And May The Best Cheater Win, by Harry Bruce

802 Words2 Pages

Can cheating be an excuse for the phrase; survival of the fittest, or is it an epidemic moral corruption? Since the advent of modern competitive sport, winning has always been the bottom line. Honesty, honour and fair play have taken the backseat. The purpose of the essay May The Best Cheater Win, by Harry Bruce, is to inform how cheating has become widespread and accepted in America. Sports are an integral part of American culture and indeed an entire industry exists because of these competitive sports. The result of these competitive sports has led to the moral corruption of most athletes, as they would do anything to win. Harry Bruce discusses the distortion of right and wrong that has penetrated all levels of sports, from children's league to regional division. He confidently informs his reader that organized sports not only "offer benefits to youngsters" but "they also offer a massive program of moral corruption". The tone of this essay is largely persuasive but turns sarcastic as it progresses towards the end. His unique use of diction clearly supports the persuasive tone to his readers. The author's use of the word "tongue-lashing", to describe the way a soccer player "may find himself writhing under a coach's tongue- lashing", gives a harsh impression that the players are forced to cheat like slaves were forced to work. Secondly, the use of over exaggerated adjectives such as "astronomical salaries" is overblown to a point where the reader starts to agree with his arguments. The use of his harsh words and exaggerated adjectives gives insightful depth to his arguments, and in return consistently supports his persuasive tone. His syntax supports his tone as well, since he gives out his own biased opinion to prove h... ... middle of paper ... ... to realize that "cheating in victory's cause was therefore" acceptable. All these arguments put together, gives the reader the basic objective of the essay. The author's purpose has certainly been achieved, as his arguments are logical and objective. He builds his arguments through verifiable evidence, that primarily involves reference of other literary works or people, in order to draw out a logical conclusion. His arguments has persuaded me into thinking that cheating has not only been widespread and accepted in America but it has also penetrated into Canada. I am able to support my opinion since I myself have experienced foul play at my regional soccer games. Moreover, the final sentence of the essay where the author mocks Pooley for believing "sports should not be immoral rather it should be fun" creates a balanced persuasive effect with a bit of sarcasm.

Show More
Related

  • Vernonia School District V. Acton (1996)

    1761 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ethical Rules on Sport’s Justice. Dallas: East Dallas Times, page 21. 2008. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Print: Harry, Patrick Hayes.

    Read More

  • Professional Sports Teams Move - Cities Fight To Keep Them

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    Professional sports, like most of our popular culture, can be understood only partly by through its exiting plays and tremendous athletes. Baseball and football most of all are not only games anymore but also hardcore businesses. As businesses, sports leagues can be as conniving, deceitful, and manipulative as any other businesses in the world. No matter what the circumstances are, it seems that Politicians are always some how right around the corner from the world of sports. These Politicians look to exploit both the cultural and the economic dimensions of the sports for their own purposes. This is what is known in the sports industry as “playing the field”.

    Read More

  • Race and Ethics in the 1960s: Race and Sports

    686 Words  | 2 Pages

    Coakley, J. J. (2007). Sports in society: issues & controversies (9th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

    Read More

  • man and superman

    1233 Words  | 3 Pages

    Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist writing for The New Yorker; he often deals with popular modern life theories and ethical issues. The essay was published in The New Yorker magazine, September 2013, so the issue of the essay is an ongoing and controversial incongruity ethical dilemma among sports industry. The magazine is nationwide read especially in the U.S. metropolitans. The contents are mostly about American literary and cultural landscape, reportage, and including short stories. The target audience of the magazine is originally educated to elite readers, also the essay intended audience would not be much different from the magazine’s, specifically, the sports circles and sports spectators among middle to upper-class people.

    Read More

  • College Athletes Should Be Paid Analysis

    689 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nowadays, we've seen many universities’ competitions on the television as a leisure performance but we've never concerned whether they receive their pay. In Mike Benedykciuk's article "The Blue Line: College Athletes Should be Paid," he argues that student athletes should receive the wage though they are not professional. Like any good writer, he employs special word choices, statistics and rhetorical devices to plead with the audience to take his side. In this article, he demonstrates many such devices, which will be explained further as follows.

    Read More

  • NBA Athletes are Overpaid

    1342 Words  | 3 Pages

    For this paper, the discussion will go in four parts. The first part will introduce the readers to the basketball fever the NBA has brought millions around the globe and a brief rundown of the debate of overpaid athletes and salary cuts. The second part will be discussing the argument that the athletes of the NBA are not overpaid, while its subsections will point out three proofs to the matter. The third part will be discussing the position of this paper that the athletes of the NBA are indeed overpaid and its subsections will be refuting the claims raised in t...

