Being A Utility Player in Sports and Sociology

A few years ago, the chair of my department told me that they saw me as a “utility player.” In baseball, and perhaps other sports, a utility player is a player who can play many positions.

Importantly, the utility player is proficient in multiple positions but (with rare exceptions) is often not the best player at any one of these positions. So, if I am not an the ‘best’ in a field, how can I possibly be successful as a professor in higher education? Well, it depends, in part, on how you define the rules of the game (what in sociology we sometimes refer to as the disciplinary level of power[1]). Do we define ‘success’ in higher education as building expert knowledge, or do we define ‘success’ as building a citizenry prepared to tackle the most pressing problems that we face as a society? You may have already guessed, that I am going to argue for the latter, and along the way, interrogate the system of expert knowledge.

Generally utility players are important to what Malcolm Gladwell referred to as a “weak link” approach in my favorite Revisionist History podcast episode (“My Little Hundred Million,” July 20, 2016) that looks at alumni giving to universities. Gladwell frames the question around a comparison between how you succeed in basketball vs. how you succeed in soccer. Citing book, The Numbers Game (2013) by David Sally and Chris Anderson, Gladwell points to what matters in basketball is how good your strongest player is.

Say, we wanted to play a game of basketball. I am terrible at basketball, so take me and three other mediocre, three other barely proficient players to play a basketball game against the varsity team of my college. I am going to make a bold claim – that we will beat the varsity team at my college if the fifth player on our team is LeBron James. The strategy will be simple. Give LeBron the ball. We will win almost every time. Why? Because basketball is a strong link sport - what matters is how strong is your strongest offensive player. (NOTE: I realize that this is basically the plot of Space Jam.)

In contrast, soccer is a game that is typically won or lost by a single goal. A single mistake can cost a team the game. Soccer depends on the highest level of their weakest player and on defense. Soccer is a weak link sport. So, if you want to win at soccer – and many other “games” in which the margin between winning and losing is small– the capabilities of your weakest player matter more than the capabilities of your strongest player.

So many of the social problems that the world faces now are mis-labeled as “strong link” problems when they are actually “weak link” problems. We put our trust in “experts” when what we need to do is all improve our basic literacy on a subject. We all need to be effective communicators around some of the social problems that affect us. And an over-reliance on experts to solve a problem, in fact, can make the problem worse.

Take the issue of climate change. It is not too much to say that the climate crisis represents an existential extinction-level threat to human life on the planet. The science of global warming is over 100 years old. Expert scientists in the early-20th Century defined the “greenhouse effect” and recognized that human use of fossil fuels was contributing to this problem. Expert climate scientists have continued their work, documenting the planet’s shift towards catastrophic effects of rising global temperature at a rate that is expected to bring the increase to about 3.5 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. In fact, if we reach more than 1.5 degrees increase, we will likely set in motion changes on the planet (such as the melting of the permafrost, complete deterioration of coastal reefs, and loss of habitats for millions of species). As of now (2022) temperature has increased to about 1.3 degrees already. The planet will likely reach 1.5 degrees increase by 2029, a level that the IPCC warned us will be devastating, especially for some of the poorest people on the planet, indigenous communities, island nations. We are already seeing an increased frequency of storms, erratic weather patterns and disrupted ecosystems.

Scientists have done an incredible amount of work providing information and warning the world of the consequences of inaction. They held 27 years of international conferences, produced fifty years worth of reports and constructed elaborate scientific models. This type of research, data collection and analysis is a ‘strong link’ problem. It takes expertise to collect atmospheric data or create predictive models about the effects of melting polar ice caps. The work of defining the problem has been done by experts. And yet, the global temperature continues to increase. Reducing carbon in the atmosphere will not be solved in laboratories by experts.

Reducing global temperature change is not a strong link problem, it is more like soccer than basketball. What matters is how strong are our weakest links? We all need to be involved in the solution to climate change. We don’t all need to know how to track the reduction in sea ice in the artic circle. But, we all need to know that the artic circle is melting. We don’t all need to know how to track a hurricane, but we all need to know to get indoors and secure our homes for the changes that the storm will bring.

We all need to build up our basic levels of understanding about climate change and change our habits to reflect this new reality. Every person needs to reconsider their home, their energy usage, transportation decisions, meals. This is not easy, but to address the climate crisis means expanding our education about the nature of that crisis.

So, why do we need utility players?

The most common reason for bringing in utility players is we don’t want our all-stars to burn out. Even though we would like to put the rookie all-star in at every game, and people want to see the rookie all-star when they come to the game – it is not always the best idea for the club to put the rookie-all-star out on the field every single night. The stress on a younger pitcher especially can be significant and can be dangerous. A promising career can be upended by a single off day that leads to injury and harm in a game that is sometimes unforgiving. And it is inefficient to have a great back-up player that specializes in the same thing that a starting player excels in.

Last year, a group of New Zealand climate scientists announced that they were burnt out (Glavovic, Bruce C; Timothy F. Smith; and Iain White 2021). In an academic publication, they called on climate scientists to stop their research until nations take action on global warming. As they state:

The tragedy of climate change science is that compelling evidence is gathered, fresh warnings issued, new institutions established and novel methodologies developed to redress the problems. Yet, greenhouse gas emissions and, other indicators of adverse climate change, and global change more broadly, rise year upon year.

