It all happened so fast; at first no one was sure what to make of it.
In one ill-fated moment, the future of a player, a coach and a football program had been dramatically altered. The day was Sept. 4, 2009, and the player was LeGarrette Blount. In the span of a few seconds, Oregon’s tenacious tailback had nearly derailed both his team’s season and his prospects as an NFL draft choice.
The debate about “the punch” started the moment Blount’s fist made contact with the jaw of Boise State linebacker Byron Hout following Oregon’s season-opening 19-8 defeat to Boise State.
Would he lose his scholarship? Who would be our running back? Would Blount fall off draft boards? Some believed he deserved to be off the team for good; others contended that he deserved a second chance.
As the news of Blount’s outburst spread, the Ducks’ season and Blount’s future as a professional athlete were thrown into a tailspin.
But while fans and journalists deliberated the on-field consequences Blount should suffer from his actions, one organization at the University of Oregon examined Blount’s meltdown from within a completely different context.
Competition Not Conflict is a program designed to reduce destructive conflict in sport and to promote the positive values of competition. It is based out of the Appropriate Dispute Resolution center in the Oregon School of Law and works with Division-I, club and recreational athletes at the University.
The program strives to combine big-time athletics with world-class academics to change conflict’s footprint in sports.
“CNC is designed to develop high impact initiatives to resolve conflict within teams and organizations,” said the program’s director, law school instructor Josh Gordon. “We believe conflict skills are core competencies, much like the physical skills necessary to compete at the greatest possible level.”
Gordon came to the University to lead CNC after time as a negotiation consultant and professor at several law schools and graduate programs in the Boston area. Gordon said CNC’s mission is not to eliminate conflict from sports but to limit it to the point that it doesn’t detract from a team’s success.
“Our goal is to eliminate destructive conflict,” Gordon said. “That means any conflict that hurts the team or athlete’s performance. This can include on-field incidents that reduce the athlete’s ability to participate, or it could be off the field.”
CNC has several initiatives to achieve these goals. One of its central focuses is exposing athletes to sports peer mediation, an educational experience that shows athletes how to deal with conflicts on teams through consultation with teammates.
CNC is also developing cutting edge observational tools that could be used to evaluate athlete behavior in a number of sports — through an iPhone app. This real-time data collection and analysis gives teams a fundamental way to reduce the amount of energy and time used to resolve conflict.
While this may seem like a simple advance, such a measure could help alter the future of an athletic program, a franchise or an individual player.
“LeGarrette Blount’s indiscretion had a tremendous cost to Oregon in terms of brand damage and the time and effort necessary to clean up the mess following,” Gordon said. “But it also had a cost to LeGarrette as in individual. This player went form a potential high draft pick making millions to an undrafted free agent with a marginal chance of sticking on an NFL roster.”
What would CNC do for a player in a position like Blount’s? Put simply, it would have instilled a program to help prevent a violent outburst from ever happening.
“We see a distinct difference between aggression and intensity,” Gordon said. “Intensity is something we want our athletes to have — we want them to compete in the classroom, on the field and in the community. Aggression is just a less productive form of intensity. It’s not where we want athletes focusing their energy.”
“The idea is to prevent any conflict before it could even happen,” Gordon added. “But those things do naturally arise.”
ATHLETICS MEETS ACADEMICS
Any University student interested in learning more about conflict in sports can sign up for either of two courses offered in Conflict Resolution (CRES) for winter term 2011: CRES 410: Confronting Sports Conflict or CRES 410: Sports Peer Mediation Seminar. The classes are four upper division credits, open to all majors, with no prerequisites.
In the second course, students can become peer mediators after participating in an intensive 32-hour mediation training focused on sports conflict. The class meets over two weekends and weekly for one-hour labs to continue skill building and prepare students to serve as mediators for sports-related conflict at the University and in the community.
“If we are all more aware of the role conflict plays on teams, we can reduce it to the point where it doesn’t affect performance,” Gordon said. “And I think that’s something we could all utilize in our everyday lives.”
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Organization sheds new light on sports conflict
Daily Emerald
November 22, 2010
Dave Martinez
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