vince Carter’s being swarmed, it’s now to: let’s create a play
78 that somebody else is going to score because everybody’s going to have their eyes on Vince Carter. On the other hand, there’s a higher predictability of success with Vince than it may be with some other player so you go with your guns. I’ll give you an example back in football when there were some occasions when Ditka put the ball in the Refrigerator’s hands to score the touchdown instead of Walter Payton. That was a gamble given the high degree of proficiency with which Walter Payton had achieved significant milestones, and Refrigerator was never going to, except for those occasions when he did. And some would argue that that was a very bad play because there was a great opportunity for Payton to have achieved another milestone in his career and it was taken away from him for a glitzy play or whatever it might have been. I’d like to speak about something a little bit different. We’ve been talking about basketball, soccer, football. Other games that involve what we call invasion territory, tactics, you know – give and go, creating space, shutting down space and this sort of stuff. There is something about the nature of the game and even the language that goes around that, that talk about “invasion territory”. It’s almost combative – in war terms, that sort of thing. And people are socialized within that territory, game strategy, to behave in certain ways that may have a culture about it, that talks about it. You know, high percentage versus low percentage; that talks about invasion/penetration; tactic strategy that may call upon notions what this game means in its essence. And we’ve often talked in the field of those plays – the great speeches that have gone, you know, the Vince Lombardys and all that other sort of stuff, that have connected a lot of that play to war, to character, to glory – all kinds images that have surrounded that. I’m not sure what all that means but it seems to me that they’ve in some cases made it bigger than life, bigger than a game. Maybe it was – I don’t know. Glen: If I use the term “risk” as opposed to “gamble”, I’m sort of interested in contact/non- contact dimension in these types of games and to what extent one provides opportunities for different kinds of risks. Contact sports obviously provide an opportunity for laying your body in a way that non-contact sports don’t. Can you elaborate on that a little bit or… Like I’m thinking of the hockey players, perhaps the defensemen on a two on one situation and throws his body at the puck. I mean he doesn’t have to do that. Okay. And that’s a contact sport. Throwing your body on top of the puck isn’t necessarily a contact action but… Are there opportunities in soccer and basketball where a player can decide to lay his body on the line or not, like that? Andy: I have to think a little bit about a similarity…I keep thinking about how awesome it must be to see Shaq O’Neil – the size and the power of that particular individual… Glen: and go out and try to block him Andy:…and what am I going to do here, short of fouling, that to some extent the risk may not be the kind of physical risk as it may be emotional/psychological, you know for him to walk down, as if he had no opposition at all, put in it in the hoop. Like what we have to do is stop him here. You know, if it was just a case of laying down my body, here, you know, if that would stop him, I think that I could do that. (laugh). But to be outsmarted or outmaneuvered or outplayed, you know, like the way Jordan left people looking where he went, kind of thing. The risk of guarding an awesome athlete had more to do with psycho-social than it had to do with anything else. Glen: What about when we look at individual sports as opposed to teams? How does going from team to individual sports change the situation in terms of opportunities to gamble or play safe.
79 Andy: You see I wonder about that. But, okay, I’ll give you an example every gymnast, every figure skater at some moment in their routine has a very high risk move. Not in the sense of – this has potential for physical harm, although in gymnastics it could very well be. I mean you’re coming off a set of high bar, or uneven parallel bars with a balance beam, with a risk move that could result in physical injury but the great risk may be that, if I throw this, I am going to be a world champion or I’m going to place fourth. So it’s all or nothing and the frequency with which I’ve landed that triple sow cow or which I’ve landed that half in/half out, pull in/pull out, whatever, is about forty percent. Okay, is today the day? Am I going to be able to muster all the resources that that will happen in this world championship, in front of an Olympic audience and my mother. Glen: (laugh) Andy: …who I’m going to answer to – all of those. I think that the risks, again, go back to more psycho/emotional than perhaps physical harm. They can recover from a broken ankle but will I ever recover, in my own mind, the minds of others who may be close to me, the fact I was that close to drinking from the cup of success, that world championship, and it was lost at that moment, for whatever reason. And I guess I’ve coached gymnastics and I’ve seen the kind of inner angst in preparation for …and if the athlete just prior to then has done extraordinary well. So not only do I have to exceed my levels of performance, I need to exceed the performance of their best day. And I’ve listened to figure skaters, again, it’s sort of the interview or the talks afterwards that they’ve talked about what was going on in their minds. Simon Whitfield, the tri-athlete, in his journal, had written across the top of his page, and every page that he had, “I’m an Olympic champion”. So he didn’t realize that he’d been writing to himself about that until he was giving a speech and he was talking about goal setting and he had his book that he’d kept his journals in. And he started...”gosh, every place along here I’ve recorded something about being an Olympic champion. Even when I’d slept in on Saturday mornings. I guess Olympic champions sleep in on Saturday mornings, once in a while.” He hadn’t realized how much he had gotten into this notion of being this Olympic champion. I wonder how he might have felt if he had placed fourth….went back and almost been embarrassed about what sorts of… but I guess you have to do that sort of thing. So I wonder how much worry about the body comes into it. I mean football players..you know back in the days of Csonka and those guys, there would be broken thumbs and broken wrists... you know, straighten it out, put some band aids around it, give me a couple of aspirin or whatever and I am back out on the field. They’ve got blood falling out of the side of their heads. The body, yah, was sacrificed and those were wounds that you carried with pride. The ones that dug deep were the ones where we were that close and that day we didn’t rise to the occasion and we lost it. I don’t know. Glen: Do you think that being part of a team as opposed to being out there on your own as an individual…do you think that being part of a team makes it easier for you to take risks or gamble? Andy: Yah Glen: In what ways? Andy: I think there’s something about human nature that, when we can do something to help others –okay, I know this sounds bizarre – that if can do something to help another person, and I have the resources to do that, there’s something good about that feeling of doing it. In a team situation, where you can lay down, you can crawl forward, do something that in the name of that
80 will enrich them as people, opportunity, whatever the case might be. I think that’s a tremendous feeling. Or even if it’s saying: “you’re a better player than I am – you should be out on the court”, you know, “take my spot” – there is something about the giving of self for the benefit of others that has some intrinsic value and to be part of that “giving of self’ in every capacity that one might do for that other person… we see that sort of thing happen from time to time. Even in, okay, motor racing, you know, when there is an accident, all the cars will slow down to give that chance to recover okay, and “now we’ll have a fair start back into the action”. If it was cut throat the way the movies try to portray some situation, like you’d drive over top of him. But there’s some moral code embedded within the sport that says: “we won’t cheat; we won’t breach some levels of humanity in the process even though it may appear to be to the contrary in some ways. I think there’s some sense of dignity in what we do. Glen: A couple of weeks ago I read in the Star where coach Quinn, chatting about one of his young hopefuls on defense, called him a risk taker and this guy was subsequently sent down. Do you have a sense that there are individual player factors that are likely to predispose an athlete to make a gamble rather than a play safe response? Andy: I think there are some people who are risk-takers as opposed to athletes. I think there are people who are athletes, there are people who are investment bankers, there are people who are inventors, whatever the case might be, that take risks. I’ve got relatives like that, who will risk everything – his wife’s car over a new idea he’s trying to get on the market… and when he hits big he’s riding high and then he’s looking for the next chance to almost it all again. Instead of saying: Hay, you’re there, play it safe, back off. Invest in stuff at 5 percent – no, no, let’s invest at 11 percent – it may all disappear but at least I had…I don’t know. So I keep thinking it’s back to more person than anything. There may be some predisposition to gambling of any sort in life, whether it be on the field or when they go to a casino. I mean I have been to a casino a few times and I am so nervous when I am there with my few little chips, that I’ll lose a hundred dollars when another person is just, you know…I remember going to the gambling tables one time and I had like maybe twenty dollars that I spread over the roulette table. And this other person came along with stacks and spread them all over the place. And I’m starting to count up how much they could possibly lose and it was just not fun for me. I was so worried about what was going to happen to my little pittance. I realized that probably gambling could never be something that I would be too excited about. There was too much rush for me. So I’m wandering around about Quinn and his situation. He sees within this young person something that says he’s willing to play some odds or something. I go back to a number of years ago – Derek Sanderson – who was a pretty flashy, risk-taking daredevil almost kind of guy, who, rather than going around the net, tried to go over the net to get the player one time. I mean it was like he would do anything and he was willing to say: okay, if I go left, he’ll go right, if I go right, he’ll go left. I’m going over the top. Let’s see what happens. I’ll try it one time, kind of thing. And those players have flair, but those are also players that sometimes you just can’t count on them. So there’s got to be a place where he’s going to figure out how to get that player into the line-up, perhaps, because they can really make things happen and open things up. You need a few of them once in a while but you have to be very careful and I don’t know how you can possibly judge when’s the best time to put that player in action. He’ll need to be sent down for some discipline. I think he’s trying perhaps to give that kid a chance to figure out how he’s going to be a risk-taker in a disciplined hockey club. (laughs) Glen: Well that brings us right to the question of how one gets to become a risk-taker. Some of the literature is suggesting that there are biological reasons for- and good chemical
81 composition… -for certain personality dispositions. So you are a risk-taker almost from the time that you’re born. Andy: See them out on the highway. Some people who are driving in and out of traffic are risk- takers; there are others that take over the right side of the road. Glen: And then there is the question that people might also learn to be come risk-takers, so that’s why I am curious about what one actually learns from participating in sports competitions that present opportunity either to gamble or to play safe. And if you are doing this fairly intensively and extensively for a long period of time, what impact does that have on you, on your development? Andy: Well let me ask some questions that not really I’m looking for answers to. I’ve been to Thailand a few times…Thai boxing, and they gamble around the outside and they also give money to the athletes around the outside afterwards. But you have the same issues around gambling in other cultures. For example, in China where they play ping pong, or maybe in India where they play cricket. In those other cultures is gambling a problem the way that it is expressed here or is it expressed here because of the whole, you know, other culture that may have an effect on it. So do we see in xxx which is a high level of athleticism. But I don’t get the impression that around that sport those types of issues arise. In Finland, I’ve been to Finland. Ski jumping, cross-country skiing…do they have issues around gambling over cross-country skiing, and biathlon, ski jumping, and that sort of thing? Glen: But as a result of participating in those things, does the athlete himself develop sort of a self concept where risk-taking is essential or a salient item in the athlete’s identity? “I’m a risk-taker, that’s who I am”. Is it partly because of learning through participation? Andy: I don’t know for sure. I am thinking about…I’ll go back to what I just mentioned, like the ski jumper. When you see what they have to do to make that long jump that has obviously an element of risk you have to push yourself as close to the edge as you possibly can to reach that king of limit. You have to be working at that top level. Glen: Well let’s use that example. You see the other convention here is, really, that the learning that goes on is… there’s a selection/de-selection mechanism at work and if you’re standing at the top of the ski jump for the first time and you don’t have it within you to slide down that slope, then you’re going to get out of that sport. Andy: Yah Glen: You’ve got to have it in you and once you’ve done it the first time and you develop some confidence and go out and do it again and again, then maybe that’s where there’s some reinforcement that comes in. But the sport itself possibly exerts very strong selection bias. If you don’t have it initially then you can’t do it. Andy: Is it transferable? If you are a high risk taker in this area are you a high risk taker in this other area? Glen: That’s the very last question I have, let me have a chance to …are we running out of time? (laughter) Let’s come back to that. So however one might acquire a predisposition to gambling/a willingness to take risks…confidence in being able to take calculated risks, how important is that to athletic performance? Andy: I think it’s important. I’ll tell you why, because I think these athletes are always at the precipice of human performance. I mean Stoyko, the quad – he hits it a lot of times but not all the time and so every time he goes to throw, or even at the take off, he may make the decision not to throw it. And not because…whatever his reasons may be. So I think they are always at the outer
82 limits of optimal performance. And not just for the individual but for the human being at that particular time. I think they are well…almost outside of themselves, in some cases, where their performance may not be replicated by another individual for several years, certainly not even by themselves maybe again. I mean, how many times have they reached a pinnacle of athletic performance and then that was the last they ever ran a mile at that speed, or ever jumped that high in high jumping. And you can see it all over their faces – “this is the day of my life and I’ve exceeded even my own expectations”. But they threw everything they possibly had into it. So I think they are always… Glen: Does this…what we’re talking about, differentiate elite athletes from so called recreational athletes? Andy: I think so, yeh. I think…and again, it’s not just being reckless. Skiers for example who…”I threw myself down the hill with no concern for my physical well-being. I thought I did everything.” I think there has to be an extraordinary capacity within the individual to, as the same time as they are maximizing their output in terms of energy, expenditure, force, production – whatever, this is still at a very high level of crafted performance. I mean this is the best skiing. If you asked them to do it in slow motion they couldn’t do it any better than when they were doing it at 100 kilometers an hour. So there is a high degree of technical proficiency at the same time as they were able to put it at the edge of what the skis could handle and the person can handle. And that I think is what’s extraordinary. Every fiber in their body is optimally performing as well. There’s a high degree of fitness, mental alertness, emotional management. Somehow they are able to bring that together as well. Because I’ve seen kids that wanted to play in the NHL who would have given your body parts away (laugh) for it. And I couldn’t imagine a person having any more dedication to want to play the game and look like they were trying as hard as they possibly could but they were never physically going to achieve the attributes, or the touch on the puck or the sense of where that pass needed to be… there is something extraordinary about those high performance athletes. God gave them a couple of extra things that the rest of us didn’t get. Glen: I remember reading years ago…I can’t remember who it was, but it was a split end talking about the kind of communication that went on between him and the quarterback. I think it was Tarkenden…The ball would just be there even before he’s made his cut. He knows the ball is going to be there and he just has to reach and the ball’s almost in his hands. And it’s almost inexplicable and you can only feel it. Golfers talk about the sweet shot and in almost every sport there is this sense of something happening which is over and beyond. You watch Gretzky make passes; Guy LeFleur and his play, and the way they could… Andy: Yah, intangibles; There are some things you can’t quantify. You know we’ve always asked Gretzky: How did you know to make that pass there or know if it’s coming then, and it’s like – how do you ride a bicycle? Well trying to describe it is something you can’t do. I’m trying to think of the other one as you were talking. Like, for example Tiger Woods in golf. Now we know that he had a lot of extraordinary input in terms of technical proficiency but how many thousands of other golfers have tried, they thought, as hard as he did, to do as well. And we see them every weekend out there, frustrated…with the not so great athletes. Glen: I know we are running out of time but there are a couple of more things that I would like to ask. What is the role of the coach in relation to managing opportunities to gamble or play safe in athletic competition? Could you take a “prior to” and “actually during” game situations?
