the moral reasoning of student athletes and athletic training students

athletes have a need to be challenged by the best. Only then can they know that they have beaten
the best.
Unfortunately today, this ideal is no longer the reality. Today, more so than ever before,
athletes train and compete under an intense pressure to win-at-all-costs. The drive for money,
fame, and glory seems to overshadow the personal meanings gained and enjoyed through sport
(Lumpkin, Stoll, & Beller, 2003). A thick fog of suspicion and doubt hangs over athletic
competitions from the elite level and intercollegiate to high school and junior high school levels
of athletics. It is the doubt cast by the suggestion that many athletes and their coaches will do
anything, even cheat, to achieve victory and success. While morally questionable issues and
activities exist at all levels of sport, collegiate athletics pose a multitude of challenges to the
student athlete, to the college/university, and to the greater mission of intercollegiate athletics
within the context of higher education (Alder & Alder, 1985; Plant, 1961; Gerdy, 2000).
Purpose of Higher Education
American colonial colleges and universities were created by a wide variety of churches,
private individuals, and local and state governments (Smith, 1988). The main focus of education
was to prepare individuals for the clergy and productive citizens in the community. While
religion was not the entire curricular focus, it was a primary mission. As such, a relatively strict,
pious regimen existed in terms of what was considered acceptable activities and behavior. Thus,
the development of one’s moral integrity and character in the pursuit of becoming a productive
citizen were primary.
With this emphasis on moral and religious education, the development of the religious
individual was considered more important than the development of the individual’s intellectual
ability (Smith, 1988). “College officials believed that with students rooming and boarding in the
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