Combating Violence in Sports

For years upon years, and decades upon decades, sport has been surrounded with violence. Unfortunately nothing has gotten any easier as time has gone one. Sports now are becoming more violent, very recently the NFL has just issued a new ruling for serious fines and suspensions for hits that are illegal, such as, helmet to helmet hits. The NFL is just one organization and major sport that has tried to combat violence to help save players from more serious dramatizations then what they are already likely to face after playing. Although there have been alternative sports to spring out of the woodwork like MMA. Mixed Martial Arts, is all about fighting your opponent until he or she taps out or is knocked out. This has become one of the largest sports to dominate the world right now, and its center stage, violence.

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Coakley defines four different types of violence that he developed from Mike Smith, a respected Canadian sociologist.

1. Brutal body contact - This includes physical practices common in certain sports and accepted by athletes as part of sport participation.
2. Borderline violence - This includes practices that violate the rules of the game but are accepted by most players and coaches as consistent with the norms of the sport ethic and as useful competitive strategies. (ex. NFL ruling on illegal hits)
3. Quasi-criminal violence - This includes practices that violate the formal rules of the game, public laws, and even informal norms among players. (Ex cheap shots, late hits, sucker punches, and flagrant fouls that endanger players bodeis).
4. Criminal violence - This includes practices that are clearly outside the law to the point that athletes condemn them without question and law enforcement officials may prosecute them as crimes (Michael Vick - dog fighting ring).

          (Coakley, 2009)

      Research has suggested that the causes of sport violence perceived by students are provocation, encouragement by coaches (Reilly, 1995; O"Brien and Wolff, 1996), peer pressure, wanting to win, because it is an implicit part of the game (Scher, 1993; Weinstein, et al., 1995; Pilz, 1996), revenge and retaliation, and as the result of role models (Pooley and Golding, 1987). (2000,June).

Coaches, peers, and outside factors are all centered around winning. The sense of fun is thrown out the window as athletes get older and they start moving into more and more competitive leagues. Doing what it takes to win? Anymore that means if you have to hurt the other team then to do it. The term, "winning at all costs," has now turned into motivation for players to become more violent. Sport will never actually get better when it comes to violence unless something is done about it. More and more injuries will happen, hurting more and more young and even older athletes not only hurting themselves and careers, but their lives.


Coakley, J. (2009). Sports in society. New York, New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

L, Lance. (2000, June). View of violence in american sports: a study of college students. bnet, Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCR/is_2_34/ai_63365174/pg_9/?tag=content;col1