83 Andy: Well do we run on this down or do we throw or do we kick? What are we going to do here? And they…as much as those may be, you know, risks – they have a play for that situation, that they call upstairs. Let’s go to the blue section of the binder and this is the play that we rehearsed to some extent and hoped we’d never be there but it is a play that we rehearsed that we can now call up, that has a chance of achieving what we need to do in this situation. Glen: Have you ever thought of the actual role of the coach as a risk manager, a manager of risk? When you think of the planning that goes into preparing athletes – conditioning regimens that are developed, scouting, game preparation – all of these kinds of things as well as the ongoing decision-making during the actual conduct of the game – much of what a coach does, seems to me, is to manage risks. Andy: I think that’s a good term, that risk management is…we know that if our first string quarterback gets hurt, we’d better have someone we can pull off the bench. So we need to build a whole team. We need to build a whole team.. balanced offense, defense…all that kind of stuff. It’s great if we can build our team around key individuals, you know the Jerry Rice… the Montana…whatever. But we know that one major hit and we could be in trouble as an organization. Glen: Does this coaching role, attention to managing risk differ depending on whether we’re talking about elite players versus recreational players? Like a coach in a house league, would he have the same sorts of concerns or pay the same attention? Andy: I don’t think so. Glen: Why not? Andy: I think the goals are different. I think in a recreational league I think they are more concerned about opportunities for young people to experience the joy of movement. That here is a place for you and your friends…I mean the research has been done on why young people participate in sports. Some of the stuff that Burinsyko out in Michigan State, which is my alma mater, said that the reason that most young people participate is because they want to be with their friends. And that tends to be the primary reason. They want to learn; they want to improve their skills. Sure they want to have a chance to engage in the play of the game with other competitors, and so on, but at the end of the day they will walk away with memories of the relationship they had with other players, coach, that sort of thing. The relationship with the game, what it meant to experience that game…scoring… Glen: So in effect it is sort of the opposite end of the continuum. As you get closer to pure play, the role of the coach is to encourage players to be a little more spontaneous and take some of these gambles or risks that may or may not pay off, but so what? Andy: Yah. The stakes may not be as high. It’s not riding on the same currency that a high performance situation where players are expected to seek another level, “this may be getting me into junior D, junior B, NHL”. Another player might be saying “this is my chance to be on the Olympic team”…there are all those kinds of things that are at stake that make it pretty important, well beyond simply perhaps even playing the game. I think it’s hard for them to keep that in perspective. What are we hear for? The love of the game. Well, this game’s gotten way out of hand. I talked with a young lady who was a scholarship volleyball player. She’s here at U of T now – she was down in the States. She said playing down there, it was well beyond playing the game. My whole academic program was basically put aside – forget about that. We’ll make sure you get the course credits. Play the game. Play at this level; be training this hard, all this kind of stuff. Now she’s burned out and she’s come back. And I said to her “are you going to play for U
84 of T?” And she said, “No, I’m working. I’ve had enough.” Walked away from the game, it’s a tragedy, it’s a real tragedy. And a lot of players who play the game at a high performance level discontinue playing it. If they can’t play it at that level – “I’m not playing it at all”. So they don’t even want to play pick- up basketball; they don’t even want to play…ski, casually. “If I can’t do it at the level of which I know I am capable of performing or I’ve been conditioned to perform then I ain’t playing it at all”. They’ve lost something. And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t still encourage players to seek that high level of performance but it may come a certain costs. It can happen in anything. If you were an investment banker, I suppose, you could say, “now what else am I going to be great at, I’ve been there, done that, now what?” Glen: This is the last question that I have for discussion and you raised it earlier. In your experience are you aware of any predisposition for athletes in general and elite athletes in particular, to need to seek out gambling or risky ventures in other life situations if they’ve been involved in certain participation and it’s important to their identity, their self concept? Andy: Again, I’ve seen it more particular to…I guess I go back to that person, that’s who they were. A young fellow I trained as a hockey player and everything he did, eucker, everything, he played at a competitive level. And again, whatever it took to push it right to the edge, sometimes some risk but he was always a strong competitor and that was sort of like “in his blood”. There was another young lady I had who played Wimbledon tennis who came through our program here, and she was the most the most gentle and kind, you know you would never…unassuming, and she would be playing in activities of any kind. You just didn’t see that she was a high performance athlete. And then she and I went and played tennis together and we were hitting and then I said: “Okay, I want to play with a Wimbledon player. I want to know what that is like.” Her whole countenance changed; she became a person that I was afraid of. The look on her face; the way she addressed…the way she tossed the ball and then the way she it the ball. I was playing against a very determined athlete. But when she turned it off she almost came back to this Jeckle and Hyde. She came back to being a person again. Boy, was she fierce on the court. So she could turn it on in that context. Now maybe she consciously turned it off in other contexts, I don’t know. But this young fellow, he couldn’t ever turn it off. He was always playing hard. She seemed to either have a sense of when to turn it on and when not, or she didn’t have the fire except for at that court situation. So that would be interesting to find out from…I think that there may be more narrative than there may be statistical evidence to suggest who is a risk-taker rather than which set of circumstances…I think that there could be some mild mannered people…Merlin Olson sells flowers now – that quiet, gentle fellow but was a very fierce competitor on the field and would take risks, would put his body on the line, lots of things like that, that were gentle giants but don’t ever get them upset. Glen: You mentioned the University of Michigan being your alma mater. In fact, one of the major studies on this whole subject of gambling and athletes come out of the University of Michigan… So coming full circle here then, what is it do you think that predisposes or makes young male athletes seem to want to gamble. I’m talking here about the cards, and the ponies and all the other stuff, consumer stuff. Andy: Yah. A couple of years ago I had a number of my Phys Ed students who were really big time into hockey pools and it became, sort of entertainment. They were getting as much
85 entertainment, if you like, out of doing this rather than watching television. They were getting together and they were involved in these hockey pools and so on. And again some of them, ProLine and some of those other…they were into it big time. They were spending, probably a hundred and some dollars a week. Sounded to me at that time…like a lot of money… were making some money as well. So this was just something that a bunch of guys were doing, you know. And maybe guys are hanging around with a bunch of other guys where this has become a very popular thing. Let me just throw out in contrast. There is also a high percentage of athletes who are very much committed to a faith community. You know, kids who grew up in the south, went to a strong faith community, Baptist colleges, all this sort of stuff. We know that a lot of athletic programs begin their play with a prayer. You know, to what extent is the culture supportive of certain kinds of behaviours and dispositions and so on. How they’re raised and so on. But a lot of guys, I think, when they hang out down at the broomy, you know, they’re watching gambling and betting in sporting events and all this sort of stuff. And there’s an invitation, a temptation, a solicitation to be a participant in that kind of activity. And it tends to be male and it tends to be around drinking and sporting events and sports pubs and all that other sort of stuff. And players are just as much participating in those male rituals as anybody else. That’s why I asked about females. Is it happening over here in the women’s rowing team? I don’t think so. You know, are our girls getting together at the local pub and “let’s bet on this” and “let’s try our hand at that” and “let’s do this over here”. There’s something going on here. I just don’t see the women’s diving team and I don’t see the women’s basketball team, either, thinking about that sort of stuff when they’re off the court. But the guys are getting together at all ages and strands… and whether they’re players or not but they want to play the game, literally, play the game, just like they’d pick certain players and they’ve got their hockey pools and they’ve got all this other sort of stuff. So that’s my take on it. (laughs) Glen: Okay I…we’ve had a good discussion here and I appreciate you taking the time very much. It has been enlightening. I don’t think it is an easy topic to talk about but I think it’s becoming something that’s more relevant and I think there will be more discussion on it. Thanks again. Andy: You’re welcome.
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Professor Peter Donnelly, Sport Sociologist, Expert on Risk in Sports, Director of Centre for Sport Policy Studies, University of Toronto. Parissa Safai, PhD Student , Department of Health and Physical Education, University of Toronto. MA Thesis on Injury in Sports, Recent Presentation at International Sport Sociologist Conference on “ Risk, risked, and risky identities: Articulating risk-taking in sport with Beck’s Risk Society.”
Interviewed by: Glen Markle. Date: December 5, 2002.
Glen: I am meeting today with Professor Peter Donnelly who is the Director for the Centre for Sports Policy Studies within the faculty of Health and Physical Education at the University of Toronto and Parissa Safai who is an elite athlete and a graduate student within the faculty and we’re going to be talking about risk-taking and gambling. And you both have been thinking about this particular subject for quite some time. Parissa maybe we can start with you and you could give me a little bit of a background on some of the things that you’ve been doing. I know you’ve done an MA thesis on the topic and just presented at an international conference on sports sociology. Could you talk a little bit about that? Parissa: Sure. My master’s thesis was pain and injury in competitive sport at the intercollegiate level in the Canadian sports system. I was interested in looking at how sports medicine clinicians negotiate with ….athletes in what’s often called a culture at risk around sport which is, more or
87 less, a culture that promotes and reinforces the tolerance and acceptance of being an injured athlete as a normal part of the sport experience. And I was interested in looking at how clinicians negotiated with athletes and coaches within this larger context that promotes injury in the game - tolerance. Glen: Interesting. Peter, you’ve been thinking about this particular subject area for quite some time, at least going back to 1980, I think we see an earlier reference. But more recently you have a work in process – a chapter in a new book that’s coming out on the culture of risk in sports. How did you get interested in this particular area? Peter: Most people in the sociology of sport are attempting to understand their own sport experiences and my major sport experiences were as a risk-taker in rock climbing and mountaineering. I started out in psychology because I thought psychology would have the answers to why some people behave in certain ways and others didn’t and psychology turned into a serious dead end because while it was able to show me that some people were more likely to take risks than others it didn’t indicate anything about the type of risk they would take or anything about why that tendency declined with age, or apparently declined with age for most people. I mean it hasn’t been a major part of my work recently but probably I’ve spent thirty years thinking about risk and risk-taking in various ways and writing little bits about it every now and again. Glen: Thank of you both for taking the time to chat with me. As a starting point, a working assumption/hypothesis I have is that competitive sports model important cultural values and themes in everyday life and to that extent one might expect the play action of competitive sports to provide opportunities to gamble or to play safe. In other words, to manage risk. And just to verify that a little bit, quite frequently the media coverage will talk about gambling and taking risks. So is this a hypothesis that you’re familiar with, that you see (having) some validity ? Parissa: Well, it’s a bit problematic because within competitive sports you see competing values, going head to head often so the value might be something said about fair play and about sport for the sake of sport etc. etc. we also have win at all costs, we have “do whatever you have to do to get to the top” so there’re competing values which do get played out on a day to day basis in competitive sport and I think that you could look at it to different degrees, in other levels of sport, although I don’t think I would be incorrect in saying the same thing for recreational sport. And in terms of gambling, I mean, it’s right then and there. Play it safe and gamble - you use that all the time in sport and we use it in a contradictory fashion depending upon the situation, upon the context, upon the level. But I think, in general, I think one of the first things that’s really coming into my head right now is that we use risk in very different ways in competitive sports …so often when it’s used to refer to a danger, a negative, an automatic negative, in sports it’s often used for the gambling definition which is more of a cost-benefit analysis. It’s used to weigh certain situations - it’s not meant to be necessarily a hazard/a risk which is sometimes how it is used when you talk about injury or pain. I mean that’s an important distinction to make because that has other connotations. I mean gambling is really fascinating for all the other things that are attached to it which have a tremendous impact on this particular study. Glen: But I guess a lot of what we want to talk about springs from the basic assumption which may or may not have a validity for you. It is that sports are, in effect, society written small or written large. A lot of what gets acted out/played out is sports are a reflection of some of the values and behaviours of society at large.
88 Parissa: But society at large currently, if I were to go out on the streets and say: what’s risk to you, it would not be, fewer people would turn around and say: Oh it’s the cost benefit analysis of environmental pollution. They would talk about catastrophic, negative hazards and danger. So in sport, it is not necessarily that equation, it’s not equated in the same manner. Glen: Peter, do you have any thoughts? Peter: Hey. It’s a really interesting question because if I want to go back to this idea of contradiction or paradox and what you do in sports very often is that you do take physical risks and reputational risks all the time. But you do it in a very conformist way and perhaps an example here is if you look at youthful rebellion which is a kind of risk-taking defiance against authority and parents. But the way youth rebel is by all doing it the same way – they all look the same, they do it in a very conformist way within youth culture. And you find the same kind of thing in sports but in sports very often it is about deferring to authority. You do what the coach says or you’re not on the team. So it’s a very authoritarian situation in which young people are encouraged to take risks. So that is, you know, you’re all taking risk because of somebody else’s orders or you’ll lose your place in this particular social formation that you love being part of, if you don’t do what this guy says. So, you know, that contrasts in interesting ways with kids who are skate boarding, for example, or snow boarding who are doing all that without authority figures and who are doing it in a very free and very distinctive ways. They can get quite badly hurt doing that. So traditional sports are in many ways about learning to be an order follower which becomes problematic. Glen: That’s an interesting comment. Since you brought up traditional sports I’ve developed a little two by two typology here for the purposes of starting to discuss some of these possible gambling/play safe options and the dimensions of the typology are contact/non-contact; team versus individuals so that within contact and team we had examples of official sports of football and hockey; non-contact and team – basketball and soccer. That’s not to say that there isn’t contact but that the rules subscribe against taking shots at other players. Individual/contact – boxing and wrestling, and individual/non-contact – golf and tennis. But again golf and tennis can be team sports as well as individual. So one of the things I’m interested in is the extent to which people can start to talk about situations in the ongoing action which present players with an option of either gambling or playing safe. Say take a team at a contact sport – football or hockey – and can either of you give me an example of what might be one of those action situations which present a player either an option to gamble or play safe? Peter: In a contact team situation where you’re going to be in contact with opponents, the major gambling decision that most players have to take at one time or another is whether to follow through with a course of action knowing they’re going to get creamed or whether to back out of it. So that it’s going to be up to them to make a decision if they’re going to hold the ball ‘til the last minute before you pass it and knowing you’re going to get hit or whether you’re going to hold the puck until the last minute to take a shot or to pass it knowing that the longer you hold it the more likely you are to get creamed by the opponent so I think that’s the major situation that people find… Glen: Does the same principle apply in your game as a varsity player in rugby Parissa? Parissa: I mean there is a whole other host of issues that come around it but of course one of the ones involves do I make the hit or not, do I make the fake…or not, do I pass the ball or not. And in rugby because of the way the positions are – and I can’t speak to hockey or football, I not familiar enough – but in rugby different positions have different responsibilities based on those positions. So you have centres and the inside centre decision-making responsibilities are far
89 greater than the outside centre, and vice versa. And there are other positions on the field that have higher levels of decision-making responsibility. That’s why you often see the rest of the forwards often called “grunts” because they’re the donkeys…pack mentality…where you wouldn’t say that about the scrum. You wouldn’t say that about… Glen: So what does this positional decision-making authority have to do with decisions around gambling or playing safe? Parissa: Because as a prop my job is to do work, my job is to hit. If I have the ball I have one goal which is to take the ball into the net, play the contact and get the ball back to my scrum half. My scrum half has the decision of to kick, to pass, to pass it to the back, pass it to a forward, to run it herself. So her, she has five more options than I do. So if it’s to me if I were to get the ball, I’m not a passer, I’m not going to pass – I wouldn’t be able to complete the action as well as she would… the way she would. Glen: Very interesting. We’ve talking about hitting and contact. What about when we go to a non-contact sport – basketball or soccer – how do the opportunities to gamble or play safe within one or both of those examples? Peter: Players in basketball and soccer would dispute the “non-contact” situation particularly – crashing heads in soccer and those kinds of things…(laughs) But looking for opportunities to take physical risk are somewhat less in those situations. In some it’s quite similar to what you define as contact and that is that sometimes you will know that you’re going to get hit if you do a certain thing or you’re going to be tackled quite hard, or blocked quite hard in basketball. So sometimes the decision is the same. I’m not sure, I have to think some more about basketball and soccer for the non-physical kind of risk they might want to take. Glen: What about individual contact sports such as boxing. Would you not want to call boxing a sport, boxing and wrestling where there are opportunities either to play safe or gamble? Peter: When you’re experienced at both boxing or wrestling both of them are very much about defense. The major element of both sports is about defense – how to defend yourself against an opponent’s moves, how to block punches, how to parry moves? But you know in order to win a match you’ve got to make some of those same moves against an opponent who also knows how to block them and how to turn them into something against you. So it’s a continual process of making decisions that are relatively, gambling-type decisions because you know that if you make a move you’re open to a counter move on a continual basis… that if you go to throw a punch you open yourself to a counter punch and that situation can make you either a defensive emphasis person or an offensive emphasis person….where you try to, as an offensive emphasis you just try to out-punch and out-score your opponent in wrestling points, that kind of thing. Defensive, you build your strategy around power and trying to take advantage of your opponent’s attacks. Probably the attacking kind of player is the more gambling one in those situations. Parissa: I agree Glen: What about in individual non-contact sports such as golf or tennis? Do you see these as also presenting opportunities to gamble or to play safe? Peter: Golf is proactive and that’s another dimension that you might want to bring into this – a proactive and a reactive. Part of you will always be making the decision of what to do with a ball in golf. The decision depends on the context, you know, where your ball lands, that kind of thing, which clubs you use, whether to go for the green or to lay up short – all those kinds of decisions are being made on a continual basis and we recognize that some players are more likely to take a gamble than others. Some players play it safe; some maybe gamble, so that’s fairly clear. The comparison in tennis – I mean the only time they’re proactive in tennis is when
90 they’re serving. Everything else is reactive and you can make decisions about whether to go down the line or across court or whether to lob or to volley – those kinds of decisions are continual. Sometimes there is a sense that players are playing a more attacking game and other players are playing a more defensive game and so again, that would be the same as soccer or basketball- back to the point that you can make attacking - no, I’m sorry, about the individual sports where you can make attacking moves; you make defensive moves…counter-puncher or punch…, those kinds of things. So those elements come into it. Parissa: And that’s increased when you’re on a team sport because you have to be accountable to all the team your own team mates as well. Peter: Yes, and doubles tennis presents another dimension. Glen: Can we come back to this dimension in the next, I guess the third question. Peter, just a few seconds ago you were talking about predisposition to gamble of certain players. Can we just talk a little bit about that, from your experience, both of you? I know that in the literature, in the sort of biological/psychological reductionist type of stuff that we read about there are certain factors that individuals may bring to a particular situation that might predispose them to take risks. But what are your thoughts on this? Are there individual player factors which are more likely to predispose an athlete into gambling rather than a play-safe response? Peter: That’s not clear at all. Whether any psychological test or biological test is refined enough to distinguish between whether you’re a puncher or a counter-puncher or an attacker/defender in the same sport, these are not at all clear to me and I doubt it if they could because the predictive value of such tests is limited anyway because of all kinds of circumstances so, while I could distinguish in my Master’s thesis, between students who are likely – you know every student at US universities has to take a well report activity credit when I was there. And I could predict from their test scores who was likely to take the football, sky diving, down hill skiing as opposed to those who were likely to opt for bowling, badminton and those kinds of things. You know, that level of distinction was possible to a fairly high degree of predictability. Glen: … principles there, being able to differentiate…? Peter: You know, people who scored a high on a stimulus seeking scale were likely to chose high stimulus activity …because they had an option. You know, they could register for whatever they liked. They had to take a course during the four years and, you know, it seemed that different people were choosing ski diving and rugby than were choosing badminton, bowling and orienteering. But given that level of distinction, I don’t know if you could get closer than that. I couldn’t, you know, the test wouldn’t distinguish between, you know, an offensive player and a defensive player in football as far as I know. And I don’t think anybody has tried that. Glen: Parissa, have you got some.. Parissa: No..?? Glen: You did start to talk about team situations and taking risks Does playing with other members predispose or make it easier for the athlete to take a gamble rather than to play safe? Parissa: I think yes. But I’m not thinking right now in terms of play action based on my limited research but I ….team… so if they’re on a particular team then it’s more likely that teams will follow that – it’s not causal and I don’t want to say that it’s all encompassing. People do react individually to their pain in their training experiences. They have different philosophies that sometimes are even more over conformed with the team mentality o… the team mentality. However there is some connection there. In terms of play action, it’s really quite circumstantial. I mean if we’re talking about a play-off or a final, you know, when you start to raise the stakes of
91 it, there’s a very different mentality I would say as compared to the beginning of the season/exhibition game which is almost collectively sensed, right. It’s discussed openly by coach, team mates, etc. etc. Glen: Okay could you elaborate a little bit about that. It’s an interesting dimension – context – where we are in the schedule, wins and losses, and things like that. What does that have to do with… Parissa: Well, it either puts the pressure on – high performance, best performance, excellent performance or it eases the pressure off. So for example, I just went and watched my younger brother playing volleyball… It was their area finals, play-offs or whatever, and they only played the top six players throughout the whole day. So they had team after team there and they only played those six whereas in previous competitions where it wasn’t the finals or the play-offs everybody had a chance to participate. And this was collectively known amongst grade eight and seven young boys that this was going to be the situation because the stakes were so high. That’s happened in my personal experience, I think for anyone who has played a competitive sport would say so similiarly. Glen: So essentially if you’re running out of time in the actual context, in the actual context itself and where you are in the scoring with respect to win/loss situation…if you’re coming from behind and running out of time there’s more of a predisposition to take risks or make changes to… Parissa: To take some sort of risk whether that means not putting in your best player who’s hurt, putting them back in or doing more riskier plays Glen: Just being part of a team and the values that develop around it as opposed to being an individual playing golf or tennis does this belonging to a team…could you elaborate a little bit more on this type of thing we’ve just been talking about. Peter: I would argue completely that if you’re a rebel or you’re mild mannered you’re probably not wanting to get onto a team in the first place. So you display a set of characteristics that are going to get you on the team – at one level of performance and on the other level, risk-taking and if you value your place on that team you’re going to do things in a very similar way to what I described …chapter as the military – all the military research shows that soldiers take risk for their fellow soldiers – they don’t take it for anything else, not ideology, not for officers, not for orders, not for anything. They take risks for their team mates and if there has been a real team bonding and a team has come together and they’re going into, you know, the end of season, a play-off situation, there are really powerful bonds that encourage people to take risks in those situations I wanted to step back a bit to their individual propensity to talk a little bit about, what they haven’t talked about is some interesting pain tolerance literature and while pain tolerance is fairly cultural in some ways – you know, different cultures learn to express pain in different ways, objective measures of pain tolerance that you wouldn’t be allowed to do by human ethics anymore, suggests that people who have a high need for stimulation, that is, those people who seem to be…need for novelty and risk-taking also have a high pain tolerance and that could be associated with playing with pain in injury and playing in contact sports and those kinds of things. So it’s not completely clear but there are some suggestions in that direction. Glen: We had talked about contact, non-contact examples in sports. A little bit about, perhaps a different kind of risk-taking or gambling that would go on both those. Could you elaborate just a little bit more about that…contact versus non-contact, the situational factors which might predispose different kinds of risk-taking or gambling? Parissa:……………………………….
