Cheating or breaking the rules is typically seen as morally wrong. Does this mean that supporting a beloved sports team that broke the rules is also morally wrong? Typically, saying “Go Saints!!!” would be morally neutral. There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about rooting for a specific team. However, the Saints were accused and “convicted” of targeting opposing players with the intent to injure in what is now commonly called “Bountygate.” Paying someone to intentionally injure someone else is pretty clear-cut in being immoral. Therefore, it is logical to say that the Saints are immoral or, at the very least, were immoral at that time. Controversy does not arise from calling the Saints immoral, but it certainly does when calling their fans’ decision to root for them immoral. Supporting a racist organization such as the KKK is immoral, even if an individual is not a member. Logic would follow that supporting an immoral organization is in itself an immoral action. Ignorance, however, could be fans saving grace. There was no way for fans of the Saints to have known what was transpiring behind closed doors. They cannot be blamed for rooting for their team when they did not know about the immoral actions. However, once the allegations came to light, if they supported the team’s actions or downplayed them, then that would make them immoral.<\/p>\n
What about an individual cheating by, for example, utilizing performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs)? Working under the assumption that cheating is wrong, then using PEDs is clearly immoral. Is it immoral to root for a player after they have been convicted of using PEDs? One can never be certain that a player is playing without them once they are convicted the first time. And does having an immoral player on a team make the entire team immoral? I say no unless the team was aware of the doping and attempted to hide it. The effects of doping can carry on for decades after the initial rule-breaking. Hall of Fame voting is thrown for a loop. The statistics of every player who ever faced the doper must be looked at with a new lens. And, arguably most importantly, earnings could have been negatively affected in so many ways. Whether or not a fan is immoral for rooting for their team of choice is not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. However, it is interesting to jump down the rabbit hole and truly think about the morals of certain aspects of sports fandom, at least before we are all drawn back into the action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cheating or breaking the rules is typically seen as morally wrong. Does this mean that supporting a beloved sports team that broke the rules is also morally wrong? Typically, saying “Go Saints!!!” would be morally neutral. There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about rooting for a specific team. However, the Saints were accused and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5113,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6107"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6141,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107\/revisions\/6141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}