One of the joys of being a father and a pastor is the opportunity to watch local sporting events of all kinds. Recreation (or "rec") teams, middle-school teams, and high-school teams. (And by the way, at Morehead City Parks and Recreation, Craig Lands of St. Peter’s Church does an outstanding job of organizing various sports leagues in our town.) Cross-country meets and track meets. Football, basketball, and baseball games. The list could go on and on.

Sports, at their best, offer training in virtue. The work ethic, sportsmanship, leadership, persistence, submission to authority, sacrifice for the good of the team, commitment, and more are routinely learned through participation in sports. Sports, at their worst, bring corruption in vice. Laziness, unsportsmanlike conduct, cheating, trash-talking, selfishness, self-absorption, and more can also be picked up in athletics. Like money, sports and games themselves are not the problem; they can be used for good or bad.

A very good team is often faced with the temptation to humiliatingly defeat a less accomplished opponent. It is a temptation that should always be resisted. For when one team humiliates another team in a game, the winner steals the God-given dignity of the members of the defeated team. Humiliating defeats are not beneficial for anyone -- not for the coaches and the teams that get the W, not for the coaches and teams that get the L, not for the schools involved, not for communities involved. Therefore, as much as possible, humiliating defeats can and should be avoided -- through early substitutions and other means.

On September 21, West Carteret High School’s varsity football team was stingingly defeated 62-0 by a very strong J. H. Rose High School team. Was that necessary? This father and pastor thinks not, for the reasons stated above.

When Matthew, our middle son, was a senior at West Carteret, he played on the varsity boys basketball team. It was usually a joy to watch his relatively short team, using terrific team work and fast-paced hustle, play against much taller teams. One night a much taller team took on the Patriots in their Morehead City gym. When it was clear the Patriots had lost the game, the other team continued playing most of its starting five late in the game. The margin of victory at the end of the game was what I would call humiliatingly wide.

After the game, perhaps in a moment of weakness, this father was compelled by the circumstances to approach one of the winning team’s coaches to ask, "Was it really necessary to play your starters at the end of this game?"

Surprised by this question from a stranger wearing a clerical collar, the coach defensively avoided answering the question and replied, "Listen, man. I don’t tell you what to preach in your sermons. So you shouldn’t tell me how to coach my team." Then he abruptly turned and walked away.

As a matter of fact, this coach’s behavior would encourage any pastor, including this one, to raise questions (in a sermon or elsewhere) about humiliatingly defeating another team. And as another matter of fact, this coach is not given an absolutely free reign to coach his team in any way that he wants. Common decency and human dignity, not to mention Christian morality, take away the option of embarrassingly destroying an opponent. If the coach of a successful team forgets these elementary facts of moral life, his team’s parents and/or his school’s administration should be quick to remind him of them.

Athletic preparation can be good. Sports competition can be a great learning experience. But a humiliate-the-opponent approach to a contest is destructive. As mentioned earlier, it lessens the dignity of everybody involved.