92 Track is a non-contact, yes, it’s an individual sport…done in a team thing..You still see people take risk with their health, with their well-being. But I think they would see it that way as well. Granted they’re not hitting another person but they still feel they’re taking a risk by doing ten extra miles per week, cycling… Peter: Yes, cycling and speed, which has it’s own set of risks as well so sometimes the individual sports have, while they’re not contact, they produce high injury potential situations. So maybe contact and non-contact is only a warm distinction at that. Maybe the injury potential in the activity…there’s another dimension, at least informal. Parissa:..Epidemiological research I’ve been looking at…looking at the rates of injuries really doesn’t divide into camps. Glen: Lot of interesting stuff with it. Parissa: I remember part of my comps was writing up this argument that the difference lies between recreational and competitive that in fact more recreational athletes are getting injured and are more willing to tolerate injury than competitive athletes… Glen: Thank you. You’re getting a bit ahead of the thing we’ll come back to – elite/recreational - but just one more thing on this contact. As a former varsity football player before I got to varsity had no anterior cruciate ligaments in either knee and still continued to play. I’m not certain to what extent I was ever aware of the risks or, I must have been aware of it but I certainly deep sixed them. If I was aware of them I couldn’t have continued to play. So, what am I trying to say? There are huge risks involved with injury, in contact sports – football, hockey but if the athlete ignores them in order to continue to play, do they really count as risks? Parissa: You never ignore them but you perceive them differently and that’s a function of … How I pushed this forward when I first started playing … And so where in the beginning I would perceive it as a risk and was quite fearful and really was quite conscious of “oh gosh, am I going to be engaging in a sport that I could break my neck. It’s quite different now only because I know where to put my head and neck and “what do I want to achieve” – function of training, function of experience, skills Glen: I learned to run in a straight line as opposed to taking cuts. I took the cleats off the heels of my shoes so that my foot had a better chance or rotating as opposed to sticking in the turf. I learned to run a lot closer to the ground and to take more of the hits on my arms and shoulders than legs. So I guess that sort of is the stuff that you’re talking about. Parissa: … Glen: No, learned to manage them, to keep playing. Father and mothers best wishes and something I’m still trying to wrestle with – the question of why I continued given the circumstances. Peter: There’s a recognition on a risk-management level that goes on but there seems to be a lower likelihood that we’ll think about the long term consequences. That those long term consequences.. You might have an immediate sense… “I might break my neck” but you don’t think through the consequences of that and I don’t think that doesn’t count until you have your own children, until you are responsible position in life, until you’re into a stable, long term relationships, you know, those kinds of things change the way that you think about the future. You never think about buying insurance or saving for a pension plan usually until you’re into those kind of different stages of your life. When you’re young, you can’t be. You know it’s been too easy to say that young people are feeling vulnerable but I do think that when you’re young you don’t think about long term consequences. There’s something about that level of your life that you don’t start thinking about those until other things are happening in your life.
93 Parissa: See I think I’d argue a little bit about that only because you see trends now where people, young kids in junior high …university… Granted it’s not a sport example, it’s not a gamble example per say but, I mean I don’t disagree with you. I think maybe there’s more. Maybe you don’t think of the consequences of your gambling on others into the future. I mean, you make a point in your chapter which is fascinating and I would never have thought that, okay, I’ve done my cruciate ligaments as well and it’s problematic now. This will really effect, if I have children, my children down the road when I can’t play with them or participate with them. I mean that’s quite a shift for me. Not quite a shift but it’s certainly a very different way of thinking. I don’t disagree with what you said. Peter: And there may be a social class element in here where middle class kids are likely to be taught the long term achievement consequences much more readily than working class kids. You know, maybe I’m talking me as a working class kid, you know, who’s working from day to day, always recognizing you might not have a job, you might not – you probably wouldn’t have any money in the bank, so , why not live for the moment. Parissa: There’s also a physiological component because your body forgets pain. Your body naturally forgets pain. Peter/Glen: Not for long laugh Parissa: Well, but there’s different intensities of it, right. So you tend to forget and then in order to deal with it you incorporate the chronic pain into your daily routine. For some people it becomes their daily routine. That’s why the slogan’s come out: Pain is temporary; Pride is permanent and then that becomes part and parcel of the context in that people do take risks and gamble. Glen: A reinforcement of that. Parissa: (murmur of agreement) Glen: So I’m interested in how one becomes a risk taker. We chatted little bit about predisposition that an athlete might bring to the sports situation. Is it sensation seeking, what the genes have in store for them, that sort of biological/psychological reductionism argument but..I have a sense that through intensive, extensive participation in sports competitions over a fairly long period of time (that) these competitions present all kinds of opportunities either to gamble or to play safe. There has to be some kind of learning impact. I’m not certain exactly what it is but that’s what I want to explore more with you. What does one actually learn about risk-taking from such intensive, extensive participation in risky kind of sports? Peter: Ken Dryden was talking about this at a conference last month at a small workshop that I was at and he was talking about what he learned from sports and while he was talking I was thinking – what did I learn from sports, from all those years of participating is sports? The only two things that I could think of that I actually felt that I learned from sports was a real sense of perspective – don’t sweat the small stuff – that there are really big, important things, like the fact you might get killed any second. You know. And the rest, after that, things were not that important, for the most part. So that was from my own particular experience in playing sports. And the second thing that I learned was that when you think you can’t go any further, when you think you’re completely drained of energy and resolve, you’ve probably got about 50% left. And so those were the two things that I learned and I couldn’t think of anything else. You know it wasn’t about relationships, wasn’t about value, wasn’t about achievement, you know, it wasn’t about any of those kinds of things. Parissa: And those weren’t from you’re team sports, right? Peter: No, not at all, not at all. Those were from track and from other endurance kinds of things.
94 Parissa: I remember you said that because I’ve been thinking about it since then. And from my team sports experiences I would have to say that the only thing I’ve learned learned is that I can handle a lot of crap (Laughter from all) Parissa: It’s awful to say but you deal with a lot of BS. I mean I can’t think of anything positive at this stage of the game, but then again, with a bit of perspective, it’ll be different Peter: Yah, I do think you need to be away from it. You do need perspective. I realized that I had been living my life in those ways. That when I’m, being in my mid fifties I’ll pull an all nighter if I need to get something finished, you know. But I know that I can do it. I know that I can go into sleep deficit and then catch up and it won’t take long. So that kind of endurance is something that I learned from sports. And I also, I’ve realized that I never, ever think what might have happened. You know, oh, this might have happened or worry about it. My wife does that all the time, you know, really frets about what might have happened. And it just never occurs to me Glen: Just to be clear. You both seem to be discounting any social learning or impact from participation in sports on self development or personality Parissa: No. Actually, I shouldn’t say that because as a woman playing a non-traditional sport, granted there’s … and a certain kind of thinking. I mean it is a learning experience to go onto a field, step onto a field and be able to hit someone. And, you know, there is something to be gained, or to be able to run faster than you thought. Or be able to score. You know there are moments. I mean I don’t think it’s identity development… in the big I big D… but it certainly does contribute to sense of self, self worth. I know that for a lot of women that this has been a pivotal opportunity for them to assert themselves, to become more empowered or more independent. And I don’t want to discount that. Peter: Yah, and I think, that I would have taken much more for granted as an athletic young guy, you know, that those kind of things, those were opportunities that were assumed as a young guy. And so it’s much more difficult for me to say how I would socialize in sport because, you know, I was playing it informally, I was playing it formally. It was a whole variety of experiences and those experiences translated into other relationships with guys where you have close-knit friendships. But those friendships have all kinds of limitations too, you know, emotional, they’re not nurturent in any way, you know. But they’re friends within the limitations of guy culture Glen: Let me try this one more …. Peter: I’m going to have to go to class. Glen: Are you Peter: Yeh. So you carry on with Parissa. Glen: Parissa, do you have time? Parissa: A little bit of time. Glen: I guess coming back to what I’m interested in. Do you have a sense that anyone can learn to manage risk as a result of participating in these sports which present all these opportunities to either gamble or to play safe? Parissa: My first reaction to that would be I don’t think so. Glen: Could you elaborate a little bit? Parissa: I’m trying to think through it and the first thought that comes to mind is that I think is that very few people in sport are critical…So will they naturally take what they’ve gained from their sport, their experiences, and think - oh wow, I did it in this and this context. I can do it in this context. I don’t think so. I don’t think people think that way. I think that if you want to
95 argue, let’s say, that there’re some people who are high stimulus seekers. But okay that might translate better. But, for some people how they approach sports is fundamentally different than how they approach other things. For example, I know athletes, co-players who play on my team, who when they are in rugby mode think a certain way, act a certain way, behave a certain…And yet when they are – and I call it their day persona – when their day personalities come out, fundamentally different individuals. For them, they can easily go from one to another. They can go from one setting to another setting. And yet they’re completely two different people. I may have made the wrong… Glen: No, no no. There’s a range of opinions. I don’t think there’s certainly any firm judgement on that/decision on that. Parissa… Glen: However one might acquire a predisposition to gamble…(to take risks), how important is it for athletic performance? Parissa: That’s a very interesting one. Because I was saying…was mentioning to me earlier in the year from some of the research that he has been doing, recreational athletes are more likely to tolerate pain in injury. And in fact in the literature on, sort of, weekend warrior … how the react to their pain and injury experiences are quite different than these other or competitive athletes. That might be a function of what kind of access they have to medical services. But I have to say, depending upon, no, actually any level, you do have to have a bit of risk taking in you. Glen: Does this serve in any way or help to differentiate elite from recreational athletes? Parissa: As a first thought, no. Because I would say the difference there is for elite athletes is more dedication to the time commitment, I mean the… Glen: preparation Parissa: Yeh, to preparation, to training. Getting more and more experienced in a sport which then has an impact on the way you perceive the risk. So sport recreational athlete, it’s recreational. They’re not dedicating five hours a day to it. Glen: What is the role of the coach in relation to managing opportunities to gamble or to play safe prior to and during athletic competitions? Parissa: Absolutely. I would think that they are one of the chief mediators between how an athlete in a team and a team in itself approach risk, risk taking. Glen: Okay, could you elaborate. Parissa: Absolutely. A coach here, speaking to coaches here, at this particular institution. It is well known that there are some coaches who, it’s not that they have no regard to, or they disrespect athletes’ health and well-being, they just have a different level of priorities. And being competitive, winning are higher up on the scale than health and well-being as opposed to other coaches who say, okay, one of the responsibilities that you have to this team, to be a good team player/team member is to… health and well-being. So they position it so what happens is athletes from that first team are notorious for playing with injury, playing with pain, not coming and getting treatment when they should be or for having poor attitudes when they’re in the clinic as opposed to the players from that second team who approach it quite differently. And that’s a chief function – some would argue at this institution – it’s a function chiefly of the coach – the way in which the coach mediates things. Also there are some sports, wrestling, in which the coach is highly involved in teaching these athletes how to take risks. I mean, women’s wrestling’s fairly new. So how are the women learning about dieting and cutting fat or whatever it’s called – teammates. Yes, and in some situations coaches. They’re having to have direct
96 involvement in telling someone how to loose six pounds in a day. And that’s a very clear example, that I know of personally. Glen: Does this coaching role vary from recreational versus elite level players? Coming from this is the concept or the notion of coach as risk manager, or the manager of risks –(which) plays out not only with respect to I guess physical injury in the sense of setting up training regimens for athletes to be in top-flight condition. It goes to scouting, game plan preparation so that you know all about the opponent about there..competition…so that you can… So is there any, given that concept of coaches as managers of risk, would you see a more relevant, say with respect to elite athletes, than with respect to just recreational athletes? Parissa: Sure because their stakes are…the higher the competition goes. And I think we’ve discussed this earlier. So if you’re looking at the coach of a pro team. I mean, not only are they dealing with their own sense, their own perception of what risk is, their own perception of how to gamble in the game, their dealing with their athletes and how their athletes perceive the game. And then there is also all those administrative duties. They’re also risks – so they’re at risk of losing their job if they don’t produce. So I think it’s multifaceted. The thing I like, I like the way you say risk manager. I think that pinpoints exactly what you’re trying to do – manage the level of risk personally, interpersonally and intra-personally. Glen: At the recreational level of playing, do you have any sense that this role of the coach really, because we’re talking about during … to be more spontaneous, do you see the coach as actually encouraging the players to go out, throw the puck up the middle of the ice every chance they get, or to skate with it or to take chances that..for elite players … Parissa: Yeh, all we see, I see competing evidence, and it’s only anecdotal..That I can think of. I mean we have recreational … out there for young people who are interested in hockey. We’ve seen – and I don’t believe that how coaches respond to that – is far from recreational, far from it. There’s other recreational setting where it truly is – it’s just pick up game, there’s a coach who is someone who’s also the equipment manager slash referee. They’re just interested in having spirited play. We have other situations such as my rugby club during the summer – it is a recreational league. I mean, yes there’s a competitive system but you pay to play. There’s nothing connected to provincial, etc. etc. It’s a recreational league and it’s highly competitive. The coach is highly involved in all that sort of stuff. They have tremendous, they’re very proficient risk managers depending on the sport and clubs. So it’s really quite circumstantial in terms of …,. If you want to say recreational in the sense of pure recreation, fun pick up then, no. I mean if there is a coach I don’t I don’t think there’s such a thing as risk manager. The thing is as soon as you start to go up higher, then, hey. Glen: The last item I want to discuss with you has to do with being outside the arena- game situation. I’m not sure how you’re going to respond to this given your comments about what one learns or haven’t learned through sports participation but, in your experience are you aware of any predisposition for athletes in general and elite athletes in particular to want to, or to seek out, to need to seek out gambling or risky ventures in other life situations, such as work, family or other recreational pursuits? Parissa: It’s interesting. It’s a very interesting question. Only I think personally in my experience I’ve had situations where I’ve gone walking late at night whereas I know some other women who wouldn’t… So that’s a direct example of how I would take a risk as a function of my involvement in high risk sport, and collision sport. However what I do that same for work. Do I do take the same type of risks as I do in school? Is that a function? Is that a relationship? I don’t know. I wouldn’t even know…
97 Glen: Okay, so do you have any sense then, of what it is about young male athletes, why they want to gamble, whether it’s casino stuff or cards or whatever kinds of things that they seem to want to do? Parissa: Yeh. I mean would that really be because they’re of their sport-produced vision? Or is that just because of general youth rebellion, just to use it the way that Peter used it. I don’t know. Youthful rebellion. I truly do believe that it’s much more social context related than it is individual characteristics. I think that there’s something to be said about having young men, their collectivity, of that being at that particular age… Becoming highly proficient risk managers… Glen: But as a result of participating in sports or? Parissa: I don’t think it’s as a result. Glen: Okay, how do they become these highly proficient risk managers? Parissa: I mean through a variety of activities. I mean, not all youth gamble, but they may take other risks - high speed while driving or drug use or… You know, why that’s happening or how it’s related to sport I don’t know. Glen: Well…we’re just starting to explore some of these things..I appreciate you taking the time, again. It’s not that easy, necessarily, to talk about but you have been thinking about it so I appreciate your comments – very enlightening. Thank you.
Mike Boland. Former Varsity and Professional Hockey Player, Self- Employed Documentary Film Camera Man/ Film Maker. Jerry “Soupy” Campbell. Former Canadian Football League, Hall of Fame, Linebacker, Pub/Sports Bar Owner.
Interviewed by Glen Markle. December 13, 2003.
Mike: It’s Friday the 13th of December. Glen: Where are we meeting Michael? Mike: We’re meeting at Captain Jack’s in the Beaches, the finest establishment serving ale and no food. There you go. The only place I know that’s got ale and no food. Soupy: Wouldn’t want my cooking anyway. Mike: There you go. Soupy: That’s right Glen: We’re here to talk about sports and risk-taking and gambling. I first met you when you were playing for the Varsity Blues back in the ‘60’s.
98 Mike: I was a kid when you were a star on the football team Glen: There you go. And you went on to bigger and better things. You played pro hockey Mike: Yep. Glen: Where, for how long? Mike: For seven years. I ended up…I only played two years for Varsity Blues. I got sick at the third year because we won the championship for two years. I was broke – went and joined the American Hockey League..played for Springfield for two years. We won the CalderCup my first year. I was still at university. I wrote my exams. I passed. I graduated from the University of Toronto. Played again in Springfield, second year I went to Springfield, third year I played in the World Hockey Association, signed with Ottawa, ’72, 73 first year. Went from there…played only a year…dislocated my shoulder…didn’t play much…went to Philadelphia, signed onto the Flyers, played in their Richmond Robins farm team, played with the Philadelphia flyers ’74, ’75. Finished it up in Finland. I was the third non Fin to play pro-hockey in Finland. Glen: So was Carl Brewer there at the time? Mike: Carl Brewer, I played for his old team Helsinki IFK. Glen: And after that you went on. Did you start your film documentary business right after that because you’ve done some very exciting things… Mike: It was a freaky, freaky thing. I used to go to Greece after every hockey season. I met a journalist in Gyos, in Greece in ’76. He wrote me a letter in Finland when I was playing in Finland. He’d met an ice rink owner in Australia, in Melbourne that would pay my way from Finland to Australia, Australia back to Canada if I came and coached for a year. I went down there. They only played twenty-two games. I had to get a job. He worked as a producer in a television station. He said “there’s an opening in the camera department. Do you want it?” I said, “why not, I know nothing about it but I’ll learn”. Started that and I’ve been doing it ever since. Two Gemini’s and an Emmy later. All: (laugh) Glen: And what kinds of things have you done in this documentary …some pretty interesting stuff. Mike: Oh, all kinds of stuff from – I try and keep away from sports because I don’t like, it’s a very, to me the film business is such that it attracts people that are…I would call them misfits. They don’t seem to fit in and there’s a bit of an artistic bent. There is somewhat of a distain towards sports. I come from a sports background. I lengthened my name from Mike to Michael to sensitize myself. I try and keep away from sports projects because it seems like too natural a fit. I got into doing current affairs – I shot for the Fifth Estate, did over seventy items for “The Fifth”. I went on to ethnological kinds of stuff, millennium, …? around the world, human interest stories. I tried to keep away from war zones because that’s hard news. I feel I’m much more of a film maker than a hard news capture that shit kind of a guy. This job and the twenty- six years I’ve been doing it has taken me extensively on all six continents and I mean extensively. Camp-outs, everything. And a lot of risk involved in a lot of stuff that I’ve done. Glen: Great. Thanks. Soupy: Most of his risks, there are in the animals… Mike: Everything wants to eat you, everything wants to eat you. All: (laugh) Soupy: Even the little things about the size of your thumb will kill you to so he came back with some sores on his legs. I mean, God, like living organisms in the sores. Mike: That was a trip to Peru in ’90.
