Real Winners in Sports Contests

ABSTRACT

The question what ultimately determines the real winner of a sports contest (or whether a sports contest was really a draw) has been little discussed in the philosophy of sport literature. In this article, I discuss in detail and reject three views about what ultimately determines the real winner of a sports contest, which I call ‘the Official Result View’, ‘the Adjudicator View’ and ‘the Rules View’. I also present a variation of the Rules View, which may be a promising view about what ultimately determines the real winner of a sports contest. I call this view ‘the Desert-adjusted Rules View’.

KEYWORDS:

• Winning
• official result
• judges
• referees
• rules

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for very thorough and useful comments. I would also like to thank Yuval Eylon for helpful questions and encouraging comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See Lundberg (2013), MTV Uutiset (2013), Parviainen (2018), Toivonen (2015) and Sanomat (2013)

2. See BoxRec (2014) for some other comments and how various boxing experts scored the fight.

3. However, see also Delattre’s (2007, 198‒199), Dixon’s (2003a, 105, 2003b, 117‒118) and Suits’s (2005, 39‒40, 47‒51) conceptual analyses of winning.

4. On ethos rules, see Hämäläinen (2016).

5. It may be wondered why I say ‘the adjudicating decisions of some specific adjudicator(s) who adjudicated that contest’ rather than ‘the adjudicating decisions of those adjudicators who adjudicated that contest’? I have two reasons for this. First, in many sports the formal role of some adjudicators (e.g. assistant referees and video assistant referees in football) is merely advisory. (On the other hand, this raises the question whether such officials should actually be considered adjudicators.) Secondly, in many sports how a contest proceeded or ended determines whose adjudicating decisions may be considered such that they ultimately determined who really won that contest. For example, if a professional boxing fight ended in a knockout, the judging decisions which the judges of that fight made clearly did not determine who really won it.

6. Adjudicating decisions can be descriptions or reports of what happened (see Dixon 2003a, 104‒105, 108; Russell 1997, 22‒24) or evaluations of athletes’ or teams’ performances (Dixon 2003a, 108). Referees’ decisions are typically descriptions or reports of what happened, whereas judges’ decisions in judged sports are typically evaluations of how well some athlete or team performed either on an absolute scale (such as in figure skating and gymnastics) or compared to the opponent (such as in boxing and MMA).

7. Reitsma & Bassham (2008, 83) argue that there is no point in asking what really counts as a murder. I disagree, but that is outside the scope of this article.

8. Smith in fact scored the fight 96‒95 for Wright rather than 95‒95. The other scorecards were 97‒93 for Wright and 96‒94 for Harmon (BoxRec n.d.). In professional boxing other notable scoring errors have taken place for example in Jose Luis Castillo vs. Stevie Johnston II in 2000 (see BoxRec 2020) and Marco Antonio Barrera vs. Rocky Juarez I in 2006 (see BoxRec 2018; Houston 2006). For scoring error incidents in MMA, see Chiappetta (2012), Fontanez (2012) and Smith (2012).

9. See Saari (2001, 41) who refers to the competitors and judges of a figure skating contest as candidates and voters.

10. In fact, I strongly believe it is a fact (in the world in which Boxer C and Boxer D fought each other) that Boxer D was better in seven rounds and Boxer C was better in five rounds (from the point of view of the judging rules of professional boxing). Denying this would seem to imply either the view that the judging rules of professional boxing always leave room for interpretation regarding who was better in a round or the view that a boxer can be objectively better than his opponent in a round but that it is never a fact that a boxer was better than his opponent in a round. The former view is clearly false, whereas the latter view may lack rationale and may even be contradictory.

11. More accurately, the judging decisions which judges make during a professional boxing fight do not affect how that fight develops unless an open scoring system is in use. To the best of my knowledge, open scoring systems are rarely used in professional boxing. So in the large majority of professional boxing fights, the judging decisions of the judges do not affect how a fight develops, because the judges’ scores are kept hidden from the fighters during the entire fight and are made public only after the fight ends.

