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[Cross-posted from SportsEthicist.com ] Fantasy Football season is just starting to spin up and millions of football fans are beginning to think about their top draft prospects or clever names for their teams. As big as it is, it is not surprising that it has started to get more and more scholarly attention. Chad Carlson and I discussed philosophical questions arising in fantasy in a podcast back in December (Mike and I also talked fantasy last August). Scott Aikin joins the fray with his relatively recent article in the International Journal of Applied Philosophy entitled “ Responsible Sports Spectatorship and the Problem of Fantasy Leagues ”. Aikin says Fantasy Sports can bring about “a unique form of distortion of proper spectator performance” (195). In sum, his argument is that those who watch sporting events for the purpose of participating in a fantasy league are failing to be what he calls “responsible spectators”. Using several different kinds of cases where a spectator intu...

The University of Gloucestershire Religion, Philosophy, and Ethics website  has several short videos about the Philosophy of Sport with fellow Philosophy of Sport blogger  Dr. Emily Ryall . Dr. Ryall is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Gloucestershire. What is the Philosophy of Sport? A short video interview Should we regard Elite Athletes as Heroes? Is Sport a form of Art? A video interview with Dr Emily Ryall. Sport as form of moral education. Can Sport make us Good? The videos are good introductions to some interesting questions and important issues in Philosophy of Sport.

[Cross-posted from SportsEthicist.com ] In the wake of the devastating shellacking of Brazil at the feet of German side, we saw hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures of crying and tearful Brazilians. Many sports fan empathized with these pictures. Part of being a fan is suffering through bad losses. Every true sports fan has been on the losing side at one time or another. We know how those Brazilian fans felt. Others raised the ridiculousness of crying over a game, especially a game one didn’t even participate in. It is one thing if you played in a game, gave your proverbial all, and then were overcome with emotion (such as Columbia’s James Rodriguez). But for fans in the stands or out on street to cry strikes many as silly. Something must be really out of whack. There are really two questions here. One: is crying an appropriate emotional response to a sporting event? Two: is it appropriate to have one’s identity so connected to a sporting event/team? The second question arises becau...

The Call for Abstracts for Defining Sport book proposal is approaching. The deadline is July 11, 2014. The focus of the book is to bring new scholarly attention to the issues and questions involved in defining and explaining the nature of sport. There are several classic works that treat these issues, but with the growth of the philosophy of sport a renewed focus on how to define and conceptualize sport is needed. The original call is here:  http://sportsethicist.com/2014/05/15/call-for-papers-defining-sport/