99 Glen: Jerry you were a CFL Hall of Famer, line-backer for a number of years. When did you actually get started? There’s a little story… Soupy: My football? Glen: Well no. When did you come up to Canada? Soupy: I came up in ‘66 Glen: In ’66. Soupy: Yeh, right out of school. I was…my college career was finished. I hadn’t graduated yet so I still had a year to go, when I applied I had about a half a hear to go. Glen: What school was that? Soupy: Idaho Mike: Vandals Soupy: Vandals, you bet. Mike: And I was fortunate because, actually I was talking to, I think, the Dallas Cowboys, Cowboys or Huston, I think. Huston wanted to take a look at me. But at that time there wasn’t that much of a money change and I wasn’t big enough. Christ, they were Butkis size, they were recruiting?? Size. Mike: But you were fast. Soupy: Yeh Mike: Which lent your game to CFL … Soupy: I was 5.9 in the 40, but I came out at 205. I went up to Canada at 205.. that’s small for linebacker…. Glen: So how many years did you play? Soupy: Eleven, ten and a half, somewhere around in there. Mike: ’66 – ‘77 Soupy: Yeh. Mike: Seven time all pro. Soupy: Yep Mike: Three Grey Cups – ’68, ’70 and ‘73 Glen: I have to tell you this little story. I mentioned it to Mike. Soupy: Plus I played against your brother too. I think I might have a photo. Glen: Nose to nose – that must have been pretty easy Soupy: No, no, actually, I’ll show it to you. It’s a picture - I’ve got it over there. Mike: Knocked his head off. Soupy: No, no he’s chasing it – took it, intercepted. Glen: I don’t know if Mike mentioned this to you but ’65, ’66 I was playing for the University of Toronto and after the season – I can’t remember if it was ’65 or ’66 – but I got a call from Frank Clair who said “Son, if we draft you will you come to Ottawa”. And I’m saying “yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh” Soupy: Yeh, sure. Glen: So they drafted me first and I was playing outside line backer at that time. So that was ’65, ’66, in there. So they drafted me first. They sent me a contract for six thousand bucks. And I wrote back to them and said, you know, I’ve already been under the knife a couple of times for both knees. I want to go to teachers’ college. Now if I go to camp and get hurt, I’m not going to be able to afford to go to college. So is there any guarantee, any bonus here you can give me for going to camp. They wrote back and said “when you’re interested in playing football, let us know”.
100 All: (laugh) Glen: So they wasted a first draft pick and I guess Wayne Giardino and you came on right about that time. Soupy: Wayne was there but I came in the middle of ’68. Glen: Was it you in ’68? Soupy: I think Pitza was there, yeh, with Kenny Lehman in middle?? I think Jimmy Conway was the other linebacker. Glen: Oh, yeh, he’s a Canadian boy too. Soupy: American kid. Glen: Was he? Soupy: …that lives up here, stayed. Ended up staying up here. Yeh, many that came, still live up here. Glen: So I went back and in the first league game against Toronto, dislocated my shoulder playing Western. Soupy: Oh yeh? So your both knees Glen: Brittle, brittle. Soupy: So both knees and the shoulder go now. Glen: Yeh Soupy: Boy, I’m glad you’re not a horse. All: (laugh) Soupy: Dog meat. Glen: Anyway, so since then you’ve been in the entertainment business. You’ve actually owned pubs in and around Toronto? Soupy: Yeh, actually, just when I was in Ottawa I didn’t do much. Like when I got out of football, I was actually floating around a little bit and then Mike Cardinal, a friend our ours, was in Toronto at the time working at Johnson’s Furniture. And he says, if you’re not doing anything, come on down. I’ll get you into Johnson’s Furniture and you can make some good cash and you can stay upstairs at Taylor’s place Mike: Dome Stadium. Soupy: At the Dome. At that time he’d moved over to the Bull. Either at the Bull or the other half at the hotel that he lives in...so he’s got about four guest rooms and I lived up there, you know, stayed at his place and worked at Johnson’s Furniture ‘til we bought the old Soupy’s Tavern, at the old Royal Oak in Cabbagetown. Mike: Dundas and Ontario. Soupy: Yeh Mike: in ‘80 Soupy: Yeh Glen: So you both fit into sporting life and continue to be in the sporting life and bring a lot of experience to talk about this stuff about risk and what players perhaps learn about risk – managing risk and how that effects them, perhaps in later life. Soupy: Well, you saw it in my bag. It’s a workout type thing. It’s stuck in you. Like he still works out. Like we don’t want to get big we just want to stay toned and stay in shape Mike: We do lot’s of sit ups. We do lot’s of sit ups because we’re better in bed. (laughter) Soupy: We’re better in bed and it’s also because we’re beer drinkers. And you hate buying clothes over 40 at the waste.
101 Glen: Alright you know that I’m involved in a little project here and I’ve got a bit of a script that I’ve been talking to different people – some of them academics – so I am interested in you guys’ experience. But one of the assumptions that I’m starting with is that competitive sports model important cultural values and themes in everyday life. To that extent one might expect play action of competitive sports to provide opportunities to gamble or to play safe, in other words, to manage risk. And the media coverage of different sports events, for example, this one here about the Leafs and the hockey player Pilar? – “Leafs Glad Pilar Took Risk”. And about the same time, just fairly recently, a golf guy Mike: Gerry Furyk… Glen: Yeh… “Playing Safe..goes low”. Okay. Mike: Well it’s called “course management”. Soupy: But also to, you can take one year of the physical business of sports, like you almost get to a point where it’s, you’ve gone through ten/twelve years of - not bad, no injuries, you know, just the usual bumps and bruises, dislocations but no broken, and career-ending or possibly even the physical disabilities. Like you almost get a little, like you almost feel like you’re indestructible. Glen: Okay, I’ve set up a little classification system. We’re just starting to talk…I’m interested in people talking about different sports and the risks and opportunities to either play-safe or gamble within the sort of on-going action. So one of the dimensions of this little classification is contact sports versus non-contact sports. And the other dimension is team versus individual. So for example, we’ve got contact and team, we’ve got hockey and football, are fairly traditional sports. Within contact and individual – boxing and wrestling. Okay? Noncontact and team – basketball Mike: Golf, tennis Glen: Soccer. Individual/noncontact – tennis and golf, although both those can be team as well. Okay? So can we look at say, hockey and football as examples of contact and team sports? Can you guys identify a situation, in the play, playing the game, where there is an opportunity for a player to either gamble, take a risk or play safe? Soupy & Mike: The linebacker position. It’s a gambling position Soupy: Because you’ve got back up. Like if you’re the free safety and you go for the interception or go for the knock-down, you pretty well go for the knock-down because if you miss it – and all it takes is one (gesture?) and it’s a touchdown. So I have back up. That’s why…I don’t think I’d have been a really good individual player, when you think of tennis player, like …. If I needed to make money I’d want it in a team sport because you feed off your team mates to get some of it. I did anyway because they’re there and all it takes is one guy to make a play, get a goal and it pumps you up. And that’s what I needed because I know that I couldn’t do any individual…because I’m not dedicated enough, particularly in the physical, for getting into ship shape. Glen: So you’re playing line backer and you’re talking about drop back in a second and pass situation.. Soupy: Like it’s all movement or it’s communication, so you know where your buddy is and they know where you are and now we can make a move for it. Mike: But isn’t it also the case in football where especially in a line backer’s situation what made Butkis what made Sam Huff and what made Ray Nitsche famous is that all of a sudden they would gamble and by gambling they would see a hole, shoot through the hole, sack the quarter-back. In other words, they made a calculation in their mind that they see an opening or
102 they read a play or they see a movement, they go on the instincts of what’s in their head or their experience, they gamble, they sack the quarterback and then bang… Soupy: But that’s a call play though. That’s been forseen as a call play – he didn’t do that on his own. Mike: oh Soupy: He doesn’t say, oh, there’s a hole, I’m going to throw through it. Now to back, he’ll plug the hole but he’s not going to go in there because, all of a sudden if you go in there, he goes (makes guttural sound)…and all of a sudden he gets shit from the coach saying, like don’t get caught in there, don’t get caught into the mess, you gotta keep your feet and stay away from all of the action. Like it’s a one on one after that because that bag bounced down but when it comes to the hole, boom, you fill it. But if all of a sudden you see the quarterback backing up and you say, no, no, no because all of a sudden he has to dump that down and your boy is running for a touchdown. Then you’ve got to walk off the field and see the coach. Mike: See that’s where in football they call it the hundred yard war but in football also, they liken it to chess. Soupy: Oh yeh, yeh, yeh sure. Mike: Hockey is not a chess game. Soupy: No, it’s movement and… Mike: It’s wild and wooly. In my position as a forward it was not a gamble position. Defenseman’s a gambling position. Soupy: Yep Mike: In other words, here we go : “Leafs Glad Pilar took Risk”. Pilar - defenseman. Ordinarily in a three-three game, and I think this is a two minute OT, he has gotta play safe. The whole thing with overtime is, especially when you’re a defenseman, you have to go back. What does he do? Goes right against thinking, makes a decision and intercepts the play, scores the goal – is a hero. Soupy: Hey Mike: I’ll tell you what, if it goes the other way, he’s a …bum. Soupy: And also he’s benched or he’s upstairs watching the next game from the…. (all talking at once: he’s back…………) Glen: He’s back in Newfoundland Soupy: It’s a gamble type thing. It’s more free flowing because God almighty we saw the other day, there were a lot of one on ones by Ottawa against… had about three - a hat-trick – and three of them were just on break-aways. I don’t know, all of them weren’t break-aways. One of them was. Mike: Gee, the position of goalie has become a gambling position as well. Soupy: Oh, well to see the one move twice into their empty nets. The goalie goes out almost to the blue line. Mike: Yeh, he’s trying to handle the puck. And the first guy to do that was Jacques Plante and then Patrick… became very good at that, Eddie Belfour . They can almost take a shot just like a forward so they’re going out skating, getting the puck moving and they become like a third defenseman. Now that’s turned into a gambling position. Soupy: You said it! Mike: Forwards are not gamblers. It’s full -on whatever you do anyways. You’re there for the offense and by the way, if it’s two men in, it’s one man back. So if both your forwards in tight, you gotta pull back.
103 Soupy: Yeh Mike: Because if the play turns around you have to come back, three men back. So it’s not so much about gambling. Glen: What about non-contact team sports like basketball and soccer – I mean there’s contact but it’s … Mike: Golfing is more the gambling sport. And I can’t speak as a pro but I can speak as an amateur. Soupy and I are totally different kind of golfers. First of all he’s a better golfer, I think, but Soupy will constantly say when we play golf: “course management, course management”. So he’ll be, like the tree will be here, and Soupy will go and take his seven iron and go … and now it’s in here, he’s at the white stick marker, one fifty and then he puts it in and goes and says: Okay I’ve got to put myself in a chance for boggy”. What do I do? Stand up there and try and bend it around and put it on the green. I skuff it up and then hit the other …tree, and now instead of taking a bogey I’m taking a triple. Soupy: taking a triple. Mike: Totally different way that we approach this game. Heavy amateurs. With the same shot. Soupy: Same shot but different club. Mike: He does it totally different than I do. Soupy: Different club. The magic wand is how he works. Mike: If it works, then I’m going like holy… Soupy: Yeh Mike: I’ll tell you what, even elevation cameras capture that. (laughter) Glen: What about boxing and wrestling? Where there is individual contact to the point of being brutal… Soupy: I don’t think you can fathom how brutal boxing is unless you get right in it, and learn it for yourself. That’s into the damn ring. You can sit and watch it all day, listen to it, but I don’t think you can have an idea of what it’s like in the actual ring. Glen: Can a boxer play safe does a boxer have a choice to play safe or to gamble? Mike: I think he can play safe by thrusting, parry, parry, parry, parry??.. Soupy: But eventually you’ve got to be aggressive. Mike: … Grasp, grab, grapple, parry, parry, parry. Basically those guys are more or less on an even level of skill so obviously if you’re fighting Lennox Lewis. And you’re a heavy weight, he’s way better than you. And so he doesn’t have to do that, he can gamble whenever he wants to because he’s God damn good and tough. Soupy: Ah huh. Mike: Whereas a guy who’s not as good as Lennox Lewis??? has got to watch himself – he’s gotta play safe until he seesLewisis starting to gamble and then he gets a good one in and then, jeeze, maybe he wins. It’s like Foster Douglas knocking Tyson out and no way is Foster Douglas every bit as good as Mike Tyson but he ended up seeing Tyson make a mistake and he capitalized on in. He waited, he waited, he waited, he was losing, bonk! Knocked him out. Soupy: I don’t know. Like you’re in there one on one I mean you gotta be… you gotta be quick and you gotta be tougher… You take a couple of shots to the head and on a guarantee, you think you’ve got a concussion? Try getting knocked out. Now there you’ve got a concussion every inning. Glen: Let’s talk a little bit more about some of the situational factors of the ongoing play that may predispose to gamble or to play safe. One of these has to do with whether in fact
104 you’re playing on a team or just an individual game. Does playing on a team make it easier for a player to gamble in any particular situation? Soupy: Yes. Glen: Can you… Soupy: Yes I could ‘cause I had four guys behind me. So I can gamble, like if I wanted to but there again, if they do gamble on something, like you gotta be good at it or you’ll be either yanked or sitting out on the bench ‘cause it is the team concept from day one that no individuals out there and so… Mike: It’s like a domino effect, you’re putting more pressure… Soupy: pressure, yah… Mike: …on the other guys behind you… Soupy: …on the other guys, they’re saying “what’re you doing… Mike: …to get in . there - “there goes Campbell. Campbell is gambling, okay guys, you know like it’s up… Soupy: …and they get in the huddle and their going “Soup, what did you do that for?. …no, no, no get back where you’re supposed to be.” And that’s the only way that I can relate to the gambling part of team sports now… Mike: In hockey, if you know you’ve got a offensive defenseman like Paul Coffee, like Bobby Orr, if you’re on the ice with those guys and you’re a right winger and your right defenseman has got a reputation for gambling then you better make sure that you’re back, ‘cause you know that five out of ten times he’s gonna be going down so you’ve got to back him. So the pressure,s on you as a forward to back up the gamblers. Soupy:: Wasn’t Orr a gambler? Mike: Yah but you didn’t have to gamble much with Orr because he’d beat you back anyways. If he’d miss the puck he’d be back before anyone anyway so. So it’s the pressure on the other guys by virtue of their decision to gamble. Glen: What about contact versus non-contact? Is the only risk that we’re talking about here the risk of injury, going out to put a hit on somebody or get blind-sided, somebody puts a hit on you is sort of one part of the risk that you’re playing with… Soupy: Never think about it Glen: Never think about it. Soupy: Never think about it…can’t. Mike: I agree. If you’re going to get it, you’re going to get it… Soupy: And, and you like it. Mike: no but the thing is… Soupy:…you like contact. Mike: But if you’re in any way, shape or form, if your decisions of play are based on whether you’re risking your body, then you shouldn’t be playing that sport. Soupy: No. Mike: Certainly not at the professional level. Soupy: No, you can’t. Tip toing all the time Mike: You can’t. You know they used to say Ingamar Hammarstrom… used to go into he corners with a dozen eggs and never break any of them. You know, great skater – great skater but he was tender. He was nervous, he was shy. You can’t be that. Soupy: You can’t.
