Stacy Danley Looks at Common Sports Ethics Issues
Take diversity, for example. On the court or sports field, Stacy Danley mentions that minorities are often well-represented. However, public scrutiny has turned to diversity among coaches, assistant coaches, and other support staff in recent years. It means that franchises now have to be mindful of issues of gender and racial diversity.
Every year, TIDES, or The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, comes out with a Racial and Gender Report Card, otherwise known as an RGRC. From 2017 to 2018, the NBA led in overall RGRC rankings. By the end of that season, the percentage of individuals of color in coaching positions was 33.3 percent, the highest of all men’s professional leagues in the country.
Another ethical issue is pay-for-play, which is becoming quite controversial, especially within college sports.
College athletics generate over a billion dollars in revenue, with big paychecks for coaches, but student-athletes do not see any of those earnings because of the strict NCAA guidelines.
Reports have shown that student-athletes are asked to miss classes because they have to travel for their sport. While a free education may look reasonable enough as payment for some college athletes, this isn’t the case for big-name athletes, whose names alone bring in millions for the colleges they represent.
Gambling is also an ethical issue in sports, according to Stacy Danley.
Once considered a vice by some, gambling has quickly become mainstream in professional sports after a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave states the authority to regulate gambling in sports.
According to reports, in 2017, legal sports gambling and betting accounted for roughly $270 million in revenue. That said, the NCAA and other sports association governing bodies still have strict rules against gambling on the part of professional athletes.
As mentioned earlier, performance-enhancing drugs have been a long-standing issue in sports ethics, with many of the most popular athletes in recent memory admitting to or having been caught taking performance-enhancing drugs. These are considered a blight on professional sports as they damage the notion of fair play.
Stacy Danley mentions that the way sports administrators handle the use of PEDs by famous athletes has a profound impact on public perception.
Unfortunately, steroids are now just one of many substances ruled as performance-enhancing. Blood doping, or injecting oxygenated blood into a person, is also one performance-enhancing technique associated with cycling in recent years.
Stacy Danley is the President and CEO of SLD Sports Management Group, a premiere management consulting, sports, and special event marketing and management company specializing in providing quality event management corporate consulting, strategic planning, fund-raising, new business development, sales, and corporate marketing. For more posts from Stacy Danley, follow this page.