The authors argue for a moratorium on additional research related to climate change until governments and the public respond. In short, we are watching our ‘experts’ in the climate crisis burn out. We all need to become utility players to address climate change.

Changing rules and strategies

Unlike the more predictable laws of science, in the world of politics, the rules change constantly. New political leaders create new threats or opportunities. Activists recognize this in ways that experts do not. Joel Best (2020) suggests that experts tend to be good at one thing, while activists are adaptable and responsive to many strategic opportunities. Activists are ‘utility players.’

Utility players are especially important when the rules and strategies of the game can change. Sometimes it is not the rules but the strategies on the field that change. In recent years, defensive teams have adopted the “shift” in which infielders re-position themselves on the outfield grass on the “pull side” of a batter, thereby depressing the likelihood that a batter will get on base – especially if they are left-handed and/or not very fast. In both cases, specialist players need to adapt their well-crafted strategies to new circumstances. They need to change. Utility players tend to be more ready to adapt to long-term changes in the game because they cultivated a wider range of skills and strategies on hand than specialists.

Specialists sometimes believe that their area of expertise will be what they need for the rest of their career. In the 1967 MLB baseball season, disgustingly, the “spitball” became fashionable – even appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated in July of that year. Pitchers who relied on expectorating found themselves left out to dry (pun intended) when the league prohibited the Spitball for the 1968 season. Learning to throw many types of pitches, rather than specializing in just one type of pitch helps you to adapt. Being a versatile member of the team prepares you for success over time by cultivating a wider, albeit less showy, repertoire of skills that may be important, not just for today, but even as other skills come in and out of fashion.

So, utility players are critical to a team’s success.

What does this have to do with teaching and education?

I believe that the health of democracy and society depends upon our education systems paying more attention a weak link strategy. And this is especially true in public universities and colleges, but weak link strategies run counter to the dominant paradigm of higher education.

Modern colleges and universities primarily invest in and promote faculty based on research productivity. In particular, the tenure system tends to define academic success around publishing in a narrow top-tier peer review journals. This requires specialization in a particular set of ideas or theories, sets of methods and research designs, the ability to write within the page limitations of theses journals, and access to data. Good doctoral programs spend a great deal of time preparing students to participate in this world of research that is specific to each discipline and sub-discipline. Publishing in your discipline rewards a strong link strategy where only “the best” are selected to succeed. Along the way, administrators and departments sometimes make decisions based on the needs of elite faculty, and disparaged the expertise of generalists (or ‘utility players’).

I attended Cornell University in the 1980’s. While I was there, we had all star faculty on campus, most notably, Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan taught exactly two large lecture courses with hundreds of people in the four years that I attended Cornell. He was not a part of the campus community. When “Rockledge”- a fraternity whose house sat opposite the gorge from Sagan’s house invited him to a party (as a joke), Sagan sent back the name of his publicist with a list of his speaking fees. Sagan’s affiliation elevated the reputation of the campus. His presence, however, did little for the vast majority of us who worked extra jobs (on scholarship) and paid tuition dollars to attend Cornell. We learned much more from underpaid doctoral TA’s who gave us their time and attention.

In contrast, teaching is a weak link strategy. What matters for for the vast majority of students is not the name of the highly-published research scholar who received an prestigious grant, but their experience with the faculty member in the room. Our students need a solid grounding in a range of important areas of knowledge, because when they graduate, they will not only be ‘experts’ in their particular career fields, but citizens who are expected to contribute to the world and face the social problems like climate change.

As teachers, we need more democratic and participatory pedagogical approaches to learning a wide range of skills, not only teaching the best and brightest (however that is defined) or ‘preaching to the choir’ by pre-selecting those students who are already socialized into our way of seeing the world, by leaving climate change only to students who decided to major in environmental science.

Instead, especially in our sociology courses, we are in a position to educate a wide range of students who will need to change the world (literally). As a sociologist, I want as many people as possible to learn to gain a level of proficiency in understanding their role in public social problems such as the climate crisis – but also racism, gender inequality and other pressing problems that have a role in addressing, so we all need to learn about.

To do this, I would argue, we need more professors who are not ‘experts’ but utility players on our teams or in our departments. We need people can teach a wide range of topics, adapt to the changing conditions of higher education and respond to the most pressing public social problems based on strong competency.

· Gladwell, Malcolm. (July 20, 2016) “My Little Hundred Million” Episode 6, Season 1. Revisionist History (podcast). Pushkin Industries. https://www.pushkin.fm/show/revisionist-history/

· Sally, David and Chris Anderson (2013) The Numbers Game Penguin Books.

· Glavovic, Bruce C; Timothy F. Smith; and Iain White (2021) The tragedy of climate change science, Climate and Development, DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2021.2008855

[1] For more on levels of power, see Guinier and Torres (2001) The Miner’s Canary, based in part on John Gaventa’s Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in Appalachia (1980). Both present three ‘levels of power’ in which the first level (questions about wins/who loses) is reinforced by the second level of power questions (who chose the game/made the rules); and a third level of power (What was the story to justify this game as “fair”). This is very similar to Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought (1990); as well as works of many other scholars.