105 Glen: Okay, what about other situational factors like the importance of the game – whether it’s just a regular game, isn’t going to change your standings – or whether this is… Mike: you’ve arrived at the playoff games? Glen: Play off game or a game where you could change position in the standings. Soupy: …pressure… Glen: Does that make it easier to gamble or to play safe…or create any predisposition? Soupy: Well that’s why you go in, you have the huddles. You go into huddles and say: okay, what’re we going to do?” Like … sometimes too. It’s called momentum change and like one big hit, one interception, one fumble, one, just one play that…they can just spark the team and I’ll guarantee, you go on a momentum change and I …, you’d need a gun to stop it ‘cause it is, like it changes and you can’t stop it. Mike: Well I think what Glen’s alluding to is, do you have more propensity to gamble with your body or with your style of play depending on the importance of the game. In other words is it regular season game or is it a play off game? And the answer to the question I think is, they say that the difference between a minor leaguer and a national hockey leaguer is that the manor leaguer will play fifty out of eighty games and a national hockey leaguer will play seventy out of eighty games. You can’t play all eighty because it’s impossible physically so you’ve gotta make sure that your shit games are few and far between. When you get in the play offs there’s no room for shit games and so consequently the stakes are higher. So if the stakes are higher you tend…the adrenalin carries you and… Soupy: and you do, there’s a difference between a fifteen game schedule and an eighty game schedule. I don’t know how, particularly in baseball like… Mike: …a hundred and sixty one… Soupy: …a hundred and sixty, you know there’s gonna be times when you go: Holy Gad… Mike;…another day, another game… Soupy: I mean Christ do I really need this? And plus you’re hung over… Glen: What about the point in the game, the beginning, the middle, end…does that have anything to do with whether you’re more likely to play safe or to take a gamble? Mike: Yeh, I think so because you’re warmed up. You take more gambles in the third period than you do in the first simply because in the first you’re just trying to get into the game. Soupy: Yeh, get into the game. Mike: The score also – forty-one nothing, gee whiz…????? Soupy:?????? Mike: You don’t want to gamble at nine nothing, who cares? I mean it’s over. And if you’re just starting the period and it’s nine nothing, let’s just play the twenty minutes, let’s get it done. Soupy: Let’s get it over with. Yeh. Mike: And you may not take, you know, “I’m going to drill that guy” – nine nothin’ and I’m not gonna drill him. What for? It’s nine nothin’. So it’s nine one. Glen: So as far as tie, you’re more likely to play safe or to gamble, do you think? Mike: No, now there’s a different story. I mean I think it’s important to gamble but once again, what you’re doing is you’re saying: Am I gonna be a hero or am I a gonna be a goat...when it’s three-three. There’s a time you’ve got it and then you go on experience. In other words if you’re, if it’s tied three-three with three minutes to go then you have to, with all calculation in your head decide that maybe the odds are such that – you know, it’s funny how the mind works to make these calculations in nanno seconds – but they’ll say, for example, you’ll read the next day: three-three and a veteran like Matt Sunden, takes the gamble, and by the way wins. Now he
106 calculated very quickly like nanno seconds in his head that he??. A guy who’s twenty-one years old will probably never gamble because he’s so nervous in his position or his brain hasn’t gotten, hasn’t reversed itself enough in a three-three situation…or an eighteen-eighteen in a football game. Soupy: you don’t get caught in the middle. Glen: What about when you’re behind? Soupy: That’ll change the mode – the momentum of the game. Mike: You’ve got to try something because you’re gonna lose anyways. So you’re down four- two, so you lose five-two. If they pull the goalie at four-two, five-two or something like that, or four-two – especially four-two…they’ll pull the goalie at four-two because if they don’t gamble they’re gonna lose anyways. Glen: We’ve been talking about different situational factors. What about what a player actually brings to the situation? Are there individual player factors which are likely to predispose an athlete to make a play-safe versus a gambling response in any particular situation? Soupy: I think that’s where a bet comes in…A player that has good confidence and he has great talent…and his confidence he has in himself, confidence in his talent and will probably take it to the forefront. Mike: I agree. Soupy: …and that’s the guy that’s gonna make that…because he has confidence and style and he’s done it before so he knows how to do it, how to handle it… Mike: This guy Pilar, he is not smart enough nor good enough to have made the decision to take that risk. I just think it was stupidity and what did he do? You know the chances are one in ten that he will be successful. In other words, nine times out of ten he’d look like the nube that he is. But the…somehow the coins came up absolutely perfect for him and they’re all going – Geez, Pilar great decision. I think he’s just plain stupid. Soupy: But also to his team mates or his partners saw him out of position right at the get go and he probably just went: “Okay, I’m out of position so I might as well go ahead with my FU Mike: Yeh, that too, go ahead with my FU . He shots, scores, holy cow! And he was probably the most surprised guy (laughter) Glen: So I’m interested then in how one becomes a risk-taker, the part before one actually gets involved in sports and what you learn from participating in sports but, in your experience what do you think one actually learns about risk-taking…from all your involvement? Soupy: He just took a risk and I’m just buying a whole bunch of, paid a whole bunch of in platonuim. Mike: Titanium. Soupy: Titanium. That’s risk taking. The other stuff… Mike: … Soupy: Hey hell that… Glen: But what does…does any of that come from your experience in playing hockey over the years or was Mike Bolland already made of that, cut from that… Mike: I think basically you are a function of your gene pool, I think you are a function of your early upbringing, I think you’re a function of your environment and then you become a function of yourself. And when you become a function of yourself you open yourself to watch, to learn, to
107 observe, to calculate – you become a seasoned person, you make smart, smart decisions or – you make stupid decisions to but you recognize them sooner than everyone else does. Now if you have those factors going for you, the older you get the smarter you are, the more, the faster your mind works, the parameters – they say that, if you cut that into a pie, basically if you look at the whole of knowledge as a pie, this little square here is the part that you know. There’s another little part here, it’s the part that you don’t know. And the rest of the pie is the part that you don’t know that you don’t know. And so what you try and do is expand this section of the pie. Now how do you do that? By doing stuff, by going out, by reading, by learning, by watching/observing/smelling. I could send two people to Peru to spend a week. One guy would come back with a hangover and the other guy’d come back with a whole new sense of what the world’s about. So it depends on how clever you are. Glen: So is being a risk-taker an important part of what you see as yourself, your self awareness of yourself, does that include being a risk-taker? Mike: Well I think, your absolutely right. I mean, just take this pub for example. There’re guys, that their idea of a vacation is Whitby. And my idea of a vacation is three and a half weeks up at the north pole. I mean four hundred and thirteen nautical miles from the North Pole right of Ward ?? Soupy: I can’t…there’re polar bears. Mike: Polar bears. We’re all trying to, you know…Robert …expedition to the North Pole, but what I’m saying is...but so their scope of knowledge, their scope of vision’s very, very limited. It’s like a horse with blinkers on. Mine is a lot bigger simply because through sheer dent of circumstance of getting in this job and being pretty good about it, it’s opened my eyes. In other words, every time I go on a shoot, it involves – I’ve got a reputation for going to these various countries – you become a seasoned veteran. You’re looking, you’re watching, you’re learning, observing. You’re trying to film it. And I have to have both eyes wide open because I’m trying to… Soupy: But too, an amateur … not in the league as long as he’s been might take photos, but he might not go into – which is a gamble, you say you’re looking at risk-taking – he is both, because he’s been there, he knows the rope in how to get in and come out and get a better flick. The amateur or the younger kid, might just know how to…”I’ll stand back here and I’ll zoom it in.” But no, he wants to go to the… Mike: There’s another factor to it, the way I approach my job and it is basically, I think that there was somebody, some adage said that it’s five percent inspiration and ninety-five percent perspiration. What I think, and I apply it to my job, is I out work everone In other words if you still want to be the top dog in this business you’ve gotta outwork everybody. Now, of course you’ve got this inspirational factor. That’s where you win awards but hard work wins awards too. Hard work wins games. Soupy: Yep, you bet, it does. Toughness. Glen: What about yourself? Do you see yourself as a risk-taker? Soupy: I probably was when I was younger. I don’t know if I am now, a risk taker. I don’t know. Like, a risk-taker to me is…it isn’t like crossing the street. No it’s like, okay I want to go down hill skiing with just a helmet on and skis. And like to me that’s …risk-taking at your extreme…being a down-hill skier…that’s kind of nuts. Mike: Can I say something about Soupy and I’ll let Soupy respond to this, knowing Soupy as well as I do. Basically, innately, Soupy is conservative. He is not a risk-taker. Soupy: No.
108 Mike: And that might date back to the fact that his late father, Bruce, discouraged him from that because he was a disciplinarian – he was a policeman. But Soupy’s direct, his risk-taking is directly proportionate to the amount of alcohol consumed. And when he’s had eight or nine or ten then all of a sudden the conservative Soupy simply becomes extremely liberal, Soupy, Soupy: very stupid Mike: …and shit happens Soupy: That’s ‘cause I’m stupid Mike: …and so… Soupy: But like I don’t even like to go fast in the car. But it’s a race car. And I’ll be here and: “come on in and I’ll take you on a little spin.” Even if it’s on a track or no track. And I’ll say: no, no, no, what do I want to do this for. I don’t wanna go a hundred and eighty miles an hour. What for? (laughs) Mike: I’m going to tell you a great story…and this is a classic example. A classic example of Soupy and his conservatism. This happened on a Saturday afternoon with a pill called Viagra. (laughter) Mike: …and he was saying to me, he said, jeeze, my needle’s been in a sand trap just a little bit too long. I said, well come on down to Cabbage..come on down to Betty’s on a Saturday afternoon. He comes on down. Johnny, one of our guys, has got a prescription for Viagra. Soupy feels that he’s like…I can liken it to a large drug deal in Columbia…as far as he’s concerned. So he goes down there and it’s like…there was going to be a chunk of gold stuck in his hand. And his big mit was so shaken he drops the thing. So the thing is now under the table, it’s lodged in this little thing and Soupy is down on all fours searching around for this magical elixir. He’s looking for his magic elixir. Well he finally finds it. So I say, let me get a napkin; wrap it in the napkin so he now can’t lose it. He sticks it in his pocket. And he’s going, “oh, what do you think, should I take it now?” And I’m saying, ”It’s three thirty. It’s not like a giant erection erupts it at four o’clock…you’d better hang on.”. “Oh, okay, okay”. So anyways we come back here, and we’re half … …., have a few beers. He’s going to go home at six thirty and he wants to ……. So I say, “have you taken it yet?” “No.” I say, “well you better take it”. He says, “I don’t have anything to drink with it.” I said, “well here, drink my beer.???”…takes the pill out and what does he do? Takes half, bites it in half. I said, “why didn’t you take the whole thing?” He said, “I don’t want to have that …monster alive, for like tomorrow noon.” So anyways, I phone him in an hour and I said, “So Soup, how’s it going?” He says: “I’m not feeling anything yet”. I say, ”well take the other half, Jerry!” So he takes the other half…phone him the next day and say: “How was it?” “Yah, it was okay” he says, “got my bull back that was about it”. (laugh). That’s a classic example of how conservative you can be. Soupy: There’s a risk-taker. (laugh) Mike: You didn’t know what it was going to do to you. Soupy: Hell no. I didn’t take bennies too much. I didn’t take any bennies when I was growing up. They’d say, “take this, and you’ll feel better, and I’d say, “no, no, no” because I heard it effected your sex life, I’d say, “…no bennies”. Glen: So however one might acquire predisposition to gamble, whether you’re born with the gene or you learn a little bit about it through growing up in a family that may have been risk- takers or you learn a little bit about it through actual playing, do you think that risk-taking has anything to do with actual performance? Mike: Sure it does. Soupy: Yep.
109 Glen: I mean athletic performance. Mike: It has everything to do with life not just only athletic performance. Has everything to do with life. Soupy: But there again too, there’re smart risk-takers and … Mike: That’s right. Based on experience… Soupy: Based on experience and the guy who hasn’t done it before, if he’s lucky he gets away with it ‘cause…I don’t know but the percentage is probably high, that’s why it’s a risk, is you pull it off and you fail. You try it and fail then it’s a stupid move. Glen: So does this predisposition or propensity, to use the word you used, does this serve to differentiate or to distinguish elite players, elite level players from say simply recreational players? Mike: Yep. Absolutely. Soupy: Well the elite players recognize it. Mike: yeh. Soupy: They recognize the situation Mike: …the opportunity… Soupy:…the opportunity and the situation and they take out the ticket and hold out – boom! They want it in their hands. They want it on them, they don’t want…they prefer it on themselves than on anybody else because they recognize it, they see it and they know what to do with it. Glen: Okay, what about the role of the coach in relation to managing opportunities to gamble or to play-safe? Mike: Gives you the green light. Glen: What about actually prior to a contest? What do you see the coach doing? Soupy: I think he takes the leader who is leadering and risk-taking and says: “we need a spark. We need something to get our ass in gear.” Glen: Does the concept of coach as manager of risk or risk manager in the game make sense to you? Mike: Large part. Because you know something? The coach will set the tone whether you’re going to be playing a very conservative game and wait for your chances or in fact you’re going to be playing an aggressive and wide-open game where you know that he has basically set the tone that allows you a little bit more green light opportunity than the red light. But if he starts to say red light all the time, well then you’re facing the wrath of your boss, ultimately, if you decide to change the concept of the game. Now who has leeway? Your leaders, your great stars have a little bit more leeway with the coach than your lesser and less experienced stars. But, I mean, if your…if the tone of the game is red light and you’re a twenty-one year old rookie, then you may see chances for risk-taking you won’t take because it’s not your place. Glen: Are you both talking from the point of view of the coach with elite level players? Like does this coach’s role differ depending on whether you’re talking with high level elite, professional versus recreational play? I mean is the coach going to be as concerned? Mike and Soupy: It’s the same principle. Soupy: It is just like ..but there again…. If you have a veteran team a lot of times you do. You just can’t control the emotion of the players. Mike: What Glen’s saying is do you find that that is different from professional sports as opposed to amateur sports when you’re in high school or you’re in a junior program. I don’t think it’s…well the coach still sets the tone but in the lower leagues or in the younger leagues there’s more emphasis on the enjoyment of play and so consequently there is not penalties to be
110 paid if in fact you lose your gamble. In other words, you’re out there to have fun. If you lose, hey, you took a few gambles, you lost. It’s a lesson in life – should be a lesson in life. You’re allowed the opportunity to learn and grow from your own mistakes as a ten year old, as a twelve year old, as a fifteen year old. When you get to be twenty-five years old and your banking, your bank account depends on your status within a team or a league as a professional, you don’t make too many mistakes, because if you make a bunch of mistakes you’ll find your bank balance is going to go down rapidly. Soupy: yeh…or you’re off the team. Mike: Okay? Glen: Well no…what I’ve been hearing and I guess what I’m finding and you were getting at it, like a little bit, is that the closer the actual contests or game gets toward pure play, you know, let’s just say we’re talking about house league hockey. Then there’s less onus on the coach to want to micro manage everything from… Mike: Absolutely. Glen: …conditioning to game strategy… Mike: And that’s the way it should be too. It’s all part of the growing up process. I mean the importance of sports and I’m just going, I’m about to meet a guy at twelve, noon who’s coming over to my house – Johan Kos?? who is a four time Olympic gold medal winner and he started after Lillihammar the Right to Play. And Kofi Amin has come to his side saying, and they made it a United Nations’ charter that every child in this world has, by United Nations’ charter the Right to Play. Now the reason that Johan is about to change his name from Olympic A to Right to Play because there’s a little bit of an in fight with Jacques Roure, but the thing is, what he’s taken is he’s in eighteen countries – Right to Play is in eighteen countries and they have over a hundred volunteer coaches. And what they’re doing is they’re going to war-torn countries where children haven’t even got like a ball to play with or anything. But the reason Johan feels that sport is so very, very important is because you can improve your sense of self, you can improve your self of self-respect, you can improve your ability to inter-relate with your fellow children, you can…crisis management – you get to learn the skills of crisis management, you get to learn co-operation, you get to enjoy the actual accomplishment that comes with the playing and the perfection of a particular sport, you become healthier, you become more healthy mentally and therefore healthy physically. And so the emphasis is to provide in under-developed or war-torn countries an opportunity for children to enjoy what we call in “first world countries” the enjoyment of play. When it gets so damn serious especially, for example, in the MTHL, where they take it so damn seriously and figure that they’re virtual mini national hockey league clubs, then it’s wrong because children have to have the right to play, understand, enjoy, co-operate and learn. You make mistakes when you’re playing on kids’ teams, well that’s all part of the learning experience and the coaches if they take it too damn seriously….it up for every child that’s in that team. And some parents “that kids not going to play for that team any more because the coach takes it too seriously”. So you’ve got to know if you’re a minor coach or a kid coach what the important things, what you’re trying to instill in those children as opposed to if you’re Pat Quinn and you’re on the Leafs or you’re Jack Gotta? and you’re on the Ottawa Rough Riders. Totally different! Totally. Glen: Knowing what I know, a little bit about parents and hockey too, Mike, sometimes parents take it a little bit too far and the coach is caught between parents who think their sonny is… Mike: …going to be the next Gretz… Glen: …going to be the next, yeh.
111 Soupy: I saw an article on television and it was an ad and it was a story where this woman is pushing the cart with a kid. And this woman comes around the corner and hits the cart and the little kid is going, “come on Mom, what’re you going to do? Why don’t you hit her, hit her. Hit her in the face, hit her in the face… Mike: That’s these new ads that a company from British Columbia that are aimed directly towards role reversal – it’s called, role reversal. It’s just like, for example, a kid caddying for his father. Same commercials come up – . The company by the way gave their expertise and their money free of charge to do those things…so the kids caddying for his father and he’s saying to his old man – and the old man’s playing with all his buddies and he’s going - ”come on you can make the putt, come on, come on, come on, make it, you can put it in, come on, come on.” Father takes the putt, misses the putt, and he goes “you choked, what’s the story here now” and all the buddies are looking at the father .And it’s role reversal – good idea! I do role reversal in my job sometimes. Sometimes I’ll have prob..like, like, dealing with people. And I’ll turn around and say, “Okay, I’ll tell you what – here, you take the camera and I’ll sit back and watch.”
