Perhaps it’s because I’m English that I took amiss Alex Morgan’s tea-sipping celebration after she scored the winning goal against England in the women’s World Cup semi-final. But I don’t think it was that. It was more because she was being unsportsmanlike and rude.
Don’t mock your beaten foe. Dignity, honor, graciousness, and magnanimity all used to be so much part of sport that the word “sport” became a synonym for those excellent qualities. That’s why we talk of being “a good sport” and of “sportsmanlike conduct.” But such ideas have fallen into desuetude.
Those of us who complain about the American women’s gloating celebrations — those against the hapless Thais were deeply embarrassing — are accused of holding double standards for expecting women to behave better than men. The gross, chest-thumping behavior of male athletes is cited as evidence. But I lament the behavior of sportsmen at least as much, probably more, than I do that of the women. I turn in shame, for example, from the strutting self-puffery of end zone celebrations in the NFL.
The extent to which dignity has dwindled in our culture was brought home to me a few years ago when I watched a video clip of a 1971 bowl game in which the great Johnny Rodgers scored on a punt return of some 70 yards. His teammates congratulated him mostly by slapping him on the back, patting him on the head, and, yes, in one case, giving him a hug. The restraint was actually rather moving.
This year’s World Cup was in some ways a coming out party for women’s sport. The U.S. women have won many times, but their unabashed, unapologetic adoption of the attitudes that prevail in men’s sports was new. Some of them were out-there political, one dropped the American flag on the ground, another knelt during the national anthem, and the same one vulgarly dismissed the president.
They have the right to be that way, of course, but it’s a shame they want to.