12. If a supporter of the Rules View agrees with my analysis, he would probably also agree with Reitsma & Bassham’s critical analysis of the Rules View, which they make on the basis of an imaginary Champions League Final between PSV Eindhoven and Arsenal:

The score is tied, 2–2. In the waning seconds of stoppage time, PSV Eindhoven’s Phillip Cocu whips a low, curving shot toward the right corner. Arsenal keeper Jens Lehmann dives, deflects the shot against the post, then smothers the ball with his body just as it appears to cross the goal line. The referee’s whistle blows, a goal. […] But the referee, noticing his linesman frantically waving his flag, runs to the sideline and after a moment’s consultation indicates his final decision, no goal. Arsenal score in extra time and are crowned champion. […] a photo published in the next morning’s London Times reveals that the ball had completely crossed the line. (Reitsma and Bassham 2008, 79)

Reitsma & Bassham then go on to make the following plausible critical analysis of the Rules View:

[T]o declare the real winner, [a supporter of the Rules View] can’t simply pay attention to controversial or mistaken calls at the end of a game. To be consistent, [a supporter of the Rules View would] need to check any such calls in the midst of the game. […] To be warranted, then, in naming PSV the victor, it would be necessary to take a close examination of the many consequential decisions made by the referee throughout the game and determine that none of them were mistaken. If some were mistaken, as is inevitable, given that such calls generally have an effect on subsequent play, […] [a supporter of the Rules View] would not be able to make a warranted judgment about who really won[.] (Reitsma and Bassham 2008, 81)

It is quite obvious that Reitsma & Bassham would have to make the same kind of conclusion about the fight between Boxer C and Boxer D, which is that a supporter of the Rules View cannot make a warranted judgment about who really won the fight.

13. On the indeterminacy of rules in sports contests, see Russell (1999).

14. It is worth pointing out that this argument cannot be used against the Nihilist View, as the Nihilist View implies that no one can fail to really win a sports contest because there is no such thing as really winning.

15. I can think of three ways how it is possible for a sports contest to be free of adjudicating error caused counterfactual indeterminacy. The first way is that a contest did not contain any adjudicating errors. The second way is that none of the adjudicating errors a contest contained affected how it developed, such as in the infamous 100-metre dash involving Tokazier or in a professional boxing fight that contained judging errors but not refereeing errors. The third way is that one of the adjudicating errors a contest contained allowed it to go on and none of the earlier adjudicating errors in the contest (if there were such) affected how it developed. For example, consider a tennis match between Player G and Player H in which Player G was up 5‒3 and 40‒30 in the deciding set. Player H returned Player G’s serve slightly wide, but the line judge and the umpire mistakenly believed the ball was in. There was also no Hawk-Eye technology in use. Player G was not able to return the ball and officially lost the point. Player G ended up officially losing the set 5‒7 and thus officially lost the match. The match did not contain other adjudicating errors. There is no uncertainty regarding how the match would have developed without the umpire’s error, as without the umpire’s error the match would have ended immediately. (Both the line judge and the umpire made an adjudicating error, but what is relevant here is the umpire’s error, as in tennis umpires can overrule line judges’ decisions.)

16. It is perhaps worth pointing out that the Rules View does not always run into difficulties when there is adjudicating error caused counterfactual indeterminacy, as sometimes we can know that an adjudicating error was causally irrelevant (from the point of view of the Rules View regarding who really won) even though it caused counterfactual indeterminacy. For example, consider another football match between Team I and Team J, which also contained adjudicating error caused counterfactual indeterminacy due to one minor adjudicating error. The error was again that Team I was awarded a throw-in at the half-way line although it was in fact Team J that should have been awarded it. The error, however, took place one minute before the final whistle. Team I had already been correctly awarded six goals before the error and ended up officially winning 6‒0. It is clear that Team J would not have been able to score six goals when there was one minute left even if the error had not taken place. In other words, there is some adjudicating error caused counterfactual indeterminacy but not so much that it would prevent a supporter of the Rules View from claiming that Team I really won.