Mike: ….we’re on the 15th fairway and Soupy’s hero is playing in the Canadian Open – Freddie Boom-Boom Couples and Freddie hits a bad shot, goes into the bunker and Soupy goes, “Hey, Boom-Boom. Like, what happened? And Boomer turned around and said, “If you think you can do any better you come and take this shot.” And Soupy goes, “okay, I guess Boom-Boom didn’t like that.” But he kind of felt smacked, you know, by his hero. Well Soupy was just kind of trying to give support but Boomer didn’t take to it. What was that? Soupy:….he missed the whole damn green too. “If you think you can do it any better you know, well… Mike: …then you go ahead”… Soupy:…”no, I don’t think I can”. Mike: There you go. Glen: I’ve got one last thing I wanted to come around to… Mike: How’re we doing? Glen: Good, great! Mike: Super. Glen: Earlier, Jerry, you said you’re not a risk-taker and we had the story about the Viagra. Mike, on the other hand, you are – it’s part of what you do, so… Mike: My father was a risk-taker so it’s in…but at the same time I still will look at all the elements, rehearse them in my head, before I take before I take these chances that I have. Glen: Are you aware of any predisposition for athletes in general and elite athletes in particular to seek out gambling or risky ventures in other life situations – like the kind of work they do, the kind of things they do in their leisure, their recreation? Mike: Can I say something about that? Glen: Yeh. Mike: We watch people and those are the sad stories about, we find that somebody makes some money in sports. They turn around. They retire. They put their money into businesses and the next thing, you know we read about them in the newspaper and we see that they’re gone bankrupt. Johnny Unitas was one. He went bankrupt. There’s a number of very famous pro sports guys who obviously didn’t go in with their heads up, they didn’t have the expertise in the business that they were going into as opposed to the expertise where they made all their money, i.e. Johnny Unitas as quarterback, for example. And so like – and Bobby Orr investing
112 in…giving his money to Allen Eagleson and finding out, like ten years later, he’s nearly broke and he has to regroup. I mean, there’re lots of stories like that, there’re legions of stories where they take big risks in business not knowing in fact what they’re doing and finding themselves penniless and tag based.. Soupy: Compared to the other side… Mike: Yeh, bad moves. Bad decisions. Glen: A lot of what we’re trying to do here in this project is all about…it started with findings of student athletes down in the states – some of the big NCAA schools. Major concern with male athletes wanting to gamble. We’re trying to find out whether there’re the same sort of numbers up here in Canada. That’s one part of…another project we have. The question is why do male athletes seem to want to gamble? Here we’re talking now about whether it’s the ponies, or cards or casino… Mike: How about Nate Newton. He gets caught with two hundred and seventy-three pounds of marijuana. Nate Newton??. He knew what he was gambling but he knew the gamble because you go to Crow Bar Hotel but he still went and did this thing where he’s got two-hundred and seventy-three pounds of stuff and he’s now probably using the crowbar. I mean, it’s big. Soupy: Yeh, ‘cause he thought… to me he said, “well no, they’re not going to dump me”. But after the second time they’re going to dump him. And he’s, like I think he’s..bad decision… Mike: What about Art Schlicter?? Remember Art Schlicter the quarterback. Soupy: Hey, quarterback… Mike: …and he hit hops. He had an addiction and it’s called gambling and he lost all his money. And then they go to the loan sharks to get more doe and they end up more in shit. Soupy: …playing games. Glen: But what is it about male athletes? Soupy: It’s just the action I guess, isn’t it? Is it the action? Mike: You’re going to get an adrenalin kick. You lose it in an adrenalin kick. Soupy: Maybe they saw it all, like Schlicer in particular. I mean he’s up in Ottawa. I met him up there. Mike: Argin?? Soupy: Yeh. I mean, this kid’s played in front of ninety thousand people and he’s thrown out of a God damn game. Holy cats. Mike: …or Pete Rose. Soupy: yeh, see now… Mike: He said he didn’t gamble in baseball games but he gambled on other stuff and he had a pretty big habit. Michael Jordan’s got a big gambling habit. Like he was fifty thousand dollars – he bets fifty thousand dollars a game. Glen: Does he have this kind of… Mike: Jaromir Jagar – another huge NFL football gambler and that’s one of the reasons Mario got him out of Pittsburg, was because he was betting over two hundred thousand dollars per Sunday. Did you know that? Mike: Do you know who told us that? Pierre LaCroix. Glen: So why? What’s in it for these guys? It’s not to make money. Soupy: No, no… Mike: It’s the thrill. The thrill of winning. Soupy: I guess, but there again…
113 Mike: When you gamble there’s a win and there’s a loss. Now if you’re, I mean..it’s also a function of money. It’s the old story about Lee Travino. Soupy always take, pulls that out of his…that’s one of his favourite stories. And he says, “Do you want to know pressure?”. He says, “Lee Travino says… Soupy:…and Lee Travino would say to you pressure’s winning your bet when you got one hundred dollar Nassau with five dollars in your pocket. (laugh) Mike: Now Jagar makes ten million dollars a year… Soupy: So what did he say? Mike: He spent two hundred thousand dollars. But if he loses two hundred thousand dollars big deal. But if he wins he gets an enormous rush from winning ‘cause he won. Does he need the two hundred thousand? No, he makes ten million a year. But he needs the rush I guess. But the thing is to me… Glen: So he’s not getting any… Mike:…the rush is the rush…the rush would be the Lee Travino story not the Jaromir Jagar story. The pressures on you to win because you’ve got five bucks in your pocket to pay for a hundred. Glen: So is Jagar not getting the rush from just playing hockey? Does he need something more? Soupy: Yeh maybe. I guess that’s the… Mike: I’d also say he’s kind of stupid. I’d also say he’s kind of stupid. He’s not the brightest light on the street. Mario had had enough of it. Glen: As a hockey player Mike: As a person. He’s a good hockey player Glen: Great hockey player. Mike: But in life skills he’s kind of stupid… they say. I don’t know. Soupy: Well like me Mike. Who do I see right up there? I see all the…I put up the…all the ball games that are going to be on televisions and the spreads and …I’m going to bet on them. Mike: Always bets. Soupy: I love that college football. And I’ve got a bookie. But there again, I ain’t making twelve hundred dollars either…so.. Mike: So the bets are twenty-five. Twenty, twenty-five bucks. Soupy: Yeh, I’m a twenty-five dollar maybe fifty dollar. Mike: But it also gives you something to do… Soupy: yeh, yeh… Mike:…so you study the sheets, you study the thing… Soupy: I’m in front of that tube and if I don’t have money on it I’ll… Glen: But it’s a part of managing the pub here too. I mean you get other guys involved… Soupy: Yeh, Yeh… Glen: There’s a lot of… Mike: Not at the college level. He’s the only interested in the college ones. Soupy: But..I ?people pay for???. I mean where if there’s a thousand dollars per week in the bar. You pick four, you win four games out of the whole schedule of that day, of Sunday, and you tell me how to pick four… I don’t know how to pick the NHL. You can’t pick four teams and even though there will be… Mike: Sparks! Glen: Now’s the time to go. Mike: You’ve gotta sit down
114 Paul: Michael, how are you? Mike: You’ve gotta sit down with Soup and your brother because I’ve got to go. Paul: You do? Mike:Yeh. Did I do enough in the interview? Glen: Jerry and Mike I want to thank you. You’re both getting very busy and Mike’s taking off and people are starting to come in so I appreciate it very much. It’s been very enlightening. As I mentioned I’ve been talking to some academics. This is straight from the heart experience and it’s been really good. I appreciate it very much. Thanks.
Paul Markle, Former CFL Football Player, VP Marketing Toronto Blue Jays Baseball, Sports Marketing Consultant Jerry “Soupy “ Campbell, CFL Hall of Fame Football Player, Sports Pub Owner
115 Interviewed By: Glen Markle Interview Date: December 13, 2003.
Glen: Still with Jerry Soupy Campbell and have been joined by Paul Markle and we’re in Soupy’s pub just before lunch and we’re going to talk a little bit more about taking risks in sports and what athletes might learn from that so…Thanks very much, Paul, for joining us. You are my brother and I should probably discredit you from this whole thing. (laughter) I’m not certain if you are going to have too much or too little to say, but I’ll take a risk here. Paul: I don’t know why you are thanking me now; you should thank me after. Glen: I may do that. I may reward you as well, but you do have some things to say. You’ve had an interesting and long career in sports. You, like Soupy, played for a number of years in the CFL, I think eight or nine. You were with the Argos, the Bombers and then think ended up with the Eskimos. You since have gone on. You were Vice President of marketing with the Blue Jays when they were the champs, and you’ve had your own…I guess you’d call it sports marketing consulting business. Part of what you’re doing now has to do with golf course development – Pitch and Putt golf courses, and also involved with your own little, not little but interesting new technology for advertising on playing fields during televised contests. So all of that has to do with some risky types of business ventures but you have been involved in sports, in entertainment and sports, for a number of years. So thanks for being here. Paul: You’re welcome. I’d just clarify one thing – probably doesn’t have to be said but you said, “like Soupy” but the difference is before I even played he starred, he was one of the…we bought tickets to see him play and I think I was awed… Glen: He is a Hall of Famer. Paul: Yeh. Absolutely Glen: Paul, you played…you survived. Paul: Yeh, I guess it was … Soupy: It was a good career too, seven years. That’s a good career for a tight end. Glen: Yeh. Soupy: And a (XXX) (laughter) Glen: Okay, I’m interested in…and this is a bit of a go around for you but maybe Paul can give some more insights here Soupy: No, that’s fine. Paul: Sort of the starting assumption I have is that competitive sports model important values or themes in everyday life, and to that extent, one might expect play action of competitive sports to provide opportunities to either gamble or play safe – in other words to learn to manage risk. And the media provides all kinds of accounts of that. I mean I brought a couple of articles here. One has to do with “Leaf’s Glad Pillar took a risk this time” in the Star fairly recently. And from golf Furyk plays safe” so playing safe, taking risk, gambling is part of what goes on in the actual contest. So I am interested in to what extent people can actually talk about these kinds of situations – opportunities to gamble, play safe – in different kinds of sports. So I have set up a little system here, classification system. We have “team” versus “individual” types of games and we have “contact” versus “non contact”. So within team and contact we’ve football, hockey; team and non contact, although there is some discussion here about what we really mean by contact, but team and non contact, at least where the rules say you shouldn’t be going and whacking somebody, we’ve got soccer and basketball… Paul: … or baseball.
116 Glen: …or baseball. Individual and contact examples are boxing and wrestling and individual and non contact might be tennis and golf, although again those can both be team. Okay, so I wanted to see to what extent we can pull out, start defining some opportunities to gamble or play safe within each of those kinds of different games. So you’re both from football Soupy: You know, if you think it through the years of a reporter talking about risk. I don’t think a reporter really understands on the risk-taking involvement in a game. It doesn’t have to be a championship. Like I said, the reporter doesn’t really know the risk, the repercussions of the success or the failure of a risk-taking, like he did but there again… Paul: Are you saying that… Soupy: ...in a hockey game schedule obviously you’re not going to take more risk because you’ve got eighty games compared to an NFL football game where every game is that important. Of course there again, if you hit it you’re a hero and if you don’t then the coach talks to you, right? But do you understand? Do you think that a reporter understands all that? Paul: No I don’t think so. So I guess what you’re suggesting Soupy is that it’s quite possible that these guys haven’t researched – they’re writing stories for people to read who buy newspapers. Glen: But they’re using the language and that’s my point. Paul: That’s true. That’s true. Glen: They’re using the language of risk taking and playing it safe. Paul: I think that this can be a fairly complicated issue because what the spectator, the reporter, the sports writer sees as taking a risk or taking a gamble may not be involved in the athlete at the time, it may just be a reaction. But real risks sometimes are really psychological. Soupy: Yeh. There again too one of the things we talked about is the big names take bigger risk because of their ability to handle that. Paul: Yep. Glen: So can we talk about football as a contact and team sport and earlier Jerry you talked about it from your position – what it meant as a middle line backer to decide whether to take a risk or play safe. Paul you, mainly offence, and a lot of special team stuff too. But as an end, on offence… Soupy: You were on the field a lot. You were on the field half the time. Glen: Can you define a typical situation where a player has to decide whether to play safe or take a gamble? Paul: You know it’s interesting that in football, I have played a little defense. I did play a few games, parts of games, as line backer it seemed to be a lot more vulnerable but it’s not answering your question…I’ll get there… because you are really reacting. Offensively though, you know what your assignment has to be, and sometimes as a tight end I get up from the line of scrimmage and I think there is just absolutely no way, that… there’s gotta be an audible here. We’ve got to change this play. We’ve gotta get out of here somehow. If I’m trying to hook a linebacker for a sweep play, I can’t do it. I can’t reach up there… Soupy: Physically you can’t do it. Paul: Physically you can’t do it and mathematically it’s almost impossible to do and so, you know, “Help!” So, all those things… so then you start playing games, it’s actually the fun of it. Taking a split when you didn’t have to take a split or… Soupy: Back offs? Paul: …fake audibles, that type of thing and hopefully with your mate, with your offensive tackle, or audibles that meant something, you actually change the blocking assignment
117 So the best part of the game is actually mixing it up and I guess you take some risks by making those changes but if you don’t make the changes the… Soupy: And if you don’t take the risks… Paul: the outcome is inevitable… you fail. Soupy: yeh. Paul: You have to take those or you’re going to fail. True. And after a while it’s easier to make them. Glen: When you say “after a while” do you mean through learning? Paul: Yeh. Soupy: Through learning but there again too I am thinking risk taking by the defensive player is I think, a little more severe than risk taking by the offensive player. Does that make sense? Paul: Yep. Absolutely. Soupy: And I think the results for an offensive player, normally risk taking is positive. The results of risk taking on the defensive side is mostly negative. I would think. Glen: You mean going for the interception when you don’t… Soupy: going for the interception when you’ve just got knock the ball down and you’re out of position in the first place or maybe guessing the…I’m blitzing and I see an opening and I take it and boop… Paul: but if he blitzes he’s leaving himself open. He’s got to have someone else backing him. Soupy: Yeh. I’ve got to make sure my decision is one hundred percent or I’m euchered. Paul: Yep. Soupy: And now… plus I’ve got…like I’m leaving my position to better myself or I’m just taking a gamble or now it’s away from the team concept. Paul: Yeh, well I…you’re questioning yourself in that respect. Soupy: Yeh, yeh. Paul: I think I know you…I don’t think you’re the kind of… glory seeker that you just suggested. That’s not it at all. Basically you take these so-called gambles or risks for the team. Soupy: Oh yeh, you do. Paul: You could end up with egg on your face and I’m sure that happens Soupy: Yeh, in particularly if it’s picked up fast enough you’re going to have egg on your face. Paul: But you have to be spontaneous too and I don’t think there’d ever be a coach that told you not to do those things Who ever told you to stay at home – don’t act on your instincts. But instincts, if you know…if you’ve looked at the films, know what the tendencies are, you’re aware that it’s second down and you’re not dreaming and you’re always in the game, as he was, as most players are then those risks are sort of minimized.. I’d put them in the category of a calculated risk. Soupy: Calculated risk. That’s the first time that’s come up Glen: Not really, not really. I think Mike was talking about it. Soupy: Yeh, yeh….But there again too, now, we’re back to again too, where a veteran has more tendency to take that risk than a rook or a younger player or a… Paul: But that’s human nature. I don’t know if that’s a sports thing – it would be in business as well. As a rooky you don’t want to make any…especially when we were playing Soup…you were taken off the field. They’re going to put somebody else in to play in the position. You might never get back…So you didn’t want to take a chance in case you ended up screwing up and if you screwed up it and it cost the team then the impact on your own personal career was severe.
118 Soupy: Yeh. Paul: But if you’re an established player and you’ve had your ups and downs and you’ve dropped a pass or you’ve missed a tackle or missed a block, it’s all part of the game. Every play in football is designed to score a touchdown. If you don’t somebody’s messed up. Soupy: Yep. Yep or is this missed assignment or just good play by the defense player? Paul: Yes. (laughter) Not usually but…sometimes. Soupy: But he is right on because he did miss the block, he did miss a block. Glen: Neither one of you has talked about the, sort of stereotype…what you hear about third down gambles…seems to be a thing that you hear about when you’re watching the game all the time…when it comes up. Not the stuff that you’re talking about which is the most interesting but what does the third down gamble typically involve? What are the circumstances? Paul: Well you have to…okay, are you talking about the third six inches? Are you talking about the third three with a minute to go in the game? I don’t think of that as a risk – a team risk perhaps, but that’s not a risk. Risks are personal things, I believe. I know that they become even more personal when it impacts on the rest of the team. But taking a gamble on the third… now if it happens to be a pass that’s called to me, in a huddle, that’s not a risk. It just puts more pressure on me. You’ve got to make sure that…it just adds more pressure. Soupy: He has to make sure he gets off the line too ‘cause they’re going to…third in the three…it’s a pinch in defense and he’s got to be inside a little bit…plus he’s coming from his outside so he has to shake it … Paul: He can’t show pass. Soupy You’ve got to fool them. Glen: Okay, we’re talking about football as a team contact. What about when we to non contact or ostensibly a non contact team game such as basketball or soccer. Does anything change about opportunities to play safe or to gamble? Paul: I think that those sports, although in basketball … Soupy: spontaneous. Paul: Yeh. Spontaneous. That’s exactly the word I was about to use. And soccer would be the same way. But I think that – maybe I’m getting ahead of myself – I think a perfect example is … Soupy: badminton and tennis. Paul:…is golf. Guys in the Ryder Cup, the pressure that is placed on them – because they’re used to playing as individuals – where if you mess up..have a triple bogey …However if you have a triple boggy in the Rider Cup, you could lose it for the country. Easy. And the pressure is huge. And you would think that the pressure and risk-taking would be only individual. When these guys are playing team sports that are really individual sports…where it all impacts on the team…it becomes another matter all together. Glen: But you have to make that put. You have to putt to complete the hole so at that point it’s not a gamble or a play safe or is it? I mean are there situations in golf…let’s put aside the Ryder Cup… Paul: There’s a lot more pressure for you to make that three footer. Glen: Well, it that the same as…how is that a situation or an opportunity to either play safe or gamble? Soupy: John Bailey . Because he hits it so damn far that…he constantly gambles an incredible amount and he loses all of his gambles. Glen: Can you give an example?
