Fraleigh defines a good sports contest as, “meeting, together, standards supplied by the nature of the sports contest itself and the two cited standards”, where the first of those two standards is that a sports contest is a, “voluntary, agreed upon, human event … [with] socially approved tactics and strategy,” with the purpose to, “provide equal opportunity for the mutual contesting of the relative abilities of the participants … [from] the moral point of view (Fraleigh 53). Fraleigh defines economic interests to be constrained in cases where, “such a value depends upon things external to the contest as well as that internal-to-the-contest-necessity of known equally competent opponents.” (Fraleigh 58).
By arguing that the inherent value in the sports contest is the receipt of the knowledge of the relative abilities of the folks involved which may be more or less valuable based on individual priority, Fraleigh makes an assumption that poor performers and cheaters aren’t able to fully provide this knowledge (Fraleigh 54). Fraleigh culminates in discussing economic valuation when he writes, “However, to maximize the instrumental value of all sports contests for profit making, the characteristic of known equal opponents is essential.” (Fraleigh 58). This is important because he omits his previous discussion on closure being that extrinsic value on which the intrinsic value of knowledge of relative ability is the function of which maximizes this value. The valuation of the closure may maximize the instrumental value of sports contests, because the valuation rests on the losing or winning of a team when omitting gambling outcomes from economic discussions. This implies that a bad sports contest may have higher instrumental value in some cases and contradicts Fraleigh’s argument (this is a viable discussion after recently witnessing this years Superbowl sports contest myself).
By assuming that the good performing team isn’t subjected to he same test when playing against poor performers, Fraleigh neglects his stated valuation that the inherent value is in the outcomes of the sports contest as he discusses the knowledge of the relative abilities being intrinsically valuable. Because an outcome of any sports contest is that this knowledge is created to an extent in all sports contests that have at least started, the measure of how incompatible economic and ideal valuations are in sports contests is what causes these ideological modalities to compete. This is because the individual interests motivates all spectators to conclude that a sports contest was good or not (players are also spectators). This perceived balance between the two ideological valuations is the simultaneous measure of their incompatibility with each other and their compatibility with external human interest over time. That Fraleigh misses this point of view appears to be due to a his opinion that sports has an intrinsic value. An individuals external valuations may hold simultaneous partial valuations of each ideological valuation which may be perceived as compatibility with each other.
Fraleigh’s proposed intrinsic value of knowing the relative abilities may also be asserted to be test-independent in the scope of his argument as he’s not built an argument regarding the crucial nature of how the ‘test’ is correlated to outcomes of any sports contest (the knowledge of the relative abilities). This is something that even a good-performing team may not be able to fulfill against another good-performing team because if someone’s got a headache and is only performing at 99% of their 100%, then this fails the criteria of “complete and accurate knowledge” that Fraleigh presents (Fraleigh 56). This impacts his argument in that the granular approach he applies using a good, bad or neutral sports contest should instead be considered using a different approach that uses mathematics to discuss exactly what percentage of people must agree to constitute that ‘closure’ has been found.
Where Fraleigh indicates whether or not “closure” is achieved is important, as it may be a more appropriate measure by which to gauge inherent value of the sports contest because closure is more reasonably experienced based off of if a winner or loser can be identified by all the spectators. This suggests that a threshold of spectators must accept the outcome of the sports contest to. Fraleigh seems to be aware of this as he writes, “a contest which has the prospect of being an even match is more marketable than one which does not,” which implies that an even match may often result in ties (Fraleigh 57). To satisfy ‘confirmation of closure’ roles, spectators may find that may be economically or ideally advantageous to design sports contests to result in ties often if the extrinsic value of closure would be more valuable as a result. This economic valuation perspective takes the stance that the outcome of the game in being able to decide winners and losers, rather than Fraleigh’s notions of relative ability, is a more appropriate concept by which to value the outcome of a sports contest from an economic perspective rather than an ideal one.
In conclusion, there are multiple competing ideological valuations of sport that fundamentally conflict with each other but are each compatible with human values. This may lead to redundantly valuing the same sports contest where foundational ideas about two valuations may appear to be compatible due to a dualistic thought process. There are many different manifestations of valuation methodologies and Fraleigh’s highlighted two more noticeable iterations here. This omits recent, broader economic developments (including gambling) that reflect a Western ideology in transition away from socio-capitalistic modality. He’s also omitted a discussion incorporating historical ideal valuations of sport going back thousands of years.
Works Cited
Fraleigh, Warren P. “An Examination of Relationships of Inherent, Intrinsic, Instrumental, and Contributive Values of the Good Sports Contest.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, vol. 10, no. 1, Oct1983, pp. 52–60, https://www.doi.org/10.1080/00948705.1983.9714400. Accessed 23Mar2025.