Authority in Sport

Abstract

Herbert McCabe uses football (soccer) as an analogy for Christian ethics, the sports game being an illuminating abstraction from the concreteness of moral life. This paper explores three authorities in the life-abstraction that is sport: the referee, the coach, and the exemplary player. (1) The referee bears practical epistemic authority: he declares what counts as a play within the rules, and what shall be excluded as an invalid (non-rule-following) play. There are interesting authority-problems that arise when referees err. In ethics, epistemic authority is found in casuistry. (2) The coach bears social authority: she works to make her team function as a team, and at the same time to draw each player to her own excellence. Christian ethics values social authority in every truly human dimension. (3) The exemplary player is a personal authority. He demonstrates excellence of play, which goes beyond conformance to the rules and also goes beyond coaching. A complexification here is the relation of deliberate rule-breaking to excellence of performance. In Christian ethics, exemplary authority is held by the saint living in koinonia. The paper closes with the disanalogy that Christian ethics hopes for excellence in every person.