119 Soupy: Like he was…just the last tournament he was, he had an eight. He had a bad drive and he’s still trying to make the green on a par five on his second shot where he hasn’t a chance to do it – there’s water on the right and he puts it in the water twice. Last time he threw his driver in the water. (laughter) Paul: That’s lucky he did…maybe he threw his putter in. I don’t know if John Bailey’s case is … Glen: But let’s stick with golf because you both emphasized golf and Mike actually did talk about this morning as well… but particularly if you’re in the woods there’s an opportunity there and either you decide, depending on the situation, to just knock it out into safe play or you try to knock it between a couple of tall pines there and then…as if you were in great shape initially. So there’s an opportunity there. Are there other types of opportunities in golf like that. Soupy: It seems to me that for golfers it’s a percentage thing. Paul: People have said about Phil Mickelson they like the way he played because he goes for the pin. I don’t know if I agree with that…Phil’s taken gambles, big time…taken tight shots that are impossible. Tiger will do the same thing. Tiger Woods has made some shots that are just absolutely amazing but you know, he doesn’t…shots. That’s where the calculation comes in – of knowing if you take a risk of the outcome…the outcome expectancy…. Glen: So let’s talk about Tiger and that famous shot. Was it the eighteenth hole in the Canadian Open a couple of years ago from the bunker? Soupy: Yep. Paul: Six iron. Glen: Six iron from how far out? Paul: Two hundred and ten. Glen: Two hundred and ten…six iron…two hundred and ten yards from a fairly deep trap…to three feet of the pin. Soupy: He couldn’t have done it. I could be there a hundred times and not even…ninety five of them would be in the water. Paul: But he had no choice. Is that taking a risk? His choice I guess was to chip out but he was being tied…being tied…on the eighteenth. What’s he going to do? Play it safe? But see those guys…what is a risk to you? Hitting out of a trap two hundred and seven yards…whether it’s a six iron or a three iron, it doesn’t matter – it’s still out of the sand. These guys don’t mind hitting out of the sand – that’s not a tough…it’s an amazing shot. But those guys… Soupy: Risk Paul: They risk. Soupy: Risk is trying to cross the 401 during rush hour on a bike. (laughter) Glen: I think that’s more than risk. Soupy: That’s risk. Glen: What about boxing, wrestling, individual contact…brutal contact in some cases…what about opportunities to gamble or play safe in either of those? Paul: I think that boxing, I don’t know, I never really did boxing…but I would think that the only boxers make it, make a success of it, are the ones that take risks and are aggressive. You’re only as good as your defense in boxing. You’ve got to have offense but also defense. The best boxers are offensive-minded. It’s like the hockey team with Wayne Gretsky shows… He basically didn’t have any goons out there. He went for offensive-minded guys… Soupy: Yep
120 Paul: …who put the puck in the net and were very offensive-minded. Those are the guys who take risks….the defensive players….they’re not successful. Maybe you could make a case of that for a defenseman but… Soupy: …cause, in boxing also it’s the offense that wins…offense wins games. Offense wins the matches…like you can get points but in defense… Paul: But that’s true of anything. I think that’s a good analogy. You could use that in any sport. Glen: Wasn’t there an NFL game just last week where the team that won had only had about forty-seven yards…that’s an anomaly… Soupy: That was Texas. Paul: Pittsburg… Soupy: …against Texas. Paul: …against Texas…Huston. Soupy: Yeh. Glen: Okay, we’ve been talking about situational factors involved here in contact and individual versus team. Does playing on a team make it easier to take risks versus playing just yourself out there versus an opponent? Paul: No. I think I earlier talking about the Ryder Cup prior to golf. No, I think that…I still remember – I will always remember – that was ’90?, I have a bad memory…dropping a ball. Not recovering a fumble, getting up without the ball…and failing and the result was a loss for the team. It bothered me. Soupy: Missing a tackle… Paul: So I think that if you play safe, though, if you play safe all the time, you’re not going to make the team. Soupy: The aggressive part…there again too, you think offensive play, you can be aggressive but it’s not advantageous to the situation. Paul: You know, you could, say, take a risk by breaking a paddle. That doesn’t do anybody any good. Soupy: No. Paul: It’s foolish…because you can’t risk it. Football’s a game of templates and patterns, so it’s not a one-man pattern, it’s a three or four-man pattern. Everybody has to run it. If you don’t run it…if you don’t run it out it screws up everything, so you can’t take risks. Those aren’t risks…that’s stupidity. Soupy: Very dense. Paul: Yeh…so there’s only so much you can do when you’re playing a game of football. You can out and have assignments. You know what your job is supposed to be. Defense can take more risks. Soupy: Defense…there’s more risk. Paul: Offensive plays – high risk…and defensive – assignments. …get assignments. How many time did you get into a game where you didn’t know your assignment for certain? Soupy: none, none. Glen: What about the dimension of contact. You talked a little bit about boxing anyway and the brutality and sort of creating a situation where you’re exposing yourself to major physical harm. The risk there is physical harm. Does contact…being in a contact game predispose or create any other kinds of risks in the play other than physical harm? Paul: I don’t think that anybody – and there may be exceptions, there may some people who were playing football at that level that we played that were afraid to get hit or afraid to hit – but,
121 you know I can speak for myself only and say that I was never, ever concerned about injury…never, ever concerned about my own physical security. Soupy: But there are times where, you know like for a stretch out for, you know like out of bounds there’s a wall five feet from where you’re stretching out to, where you have a chance of getting hit head forward into a brick wall, I’d probably kind of sway off my dive. Paul: hey that’s reasonable… Soupy: …like if there’s a chance of, you know, dying. Like I said risk to me is like driving at a hundred and fifty miles an hour down a road somewhere and I wouldn’t want to do that. Glen: What other kinds of situational factors are there? We talked…Paul, you brought up a little bit about the Ryder Cup competition but what about the importance of the game…whether it’s just a regular season game with no change in the…your position in the standing versus it being a game that’s going to move you forward or not…whether it’s a championship or play-off or just moving you up in the standings. I mean, how does that… Paul: I think the play-off games put a little more pressure on you. Glen: Pressure to? Paul: Because it’s a sudden death thing. Glen: Okay. Paul: As far as… Glen: The pressure to play safe or to take risks. Paul: I would say the play is well, perform as well as you can and play as hard as you can. As far as taking risks/playing safe – I don’t think there’s such a thing as playing safe. I mean safe to me is doing your assignment as it’s supposed to be done. Now an assignment may…maybe could be as complicated or as simple as blocking you or it could be as complicated as if you blitz I’ve got to pick somebody else up. You know, so you’ve really got to be…keep your head in the game…Football’s an intelligent game when you’re out in the field. If you’re not…if you don’t know your assignments… Soupy: You think too, like Boland expressed this too, like, you almost kind of, like, almost rely on your ace, your star. If your star kind of like – which is normally the quarter-back or the half- back, the high priced player that’s the “go to” guy. You know, like, if you need a play…like normally your star is going to make that play and he probably has confidence in his risk-taking. Paul: Yeh. Yeh. Soupy: He’s been there , he’ s done it, and his percentage is better than anybody else’s and he’s the one who’s going to do it. Paul: I would think that – were you on the Grey Cup team? Soupy: Nope. Paul: What was your last year? “77? Soupy: ‘77 Paul: So you were …you won at Exhibition Stadium… Soupy: yeh. Paul: …against Saskatchewan Soupy: No, no. Paul: You weren’t there? Soupy: I wouldn’t have been there. Paul: I was in the stands watching the game and there was a minute or two left in the game and Tony Gabrielle…everybody in the ballpark knew …who was the quarterback fellow? Soupy: Thomas.
122 Glen: Tommy Clements Paul: Everybody in the ball park knew that Tony Gabrielle was going to be…was going to get this ball Soupy: It was Ted Provost Paul: It was Ted Provost for Saskatchewan has him covered…everybody in the ballpark knew... I was sitting there watching…I was just watching Gabrielle. That would be, I don’t know…it’s not risk it’s just… Soupy: pressure. Paul: yeh. Do you break the pattern? Soupy: It’s a good analogy because , like it’s … because Clements…he… to buy time he had to roll right. He rolled right by five, six, seven steps. And had more time? time to do a .. Paul: …do a post corner. Soupy: do a post corner, yeh. No, no, no, no. Corner post.. Paul: Is that right? I thought he caught it … Soupy: No he caught it … it behind the goal post. Paul: Okay, alright. Glen: What about the point in the game, whether it’s the start of the game, or the middle of the game or the end of the game, are you more likely to play safe or take a gamble? Soupy: I think it depends on tempo. Glen: Okay, could you elaborate? Soupy: Like if the defense is …like…I can only do it in football. Your defensive line is controlling the tempo of the game and normally…in the opposite way. Whereas, now you’re going to start taking some gambles which risk like blitzing..‘cause we’re getting eaten up with our zone. Okay? Because I was calling defensive plays, say the quarterback is the opposite, and not only have I got to say that we’re getting chewed up, we’re getting chewed up by our own defense, like I’ve got to change this around or like we’re just going to get blown out of the water. And so I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to make a call to where it’s maybe change the…and I’m sure Paul will agree with me on this, that it only takes one play to change the tempo of the game. And it’s one of those things that…and if you hit it, if you hit that tempo, or excuse me, if you hit that one risk play, if you hit it then the tempo just changes in a heartbeat. And all of a sudden it hits the other club up and… Paul: And do you think you know that going into a game? Soupy: No. Paul: Do you know that going into a game? Soupy: No, no. Paul: You don’t. You don’t say that we’re kind of in a funk here. Get behind the… Soupy: Yeh. You get on the side line and say, okay we’re getting killed. I mean we’re down fourteen, you know like, we’re down fourteen and two minutes left in the game and we’re down fourteen points. We’ve got to do something. And so you’ve got to start, almost take gambles, risks of change in the tempo. Glen: Well you just brought up another item I want to talk about. To what extent then does playing safe or gambling have to do, depends on the particular score at that time. What about, scores tied. Are you more likely to want to play safe or to take a gamble? I mean… Soupy: There again, it’s tempo isn’t it. Glen: Okay.
123 Paul: I think that every, every player offensively…you want to win the game. A tie – Leo would say is like kissing your sister. It’s not what you’re there for. You’re there to score points and to win the game. So I don’t know, Glen, whether it’s a matter of playing safe or taking a risk as much as it is playing smart in football. Soupy: But the…and on top of that, that’s pretty well on the…on your star. Like his guard is not going to make a difference. A linebacker might, not too much, I don’t know, because like it’s a team concept but somebody’s got to come through like…and it’s going to be your star. And that’s why he is a star. He’s the quarterback or he’s someone in a skilled position. And that’s the guy that takes over. You know, it’s the half back or the quarter back…but on defence…. It’s going to be the talented…free safety..that’s going to go for that, that’ actually going to go. Paul: The difference is that an offensive player can make these opportunities and a defensive player has to see the opportunity that comes to him. You just can’t…a defensive player cannot win the game by himself. He needs some help. Soupy: Yeh Paul: He can turn things around…the tempo around but it terms of… Soupy: …like a great play, or for just a knockdown, like in the end zone or something like that, but…or like said, a pick, or a good linebacker play that just absolutely lifts…the gambling play. Glen: You’ve brought up the skill player several times, Jerry, and that’s interesting because usually you’d think it was the skilled player that was relying on skill and not one who’s going to be…have any predisposition to take risks at all or is it a different kind of risk that you’re talking about with a skilled player that actually makes up part of his skill mix? Soupy: His aurora, that he is, “that’s your man”, that the coach ‘s go to guy Glen: But is part of what being a skilled player all about is the ability to… Soupy: …take risks… Glen: …take calculated risks. Soupy: …calculated risks and to be a high percentager. Paul: Yeh, you can cheat a bit, if you’re that good. I wouldn’t know that, but I was never served that you can get away with it. Soupy: (laughs) …and get away with it, yeh. Glen: Okay, we’ve been talking a little bit about situational factors: the contact, the team, the point in the game, the importance of the game and all this kind of stuff. What about the individual players themselves? Are there individual factors which a player would bring to the game which are likely to predispose the athlete to either want to play safe or to take gambles given the opportunity? Paul: You’re only…you’re inspired by the gifted performers, the guys that, the players that … Soupy… Paul: On the other hand if you’ve got mates, teammates who that aren’t up to snuff, that aren’t performing well, there might be a tendency to try to…not fill in a bit but…it’s probably more of a defensive thing than an offensive thing. Soupy: Yeh, yeh. Paul: (to Soupy) I don’t know if you’ve run into that situation. I’ve had good fortune to play with some pretty decent players…. But I think the good player… Soupy: But knowing that what do you have? You had to sit in ..Paul had to sit in and block Wayne Smith– if he hadn’t hit the block he’d have hit cement. You know, he’s…say… Charlie, give me some help on this one… (laughter) Paul: That’s when you’re hoping for an audible. That’s when you’re hoping a…(laughter)
124 Soupy: Here I’ll just grab his legs…hoping you wouldn’t get caught for holding. Glen: So let me ask it another way. Do you think that there are individual players that you would characterize as risk-takers? Soupy: As what? Glen: As risk-takers. Paul: I think…you know I think that on the field because you have assignments, in football it’s more of a defensive thing. As Jerry says blitzing or just going with your instinct, but in offense you can’t do that. So taking risks by an offensive football player…I can’t even think of a situation with that… Soupy: …..you’re a tight end. I wonder if Dave would do something different. Did Dave ever do something different because he was the “go to“ guy? Paul: Yeh, but I… Soupy:….?? Paul: You know I guess it depends, if we’re talking about…let’s go back to that Grey Cup pass – the winning touchdown. Did you say, did I hear you say that he broke his back and they called it because he had to…because Clements? had… Soupy: He probably did break his pattern. He probably cut short. He was probably curled in and he happened to see Tony break to his right and so he’s buying more time that he…’cause what he…like, for a receiver ‘cause like a lot of times when the quarterback breaks out of the pocket the receivers going to the open area, right? Paul: Well, let’s just put it this way. If you’re breaking your pattern you have to know that the quarterback is reading you… Soupy: Yeh. Paul: …and reading the defense. If you run a pattern – and this happened several times, you’ve talked to us…– if you’re running a pattern and it’s safe to say, is it tight in my pattern happen to be an out and then up. Now if it’s a zone defense, there’s a guy covering deep outside, why would I go up? You’d shut it down… Soupy:…and come back. Paul: So you need to know that you have confidence that the quarterback is going to make that read and throw to that spot instead of deep because if he throws it deep it’s interception. Soupy: yep. Paul: So I guess there’s risk in there but they’re not really risks because you’ve done your homework, you’ve read the defense properly and if the ball goes deep then it’s just part of the counter scene. I guess the risk is, as I say, calculated. You know your assignment and that’s it. Soupy: Like we were talking about too, risk in downhill racing skiing – that’s a risk – that’s life and death. Glen: Well I’m interested in… Soupy: Stemo was… Brian Stemmle… Paul: That’s right. If you want to interview…it’s Brian Stemmle, we can arrange that, or at least… Do you want to interview her? Hey, compared to these guys Glen: I’m interested in how one becomes a risk-taker. There could be some, something to do with… Paul: I think that if he was a down hill skier he’d be a risk-taker. I mean he’s got that stuff in him. Glen: Well from what I heard earlier he’s not but ah… Soupy: I’m a …like I don’t like pain, that’s why and ah…
125 Glen: So how does… Soupy: Like Brian Stemmle he’s going down.. Paul: …like on Wide World of Sports and I wiped out? Soupy:…and he’d hit something where he’d wipe out, where he tore his…from his ..to.. … where his bowels were coming out, his bowls were coming out, hey. His bowels were …he tore from…they had to keep them in. Paul: …and he had to get back on his skiis. Soupy: yeh. Glen: So what makes this kind of event? How did…I mean is it in the genes, is it part of growing up in a family of risk-takers, or does he learn something from the actual experience itself that sort of makes him become even more of a risk-taker? That’s what I want to get out of…I mean what do people learn from… Paul: I think there is some of both. I think it’s in your genes but I also think…I think of my situation now in trying to be successful in business on my own and I draw some strength from my past experiences in sports, I really do. And even the failures. Glen: Can you elaborate a little bit? Paul: Being able to pick yourself up and get over that funk about, as they say erroring a dropped pass or missing an assignment?...how good you are, you can go from being very good to being mediocre in a hurry. Just like a game can turn around over on play, you can have a couple of blunders and all of a sudden you kind of lose your confidence and it’s a huge thing. Soupy: …not a high percentage risk-taker you constantly do it and you tick it off…and like that…move it on to your everyday life. Soupy: …not that much but… Glen: Soupy, you’ve given me a lead here. How do you become a high percentage risk-taker? Soupy: Your percentage. Glen: Oh, but if you’re labeling somebody as a high percentage risk-taker – Paul’s not; Mike Boland is. So how does one become a high percentage risk-taker? Soupy: Luck . Can I throw luck in there? (laughter) Glen: No you can’t. (laughter). Try something else. Paul: Do you want to know what I think it is? I think it has to do with confidence in what you do. Confidence in your ability, confidence to recover – you’ve got to be selfish as well, I think, in that selfish in that you don’t really care about the impact it has on the situations, on the outcome of the game or any impact it has on other people, whether it be your teammates, or whether it be the bookies or…you just don’t care. Soupy: ??? Paul: Yeh, you’re absolutely right. And I’m kind of conservative in that respect. I look at business plans and I look at things and I don’t get it. Meanwhile others… I don’t do anything about it. Soupy: You won’t do anything about it. Paul: No it’s not that I won’t get it. What I’m saying is that I’m a fairly honest, a very honest guy. I try to be honest in all respects in business and other things and I’m just not a risk-taking kind of guy personally Soupy: I was accused of that too. I was accused of that too. Bo accused me of that. I’d even take the Viagra pill. Two days and to get it down… Glen: …and it was only half a pill. Soupy: …I didn’t want to be walking around with a ….
126 Paul: I thought you took it … (laughter) Soupy: I needed somebody to put it …arms would be sore... Glen: Getting back on track…so participating in sports has a lot to do with self – confidence, developing confidence and a willingness to take risks… Soupy: absolutely. Glen: …and the smarts, being able to calculate when to take a gamble or to play safe – calculated risks. Okay. How important is this for athletic performance? However one acquires this – predisposition or propensity or set of abilities – how important is it for actual…count in performance? Paul: It’s probably more of a circumstantial situation so you’ve got to…you need the big play from somebody, you need somebody to come up with the big play Soupy: but..but… Paul: But people that take risks, in the past and have overcome not succeeding, have taken risks and been successful, the greater the propensity for these people to come up with the big play. I believe it, I don’t know for a fact but I would think, yes, these guys are not as vulnerable to the lack of confidence, funk, that can happen to people. Glen: So you’re also talking about from the team perspective. There’s a reliance on the other players, coach, on the high priced help. Again, if you’re on your own you don’t have that, you ..so, what is the distinction there? Soupy: …the individuals versus the team. ???Okay say like for golf, you know for the par five or how about tennis – that you go to the net constantly but this player, you’ve Aggassi on the other side knocking that thing at your feet very time you go.. Glen: Do you see Tiger Woods, gambling, taking risks? Paul: Well as I was saying earlier about Mickelson, I don’t see him doing those things. He has a better sense or a better knowledge of what he’s capable of doing – what is possible, what’s not possible. I don’t think Mickelson does. Mickelson I think envies, wishes he could be a Tiger, and he’s not. Glen: We all do. Paul: Yeh. I would say so. Glen: Does this ability - I suppose you’d call it ability – if it’s important for performance, does it distinguish elite players from, say, just recreational players? Paul: Yep. Soupy: Yep. Automatic Paul: Absolutely. I would say that my, and maybe I wasn’t an elite player… Glen: Well, to the extent that you played professionally you were an elite player. Soupy: You’re a professional; you’re an elite player. Paul: I was relatively, yeh, but no – relative to the guys, like this guy and others that I’ve played with that I could mention – I was really concerned about me making the teams sometimes. You know really, when I first started with the Argonauts, after that I didn’t. Isn’t it funny how after a while you get immune to that kind of stuff. But I used to really… Soupy: But you have to have…have confidence in your ability. Paul: I had more confidence in my ability than I’d had…I’d recovered from some lackluster…and I’d also had some good ones and so I just knew that that’s life, that’s the way it is. Soupy: Sure it is and play through pain.
