Sports ethics: Drunken role models: Rescuing our sporting exemplars

A number of the important and interesting questions about sport are ethical questions. They involve asking if it’s fair, good, right, acceptable, desirable or valuable. The discipline of sports ethics employs philosophical methods to answer such ethical or moral questions which arise in our sporting practices and beyond. Unlike many other disciplines, ethics does not involve collecting data, but reflecting on data and asking what are its moral implications. The aim of the philosopher is to draw careful conclusions about moral questions using reason, critical thinking, analysis and logic. This chapter explains how philosophical methods are used to investigate the question: “Does sport provide good role models when it comes to alcohol related behaviour?" The chapter provides a step-by-step account of the stages of constructing a philosophical argument by identifying the basis of key claims and the structure of the important arguments.