體壇官員爲何如此不可救藥 What's wrong with sports officials

Next Friday, Fifa is expected to elect a new president who isn’t keen on elections. The Bahraini royal Sheikh Salman al-Khalifa has suggested that voters agree on a single candidate before the vote, though modesty precludes him from naming a name. “If we go to election, there will be losers,” he explained. Better to “have a clear indication on who will be elected”. The sheikh sounds like a worthy successor to Sepp Blatter. He does deny complicity in the torture of Bahraini footballers, calling the allegations “nasty lies”.

近日國際足聯(Fifa)將選出一位對選舉反感的新主席。巴林皇室成員謝赫薩爾曼·阿勒哈利法(Sheikh Salman al-Khalifa)曾提議投票人在投票前商定一名候選人，儘管出於謙虛他不好意思說出自己的名字。“如果我們要走到選舉那一步的話，就必然會有輸家，”他解釋說。更好的安排是“明確知道誰會當選”。這位酋長聽起來像是塞普•布拉特(Sepp Blatter)的合適接班人。他否認涉及虐待巴林球員案，稱這些指控是“骯髒的謊言”。

But Fifa isn’t alone. The International Association of Athletics Federations, tennis, American football, volleyball and various other sports are also sunk in scandal. Why are sports officials so embarrassing?

但是，國際足聯並非特例。國際田聯(IAAF)、網球、美式足球、排球和其他很多運動也都深陷醜聞。體育官員爲何如此不可救藥？

The history of sport divides into two eras: before TV money, and since. Pre-TV, the old white men who ran sport tended to be pompous but not greedy. From the British toffs who invented modern sport, they had copied Victorian customs: blazers, elaborate titles and bans on women. Having swallowed the Victorian notion that sport builds character, they considered themselves morally superior to governments, business and the press. They also tended to feel superior to grubby players and fans.

體育的歷史分爲兩個時代：電視轉播費登臺之前和之後。在電視時代之前，那些管理體育界的白人老頭往往自大但並不貪婪。他們從開創了現代體育的英國紈絝子弟們傳承了維多利亞時代的習俗：西裝、煞有介事的頭銜以及禁止女性參與。在照搬了維多利亞時期有關運動錘鍊性格的理念後，他們認爲自己在道德上高於政府、企業和媒體。他們還傾向於覺得自己比粗魯的球員和球迷更高一等。

Before TV, the world mostly left sports officials to their own devices. They were viewed as harmless old fools supervising children’s entertainments for no money. Nobody bothered to regulate them.

在電視出現以前，這個世界基本上放任體育官員自己做主。他們被視爲照看孩子們娛樂的傻老頭，沒有優厚收入，但也沒什麼害處。沒人費心去監管他們。

Practically the first power brokers to pretend to take them seriously were the Nazis. Sports officials were easily flattered by a regime that preached fitness and discipline. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, got behind Berlin. He told critics that using the Games to promote Nazism was just like Los Angeles using the 1932 Games to promote tourism. Avery Brundage (future president of the International Olympic Committee) extolled Nazism for making Germans more athletic. João Havelange (future president of Fifa) returned home from the Berlin Games marvelling at Nazi organisational skills. As late as 2009, Bernie Ecclestone, boss of Formula One, was praising Hitler’s ability to “get things done”. (Ecclestone later refined this by saying he only meant Hitler until 1938.)

差不多第一批假裝重視體育官員的權力掮客是納粹。提倡健身和紀律的政權很容易贏得體育官員的好感。現代奧運會的創始人皮埃爾•德•顧拜旦(Pierre de Coubertin)當年支持柏林。他向批評者表示，利用奧運會來推廣納粹主義，與洛杉磯利用1932年奧運會推廣旅遊沒什麼差別。後來出任國際奧委會(IOC)主席的埃弗裏•布倫戴奇(Avery Brundage)，當時讚賞納粹主義使德國人的體格更強健。後來出任國際足聯主席的若昂•阿維蘭熱(João Havelange)在從柏林奧運會回國後驚歎於納粹的組織能力。直到2009年，一級方程式賽車(Formula One，F1)的老闆伯尼•埃克爾斯通(Bernie Ecclestone)仍在讚美希特勒的實幹能力。（埃克爾斯通後來解釋稱，他只是指1938年以前的希特勒。）

Most sports officials eventually dropped Nazism but they continued to marinate in Victorian pomposity. When the BBC journalist David Davies took a job at the English Football Association in 1994, he found that entering FA headquarters was like “stepping back into 1894 … A fading portrait of the Queen, painted when she was very young, stared down … On rather dusty shelves stood silver trophies from bizarre places around the world, some of which no longer existed.”