    Read More

  • Is Football Ethical Analysis

    1330 Words  | 3 Pages

    Let’s discuss. Her first analogy portrays football in comparison to prostitution. She makes the claim that if prostitution was legal, people would still find it distasteful and dangerous. She then communicates her views on why something can be legal, but still be unethical. All of this is true. Prostitution may or may not be immoral, but either way, you probably wouldn’t encourage your children to do it. The question then becomes, is football prostitution? I don’t think so and here is why. Football players aren’t having sex for money. Sounds like a cop-out but it isn’t. Football players are selling a service to franchises willing to pay for it. Now that service could cause them to become injured, but as long as both parties are aware of the risk it’s no different than any other craftsman selling their

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Walter Byers

    298 Words  | 1 Pages

    "Amateurism is not a moral issue; it is an economic camouflage for monopoly practice.” This was a quote from Walter Byers who was the first executive director of the National Colligate Athletic Association or NCAA for short. Byers helped make the NCAA the powerhouse it is today, he acknowledged the fact that it was a flawed system back in 1995 (Byers). Mr. Byers was in charge of the duel mission of keeping intercollegiate sports clean, meaning that there would be no cheating and he had the oblation of generating millions of dollars of revenue for the colleges. What he didn’t know is that today it is generating not millions, but billions. In 2010 the NCAA announced that it sold the broadcasting rights to the NCAA Division I Men’s basketball

    Read More

  • Deviance in Sports: Four Categories of Violence

    1728 Words  | 4 Pages

    March 8th, 2004 was supposed to be nothing more than a competitive and action packed regular season hockey game between feuding rivals, the Colorado Avalanche and the Vancouver Canucks. The game slipped away from the Canucks, with the Avalanche up 6-2 heading into the third period. The heated contested already had its fair share of fighting majors, but an incident that happened late in the third period shocked the more than 18,000 fans in attendance at Rogers Arena, the hockey community, and North America. After failing to instigate a fight with Avalanche forward Steve Moore, Todd Bertuzzi of the Vancouver Canucks grabbed the back of Moore’s jersey, landed a vicious punch to the back of Moore’s head, before slamming him face first on the ice and falling on top of him. Moore had to be helped off the ice on a stretcher, and has never returned to the NHL. Bertuzzi, on the other hand, was suspended for 20 games by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, and is still playing in the NHL for the Detroit Red Wings. This is one of many examples of deviance in sports, and how a win-at-all costs mentality can drive athletes to act in extreme manners. As a result of the growing commercialization of sports, athletes are socialized at young ages to believe that winning is everything, and that stopping at nothing will help you succeed. Athletes will do almost anything to gain the upper hand in their respective sports, whether it is through engaging in excessive on-field violence or through the use of performance enhancing drugs, excessively committing themselves to their sport, or by violating league rules and policies. In sports, deviance is viewed in a different light than in the outside world. As professional athletes strive towards conforming to spor...

    Read More

  • Analysis: Why Athletes Are Not Overpaid

    281 Words  | 1 Pages

    One reason athletes are not overpaid is the’re doing it for our enjoyment. The author mentioned,” it may seem unfair athletes

    Read More

  • Analyzing Sherry Turkle's Argument

    929 Words  | 2 Pages

    Finally, the argument must be reasonable and logical to the people who need convincing. The person who wins the argument isn’t always right, but they were able to convince an audience that they were by vouching for their character, appealing to human emotion, and by creating a reasonable and logical justification. In the essay,

    Read More

  • Denver Post Summary

    398 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Denver Post states that paying college athletes is not justified due to the actuality of them desiring to play and that the critics are unsound for divulging college athletes deserve payment. The article conveys the impression that they are attempting to appeal to everyone who believes that college athletes deserve to get remunerated is preconceived. The news article emphasizes deception: "And that is where our critics have it wrong. College athletes are not employees. They are students. It’s that simple." The article thrusts their mindset onto society and the critics who acknowledge rewarding college athletes. The Denver Post forces its ideals onto the reader by using rhetorical devices, appeals, and fallacies while this source itself

    Read More

  • Reflective Essay About English Class

    758 Words  | 2 Pages

    However, while writing the argumentative essay, it took much more than just asking myself a simple question. Since the topics of my body paragraphs were so diverse, I was forced to work harder at picturing the connections between all three of them. While I knew writing the process essay was difficult, when I began writing the argumentative essay, I knew it was going to be much more challenging. Nevertheless, after the paper was finally complete, my ability of writing transitional sentences was increasingly better due to the difficulty. Furthermore, I never would have examined so closely how to relate the ideas of college athletes’ monetary compensation to lawsuits being filed over disputes of unfairness (“Paying College Athletes” 3). Not only did the process essay help further my knowledge of transitional sentences, but the argumentative pushed it to the next

    Read More

  • Doping, Athletes and Sports

    905 Words  | 2 Pages

    Eitzen, D. Stanley. (1999). "Sport Is Fair, Sport Is Foul." Fir and Foul: Beyond the Myths and Paradoxes of Sport.

    Read More

  • Negative Impact Of Being An Athlete

    1114 Words  | 3 Pages

    In her study, she argues that environments that are set up for athletes to be successful with strict enforcements are more likely to create a better well-rounded athlete who performs better based on his moral being higher. Morale being the deciding factor of here argument on how successful players are and their ability to flourish in such media moments. In her argument, she also looks into most outburst and unacceptable behaviors are a result of the social formalities built within the school and programs of which the student-athlete attends. She also states intakes repetition of consequences in order to change a program 's culture from the rare media outburst we

    Read More

More about And May The Best Cheater Win, by Harry Bruce

Open Document