127 Glen: What is the role of the coach in relation to managing opportunities to gamble or to play safe, prior to the actual contest and during it? Where do you see the coach factoring in here? Soupy: Here’s the answer Paul: I think that – I’ve had some good ones and some bad coaches. And I think that you prepare the team during the week – talking football now – you prepare the team, you build confidence and you stick to your plan…stick to your plan, stick to what you plan to do. Once you start making changes you just throw the tempo, throw ... So the role of the coach is to be solid, … A solid resource…the Dad that you admire. No really, I don’t know if that… Glen: Does the concept of coach as risk manager ring a bell with you? Paul: I’ve always, when it comes to football, when I hear that you’ve got some trick plays in the arsenal, in the offensive play, you know that tells me as an offensive player you don’t have confidence and you … Soupy: You have the power but you don’t have the power to…it’s nonsense. Paul:…so if you have one or two to use those .. and if you don’t even use them,then it comes down to…and they don’t even work. I don’t think I answered your question. Glen: Well let me come at it from another angle. Does…I use the concept of risk manager for the coach involved in conditioning regimens for players so they minimize the opportunity to get hurt… Paul: Coaches don’t do that. Glen: They don’t? Paul: No. They didn’t when we played. You were expected to be in shape – if you weren’t in shape you didn’t make the team Glen: Well, this is professional. What about in… Soupy: …amateur… Paul: There’s only so much you can do for a person. If a person wants to be on the team, wants to be a top performer, wants to be respected by his mates, and that’s the biggest thing, that’s the most important… Glen: The coach will typically send out a conditioning schedule… Paul: But if you’re going to be… you’re going to get yourself in shape. If you report not in shape that’s a big gamble – should be. That’s an indication to everybody including the coach… Glen: Alright. Okay, so there’s some room for discussion there but there are…particularly talking about elite, elite level play – there are scouting reports, game plan development and rehearsing for the actual game which has to do with, you know, in my view, risk management and it’s the coaches role there to do that. Does that differ at all from simply recreational play? Does the coach have less of a responsibility…in that regard? Soupy: Well, I think too, like you, like a high school coach is not going to get fired. A professional coach will get fired… Glen: Okay, consequences… Soupy: There’s a consequence because you’re things determined on wins and losses. Even in the college level…like on the pro level, the college level… coaches get replaced also. And like what hits me too is, like, so it’s got to be philosophy of the coaches, the coach gives to the clubs. Because why has, for example, the Calgary coach been fired when his team wasn’t doing well and so one guy’s philosophy obviously, his philosophy towards the make-up of the game, the town, the players are still there. So it’s the philosophy of… it’s the philosophy isn’t it?
128 Paul: It’s interesting, yeh. It’s interesting to hear what Al McNeil says. He’s now the interim coach, or maybe he’s the head coach forever, I don’t know, but here’s a guy who’s just spent six years at least, as a head coach in a NHL hockey team and he’s basically saying: You guys not only have to be physical you have to be entertaining as well. And what happened to… Soupy: What were they doing before? Paul: What happened to… Soupy: What were they doing before? Paul: They weren’t…he said they weren’t either.?? Soupy: So, they weren’t… Paul: What happened to Gary Etcheverry?? and he coached …and he didn’t do it, he was bad in that respect. The fans… Soupy: …he ran??? Paul: Yeh, I’d say so. Glen; So what makes the game entertaining? Paul: I think what makes the game…whether it be baseball, whether it be football or basketball…you want to see athletes hustling. Whys does the Toronto Rock lacross team, why do they virtually sell out? I mean I think that if you were to interview people coming out of the entertainment centre …the Rock team… they would just say, ah, it’s the best value in town. Not only do they win but the guys…they know the guys are blue collar, lunch pale guys – not all of them – teachers, firemen, that type of thing, and they hussle, hussle, hussle. So what makes the game good to me is the excitement of the real good effort. Soupy: Good effort, yeh. Paul: Not all sports provide that. Baseball doesn’t…baseball is… Soupy: I’m thinking of the Raptors.. Glen: Is this what your average fan, Paul… Paul: The Raptors don’t seem to work that hard . Soupy: No. Glen: You two guys aren’t your typical fan, though. I mean you’re looking at these games from a particular experience. I can’t remember what we were talking about just before a little pause there but…ultimately I want to get back to…in your experience, what you think athletes and perhaps elite athletes in particular learn…do they, as a result of their participation in sports over a long intensive and extensive time, do they seek out gambling or risky ventures in other aspects of life – whether it’s the type of work they pick or what they do in their leisure, their recreational time? Paul: I think that your experience in sports, experience in sports.. – especially if you’ve had a number of years at it, basically you’re talking about somebody whose made it a career….competition, not just participation in competitions all the time, better prepares a person for making business decisions and taking business risks. Now, I don’t think that classifies necessarily as gambling. You may not want to hear this but I just don’t…I don’t gamble. But then again, I don’t take many risks either in business. I’m a pretty conservative guy. Soupy: …well you golf with bets… Paul: oh, I do that. Okay I’ll bet on golf but I won’t go and …I don’t buy lottery tickets…I don’t go to the race track and I don’t …I’m not interested in it, I’m not interested in it…I’m not even interested in gambling in a NFL pool…NFL pool – no interest in it at all. Glen: Can we talk about the risk involved in the kind of business ventures that you’re in now. Soupy:...say about that.
129 Paul: Yeh I would say that… Soupy:…because you have confidence. Paul: Well the risks, yeh, the risks are that if you’re going to spend money you’re going to put a lot of time into it, which I’m doing, and time is money. And also there’s the costs associated with financing… and hoping that this is going to lead to something so…you don’t do it unless you think…I’m not wasting…I don’t think I’m wasting … Glen: This has to do with entrepreneurship. There are cultural values that say we…this kind of risk-taking is a good thing. This is how you create wealth, this is how you move on, this is how you innovate…things like that. Paul: Yeh. I think that entrepreneurship is something that you’re born with. I don’t think it’s something that you really learn although I think being an athlete, anticipated for a period of time, competing – not participating but competing for a period of time can bolster any entrepreneurial spirit that you have and can make you even more so. It improves. But if you’re not, if you’re a low risk player you’re a low risk business person as well. Soupy: Well then there’s your gambling part right there, isn’t it? You’re gambling on your ability… Paul: (laughing): I think that’s where intelligence comes in. I look at gambling as just a complete waste of time and money. Who wins? Nobody wins. Soupy: But there is…like the gambling, like to gamble is almost two fold, isn’t it? It’s gambling for pleasure and gambling, like, gambling to your ability to get it upto the market…as, like your gambling your ability…that you’re going to be successful at what you’re going to do. Is that a gamble, so-called? Would that be so-called? Paul: I don’t know if it’s a…I would say that the gambles that I’ve had.. my wife … Soupy: …plus you put money on it… Paul:…on a few occasions has said to me, you know, you’ve been at this for two years now – hasn’t been two years, but just about – been at this for a long time and you haven’t had the break through, you should…I know what she’s thinking. You should pack it in, not to chance it…not to chance it because it’s going to … Soupy: No. You’re rolling the dice because you have confidence in your ability to pull through. Paul: Yes, I would say it’s a matter of time, it’s a matter of doing it…. I’ll tell you what it is, also. I’ve always enjoyed …I’ve always enjoyed about this …there’s another aspect to it…is that I’m learning, learning a lot about myself and… Soupy: if anything your ability to??? Paul: (laugh) I’m learning a lot about myself and I’m getting better at …see, in my other life with the ball team – with the Blue Jays – I wasn’t answerable. People used to call me…people would come in and they’d make presentations…although I’ve been a salesman in the past, now I really have to use some so I’m the guy who out knocking on doors.. Soupy:…because you’re president. Paul: What? Soupy: …you’re president. Paul: I …yeh, it’s my business…it’s my business so I’ve got to knock on the doors …and I’ve had to really change my…rather than be more laid back – here it is, what do you think? Now I’m saying: here it is, you need it. There’s a bit you know - you need this and I’ll tell you how you need this. So I’ve really changed my technique by… I guess necessity has required me to do that. Now getting back to this sport thing, I could say that there is a connection there because I don’t
130 think I would have had the confidence to keep it going this long – not that I haven’t had my ups and downs… Glen: Are you talking about confidence or persistence…or both? Paul: I think you’ve got to be persistent…I think they go hand in hand. I know that they’re not the same thing but I think that… Soupy: I think it’s confidence in your ability. Paul: Confidence is a long term concept. You don’t get confidence by catching one high pass. You get confidence from catching a bunch of passes or by making a bunch of tackles on a consistent basis – there’s consistency really. And that’s what I’d like to get in a business sense. I was good when I was with the ball club… It’s their loss. I want to be as good in doing what I’m doing now, I want to be better. I’ve been pretty good at this and I think I’m getting…sort of learning daily, weekly learning this thing and ….When you’re working out, pre-season, on your own…getting ready for the game season, getting ready for the team, you’re working on certain aspects, you’re working on.. Soupy: ...working on conditioning… Paul: yeh, whatever. And why is anybody doing this? One is you want to make the club better and… Soupy: You want to make the club better and you want to be the… Paul: Yeh, precisely. Glen: What about…this is sort of vocational stuff…what about what you do in your leisure, your recreational time? Or, we’ve been talking about you guys in particular but in general do you see athletes in their free time wanting to take risky types of things? Is there any propensity to do that? Soupy: Like on their free time? Glen: Yeh. Soupy: I don’t know why they would do that because they..like the athletes are working. It’s high end working…it’s very high end and their lieu time it is actually strapped.. Glen: Down time. Soupy: Down time, like you have to kind of cake the beast a little bit. Paul: I think that’s part of this whole concept of …you know, you used to be in great shape and all that muscle has turned to fat and now he’s a slob. That’s no necessarily in my case or Soupy’s or Bobby Taylor’s. Soupy: But like you’re talking about during our playing when you had Russ … Paul: So are you talking about when we were playing or when we were finished playing? Glen: Well after…well both. But when you’re not playing…when you’re finished playing is there any propensity to want to find opportunities to gamble to take risks… Paul: …because you’re missing strength.. Glen: Well I’m not saying because I’m just asking… Paul: ...missing the action. Glen: So that may be the reason. Paul: You’re saying is there a need to substitute… Soupy: You go to your corvette and get on the 401 and a hundred and eighty miles an hour…(laugh) Glen: Well, do you know any of those kinds of people? Paul: You know I would say that maybe it manifests itself in other ways… Glen: Okay.
131 Paul: …maybe too much drinking, you may be carousing, drinking, all the things associated with that – excess. Glen: What are the things associated with that? Paul: I wouldn’t know because I wouldn’t be one of them. Glen: Have you not observed. You brought it up so… Paul: Well, I think that…certainly there are stories, I know some people, athletes who once their careers are over miss the spotlight, miss the…can I have your autograph…it might be they miss the action and… Glen: And do you think they can find that in…whether it’s at a casino or riding fast? Paul: I don’t think you can myself. Soupy: Also to like they say look at this and it’s like, the athlete has been in that position where what we’ve got is…ah, gee wiz, guess what happened to Markle. Well you know, goes from him…now he’s…guess what he’s doing…he’s gambling in Vegas. Well, you know, so what? So no better than someone … Paul: I never thought of that Soupy: You know, because your name is in the paper for like ten years and all of a sudden… Paul: I guess there’s a network…I knew what Soupy is doing, I knew what Taylor is doing…what Doug Strong was doing… Soupy: That’s right. Yeh. Paul: I try to keep… Soupy: But until you really don’t… you don’t know what my brother’s doing. You don’t know what, like… Paul: …and it’s important for me… Soupy: …high school buddies. Paul:… personally. Important for me. Soupy: Yeh, because we have a network. Paul: It isn’t for everybody. And I’m saying it’s so important for me that I have to keep myself up…on the upside. I want to be successful…for myself, for just for … that it’s a success story. Glen: Ultimately what I’m trying to get at here, I’m trying to find out a little bit more about…going back to some of these findings from the States and what we’re trying to replicate here is that young athletes and athletes on NCAA elite teams have been found to want to gamble. So I’m talking about male, athletes, gambling more than just about anybody ... I’m trying to understand why that is. And not just gambling in the sports context – we’ve had a really good discussion about that – calculated risk-taking… Paul: Athletes more than the general population. Glen: More than the general population, yeh. Paul: Really. Glen: Yes, yes. Soupy: I think it’s just reported more because you’re an athlete. Glen: That’s a very good point. Paul: I’d agree. I don’t think there’s a connection. I’d be surprised if there was. Soupy: I mean I gamble but I’m… Paul: But you always were. You were gambling when you were in high school, if there was an opportunity. Yeh? Soupy: Yeh, we’d gamble on the golf just like….and I know that you… Paul: But I’m not gambling, I’m gambling on me, I’m not gambling on…
132 Soupy: Okay. But I know the Super Bowl you came in there…say, okay here. Like… Paul: Test it…test it. Soupy: But that’s gambling. Paul: That’s once, that’s just for not being a party pooper, that’s sort of being “in”. You know that I don’t gamble. Lisa said to me once that, I think we should start buying lottery tickets. I said that’s a good strategy, that’s a good get rich strategy. (laughter). I don’t think so. (laughter) Soupy: But …I’ll walk two blocks and put…what’s the booty… eighteen million dollars…sure I’ll buy five bucks worth…never know. Glen: The consequences…the down side of that kind of a bet is not…it’s … Soupy: Well what about Hollywood Henderson? Glen: How about him? Soupy: Hollywood Henderson won twenty-seven million on the Texis five or six years ago. Twenty-six million dollars on the Texis higher ticket or something. Twenty-six million. Paul: He’s just a coke head.. Soupy: He just went in and yeh, … Imagine he just went in and bought a ticket Glen: Yeh, but I don’t think to say that it’s just over reported because these are… Soupy: because he’s an elite athlete. Glen: Yeh, I think that’s part of it and I agree. But it’s more than that. But, but there are some fairly good scientific studies here that… Soupy: What about Pete Rose, that we talked about. Glen: Oh yeh. Paul: I think that maybe because of the action, maybe because of the money that athletes have a potential to make – even in our days when we were not making the money major sport athletes are now, but still there was some change that you could play with, I suppose you were expected to…throw it around a little bit. And maybe that’s where it comes in but I think it’s more of a bravado… Glen: That’s a good point because in general young males, regardless of whether they are athletes or not athletes go through, when they’re still young, you know, let’s say fourteen to twenty…the sixteen to eighteen age group is…you know they’re taking risks all over the place, one way or another. And it just seems that athletes for one reason or another are even a bit beyond some of the stuff that we’re learning about these days. So I’m trying to figure out… Soupy: not just a gamble but it’s a competition… Paul: Competition for chicks…or the hierarchy, social…where ever you might be… Soupy: You’re in competition. Because…like, I like my team to be better than your team and like… Glen: Is it just the thrill of the… Soupy: ..like with the champion – “Paul he came in third”. So that there’s going to be competition… Is it considered a gamble or is it a competition, just a love competition, whether it’s a gamble or whether there’s money involved or is it just his call? Like where does it… Paul: If I was trying to find out…I think that where you’re going here is you’re trying to determine baseball, competitive athletes have a propensity to gamble…take risks. Glen: Outside the arena. Paul: You’re taking risks… Soupy: …outside the arena. Paul: You’re taking risks and gambling when you’re playing… Soupy: So that’s betting, so you’re betting.
133 Paul: …do you have to take risks and gamble off the field and else where? And I think you do. Soupy: Sure. Paul: But is there a greater propensity in athletes than there is in the general public? Soupy: Yes. Glen: And why? Okay great because I in…this is it. Paul: But I think so too because of the confidence thing, but it’s not only confidence of “I’m good”, it’s confidence that if you FU, excuse me, I’ll recover. I’ve been there before – it’s not a deep hole…this is just a short circle. Soupy: Like losing streaks, you know. Paul: The reality is, the microcosm of being…of playing professional sports or sports at any level –key level – is that it really is life, it really does … life. You know, you’re going to have your winning season and your losing season, you’re going to have the championship, you’re going to be the worst, you’re going to get injured, you’re going to do all these things and how is that life? Well you could say that successful business and you had a good job, you had a bad job, you had a bad wife…you had all these things and they, you know, so there is a very … Glen: Is there any sense of… Soupy: …gambling, then okay. Like my wife, she says, do you think after your second wife, oh, why would you want to be married to your fourth wife or your fifth wife because I just think you’re not a hubby…you’re not a good husband, you’re a FU. So what’s your deal and what’s the limit? You know like you’re going to either be gone – in a losing streak or you’ve got bad taste. (laughter) So my…Kim just came out and says, like, after your second, man like, why are you… Paul: You’re toast? No, you’re toast. Soupy: Yes, obviously… Paul: It seems that being married a second time is okay but after that you’re tainted… Soupy: Yeh. Paul: You’re damaged goods. Soupy: That’s right. Glen: Well do you learn a false sense of confidence in the sense that you think that you’re invulnerable? Is that… Paul: I think so. Soupy:???? Paul: I think that confidence… Glen: …like it transcends from the arena to almost every other situation in life which can either work for you or not. Paul: You could have a bad game but you still win the game…so there’s a bit of a cushion there. Maybe that’s why… Soupy: Well like a mentioned earlier because sometimes momentum changes and in team sport, now that’s better in a team sport. Glen: Momentum. Soupy: Like in good golf too, like so that’s an individual sport, man you come up with three straight wins and all of a sudden you’re on the road. So what good is that – it’s momentum change…and you see it, and it’s here today. Paul: And if you start looking behind you know you’re done. Glen: Well. Thanks very much, you’ve both been very enlightening in the sharing of your experiences and I appreciate it very much.
134 Soupy: It was instinct too Talking to…like if you bring three other guys, football players, basketball players, hockey players and…same theory. Glen: And same discussion. Soupy: Same discussion – everybody’s got the same philosophy.
10. APPENDIX 3: Sports Identity Index
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