Sports, Rewards, and Happiness

Thomas Martin

Thomas Martin teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. You may contact Thomas Martin at: martint@unk.edu.

I was recently reminded of the difference between academics and athletics at the University of Nebraska, or, for that matter, American universities in general. Mike Andersen, the baseball coach at the University of Nebraska who took his team to the College World Series where it became the first team in school history to record a victory, was given a 76 percent salary increase (from $113,531 to $200,000).

This brought to mind Socrates, who, after being found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens and creating false gods, was given the right by Athenian law to recommend his own punishment before the Senate of Athens. Socrates thought that he ought to receive free meals at the Prytaneum, the town hall of Athens in which public entertainments were given, particularly to Olympian victors on their return home.

Socrates’ reason for asking to be treated like an Olympian victor was simple: “The Olympian victor makes you think yourself happy; I make you happy.”

What Socrates said before the Senate of Athens in 399 B.C. is true in Nebraska in 2005 A.D.: the victorious Huskers make sports-minded spectators, like myself, think ourselves happy, but they do not make us happy. However, for making us think we are happy the state of Nebraska gives her athletes free meals at the University dining halls and coaches are rewarded beyond reason.

We must now ask, what is the difference between a fan thinking himself happy because his baseball team won a game at the college world series and being happy?

Thinking I am happy because my team has won is not so much a thought as it is a feeling that swells up in my chest and lasts for a few days. I, as every fan, am proud when my team wins and this makes me happy. Conversely, when Nebraska loses I do not think myself sad but I feel sad.

Of course, I realize that I had nothing to do with my team’s successes and failures, unless I think the fans’ cheering is essential to the quality of play.

Obviously Socrates thought that feeling happy was not as desirable as being happy.

Socrates, in his defense before the Senate of Athens, asks the Senators, exactly what he asked his fellow Athenians throughout his years as a philosopher:

Good Sir, you are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for both wisdom and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?

Socrates here is making the distinction between the goods of the body and the goods of the soul and their respective forms of happiness. Being physically fit is a good of the body but it is not a good of the soul.

Socrates tells his fellow citizens that if a person wants to be happy, he must be concerned with the state of his soul. It is not wealth, reputation, and honor that will make the soul happy. These three things will not make the soul happy because money, reputation, and honor are external to the soul. Money is an inanimate object while reputation and honor are dependent upon what other people think. This puts one at the mercy of others; if they change their minds, so goes one’s reputation and honor.

The happiness of which Socrates spoke is a matter of a personal character. It is not about being a spectator and feeling happy when one’s team wins, but it is about being an active participant in the virtuous development of one’s own soul. It is a different form of development than the athletic development of the body that is handsomely rewarded at universities throughout America.

A teacher, especially one who is able to assist in the development of each student’s character and mind teaching him to read literature, history, chemistry, and the like and write coherently, is not a coach who receives monetary rewards for his students’ performances on the field of life where we all are responsible for playing out our lives.

The financial rewards in universities like Nebraska go to the coaches who cull a select few for their athletic prowess to entertain the masses of spectators who feel good about winning. Historically, it is not the business of a university to be consumed by the goods of the body to the extent of paying exorbitant salaries to those who coach games.

In all of this we do well to remember there is a difference between being a spectator who thinks he is good because his team wins and being an active participant in the moral development of one’s soul, which can not be measured in dollars but in sense.

And so it goes.     *

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.” --John Adams