Coaching and Undeserved Competitive Success

This chapter focuses on an issue in sports that is barely recognized as a problem of distributive justice. This is the problem of accepting undeserved advantages in competition. The undeserved advantages considered are erroneous judgments made by umpires. The chapter argues that there should be a greater role for coaches in rectifying these injustices. This is bound to have an air of paradox about it. The chapter further discusses two scenarios that illustrate the range of errors an umpire can make in the course of competition. One is an error making a call, the other is an error applying the rules. If a coach acknowledges that an umpire made an error that wrongly awarded his team a win, that has the obvious effect of downplaying the idea that winning is everything in favor of recognizing that successful execution of individual skills should determine competitive results.