多數體育官員最終放棄了納粹主義，但是他們仍然沉浸在維多利亞式的浮華之中。1994年當英國廣播公司(BBC)的記者大衛•戴斯(David Davies)加入英格蘭足球總會(English Football Association)時，他發現進入總部就像是“回到1894年……一幅褪了色的女王畫像——畫於她非常年輕的時候——俯視着一切……落滿灰塵的架子上放着來自世界各地奇怪角落——有些地方甚至已經不存在了——的銀色獎盃。”

But TV changed sport. For a start, it inflated its importance. Where once only Hitler had bothered to flatter sports officials, in the TV age all politicians did: just look at the photograph of President Obama in the White House cooing over the soccer shirts that Blatter and Trinidad’s Jack Warner (both now banned from football) had brought him for his daughters.

但是，電視改變了體育。首先，電視使體育的重要性大幅膨脹。曾經只有希特勒費心捧高那些體育官員，但是在電視時代，所有政客都加入了拍馬屁大軍：你只要看看在白宮拍的那張照片就知道了。照片中，美國總統奧巴馬對布拉特和特立尼達(Trinidad)的傑克•華納(Jack Warner)——二人如今都已被驅逐出了足球界——送給他女兒的足球球衣欣喜不已。

TV money especially changed sport. There was less money than there might have been, because TV executives tended to be cleverer than sports officials, but many officials felt entitled to trouser their share. After all, these men thought that they themselves embodied their sports — “the football family”, as Blatter called Fifa.

電視轉播費更加明顯地改變了體育。以往的錢不是很多，因爲那時的電視臺高管傾向於比體育官員更聰明，但許多官員認爲自己有資格撈一把。畢竟，這些人認爲自己代表着體育項目，就像布拉特把國際足聯稱爲“足球家族”。

The sums they trousered eventually got so large that fans and journalists complained. Sports officials were genuinely outraged. How dare young whippersnappers without blazers criticise men who had given decades of their lives to “the good of the game”? Surely the officials deserved to travel the world first-class, like all the other sports officials they knew? (It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his expense account depends on his not understanding it.)

最終，他們撈取的利益金額大到了球迷和記者開始抱怨的程度。體育官員真的非常氣憤。這些不穿西裝的狂妄的年輕人，怎麼敢批評那些爲“體育事業”奉獻了數十年的人？這些官員難道沒有資格坐一等艙奔波於世界各地，就像他們認識的其他體育官員一樣嗎？（當一個人的報銷賬目取決於他什麼都不懂時，你很難讓他搞懂任何事。）

Happily for sports officials, they were free to ignore the world. Most global sports federations were based in discreet Switzerland, where they enjoyed a degree of “self-regulation” that bankers just dreamt of. And so the officials dismissed criticism. Almost refreshingly, they never bothered learning the modern corporate language of PR, which is why Blatter kept coming up with howlers like advising women footballers to wear “tighter shorts”.

對於體育官員來說，好在他們可以固守自己的獨立王國，忽視整個世界。全球多數體育聯合會的總部設在謹慎低調的瑞士，他們在那裏享受着銀行家們只能夢想的“自我監管”。於是，官員們對批評聲置之不理。近乎令人耳目一新的是，他們從不費心學習現代企業公關套話。這就是布拉特爲何不斷語出驚人，比如建議女足球員穿着“更緊身的短褲”。

Even today, sport’s ideology remains: world, keep out. Only last October, Paquerette Girard Zappelli, the IOC’s chief ethics and compliance officer, issued the ritual warning to leave sport alone, telling the Play the Game conference in Denmark: “When you speak about interference of governments into the National Olympic Committees, this is absolutely key: this must not be!” (The official language of sports officialdom is bureaucratic Globish.)

即使在今天，體育界的觀念仍然是：世界，別插手我們的事情。就在去年10月，國際奧委會的首席道德與合規官帕格萊特·吉拉德·扎培利(Paquerette Girard Zappelli)還在發出例行警告，要求不要干預體育。她在丹麥的Play the Game大會上稱：“當你談論政府幹預國家奧委會時，這一點絕對關鍵：這絕對不行！”（體育官員的官方語言是典型的官僚用語。）

But now sport has entered a new era: government control. “Self-regulation” has simply got too embarrassing. The dawn raids by fraud investigators on football officials in Zurich last May marked a turning point. The American and Swiss justice systems continue to dig into Fifa. Switzerland is tightening its laws for sports federations. In response, even Fifa is doing something about its corporate governance. One day, sports federations might be as clean as corporations. That sounds like damning with faint praise but, in fact, it would be a step forward.

但是，現在體育進入了一個全新時代：政府控制。“自我監管”簡直到了讓人情何以堪的地步。去年5月，欺詐調查人員對蘇黎世的足球官員發起的黎明突襲標誌着一個轉折點。美國和瑞士司法機關繼續深挖國際足聯的問題。瑞士正在收緊適用體育聯合會的法律。作爲迴應，甚至連國際足聯也在進行某種程度的企業治理。未來，體育協會或許會像企業一樣乾淨透明。這聽起來像是反諷，但事實上，這將是進步。