Sports are corrupt. I don't mean corrupting, I mean sporting institutions at almost all levels are corrupt. High school sports are corrupt in their recruiting of kids; you don't get shady recruitment for math class.
College sports are corrupt: witness the admission buying scandal, or else look at the non-criminal ways wealthy kids get into prestigious schools as "athletes."
Professional sports are corrupt: hello taxpayer financed stadium deals!
International sports are corrupt: FIFA, IOC, bribery, etc.
At all levels, sports institutions are just endemically corrupt. Often to absolutely absurd levels. The corruption isn't even economically rational; countries lose money on every Olympics even without counting the bribes
At all levels, sports institutions are just endemically corrupt. Often to absolutely absurd levels. The corruption isn't even economically rational; countries lose money on every Olympics even without counting the bribes
So the question is WHY are sports so corrupt? Other institutions are not so corrupt. What is it about sporting institutions that creates such extraordinary corruption?
Many theories are possible. Maybe these institutions attract worse people. Possible, but this explanation doesn't seem plausible to me for many reasons, not least that people-who-like-sports do not actually seem to be worse people than other people.
Another theory is basically unmeasured economic benefits, in no small part gambling, legal or otherwise. Maybe there are big side payments.
That probably works for ref-bribery, but it doesn't really explain stuff like the IOC's corruption or college athlete recruitment.
That probably works for ref-bribery, but it doesn't really explain stuff like the IOC's corruption or college athlete recruitment.
So what is it? Why are these institutions at so many levels so totally corrupt?
My theory is it's about NON-economic returns. That is to say, I suspect it's precisely because sports provide prestige rewards with tournament win/loss patterns that side payments matter so much.
My theory is it's about NON-economic returns. That is to say, I suspect it's precisely because sports provide prestige rewards with tournament win/loss patterns that side payments matter so much.
Why do countries compete to hold the Olympics? It's not economic returns. It's *prestige.* It's pride. It's vanity. And when you're in it for the vanity already, bribes just don't seem like a problem.
It is precisely because returns are extremely difficult to assign monetary value to, and extremely rivalrous and excludable, that high schools spend tons of time and effort recruiting athletes who do absolutely nothing to achieve the school's telos.
In this theory, the reason sports are corrupt is that they have a huge financial footprint alongside extremely rivalrous and excludable returns which are largely intangible. That creates ample space for corruption.
Nonprofit organizations generally would have similar problems, EXCEPT they also have public-facing missions that provide a competing source of meaning and orientation for an institution. Their missions create reserve armies of moral spine to deploy against corruption.
This still fails sometimes. There are tons of corrupt nonprofits. I'm not saying they're perfect. The huge non-economic rewards of nonprofit work often leads nonprofit workers to "forgive themselves" for egregious corruption.
But they only forgive themselves because....
But they only forgive themselves because....
... the ethos of the institution includes the view that corruption is BAD and needs forgiveness, and includes an actual set of propositional claims about what is good.
Sports has all the non-economic returns of nonprofit work but none of the moral purpose or sense of mission. It's a for-profit endeavor with non-profit-style non-economic returns. So there are huge incentives for corruption.
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