Q. Do sports make men cruel?
A. Not all sports, but unfortunately, in this country a lot of sports aimed at the young emphasize competition and winning at any cost. In high school football, boys are often taught to "take out" players from the opposite team. Taking out a player means injuring a player so badly that he can no longer play. I would say that is cruel and entirely inappropriate. There have been studies that indicate that instead of learning sportsmanship and fair play, boys who are involved in competitive sports demonstrate less of these qualities than boys who are not involved.
Q. Aren't you overreacting? I played sports as a kid. I learned positive competitiveness and camaraderie. What is so wrong with wanting to push our sons and our daughters to excel?
A. I am in no way saying every team is obsessed with winning to a really outrageous degree. I am saying it happens much too often. It sounds like it didn't happen to you. My research reveals it is frequent enough that it is a serious problem.
One problem is that there are coaches who are obsessed with winning. Often parents, particularly fathers, literally push their sons to such a degree that some boys play really badly, because they want to get kicked off the team because they are under so much pressure from their fathers to win.
Parents should become aware that an extreme level of competition is just not good for a seven- or eight-year-old boy. What I recommend is that parents make sure the coach is not someone who is obsessed with competitiveness. At every level it is important that parents find out what is going on and do something about it. I advocate regulation of youth sports. There are 30 million American children involved in youth sports programs, and there is absolutely no control over who the coaches are or what is going on.
Q. How can you seriously expect more regulation in a period of budget austerity?
A. Anything is possible. We have gone through a period of extreme deregulation, and we are suffering greatly as a result. The fact that regulation isn't fashionable now doesn't tell us anything about five or 10 years from now.
Q. But isn't the inappropriate behavior you speak about isolated to the playing fields?
A. No, not at all. It isn't. What athletes learn on the playing fields is often carried on in the outside world. They learn to win at any cost. They are taught to be enormously concerned with dominance and conquering the other team. Having learned those kinds of lessons, it is very hard to cut that off when you are in the outside world, so it is not surprising that they carry it with them to their relations with women. That is not to say some athletes don't make a distinction, but many don't.
From the youngest age in Little League, there is often a denigrating attitude toward girls and women. The worst insult a boy can yell at another boy in Little League is to call him a "wuss." If you combine the emphasis on winning at any cost with the negative attitude toward women, it is not at all surprising that approximately one-third of the sexual assaults on college campuses are by athletes.
Q. Isn't the level of sexual assaults just a reflection of better reporting of a phenomenon that has been going on for a long time?