football fields are crowned with the center being higher than sidelines. This is to aid in drainage. (This confers no advantage, however)
The expression (to my knowledge) speaks to playing fields that are unlevel in direct violation of the rules. The ‘teams’ (say, black people) that are fighting against other ‘teams’ (say white people) with an unfair advantage only crave a playing surface that confers no advantage to either team. There are (almost) no literal unlevel fields because they’re against the rules of any fair game.
I’m going to challenge an assumption that the rest of you seem to be making. What if this has nothing to do with the physical “field” that the teams (sports or otherwise) are playing on? I think the term is used more metaphorically, to mean all the players in a given activity, as in “His perfect SAT score diminished the rest of the field.” In this sense, the “playing field” simply includes everyone who’s playing, rather then what they’re playing on.
Sure. Let’s look at that. The expression in question is the need to “level the playing field”.
First, it literally says, ‘playing field’. Doesn’t that imply, you know, a field you play on?
Second, if ‘field’ is to imply the ‘players’, it’s your opinion that the phrase literally wishes that the players were levelled? What does that even mean? That they were destroyed like buildings? Or that they were literally physically harmed so that they were the same height? Or (probably) that measures were taken to ensure they performed equally? If it’s the latter, well… maybe that works. It does require a sort of ‘double abstraction’ as the field is metaphorical (i.e. it’s not a field, but a group of people) as well as the levelling (not literally levelling, but metaphorical, such as… grading on a curve, maybe?) I just think that’s too complicated, but I guess that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
I agree with the claim in your second sentence. It appears to me to strongly support the assumption you mention in your first sentence. I do not at all understand why you apparently think it undermines it. Yes, a non-level sports playing field gives an advantage to one side (unless measures such as changing ends half way through the game are taken to prevent this). The relative obviousness of this fact is why the notion of a non-level playing field makes a good metaphor for unfair conditions in other domains of activity.
I assume that the metaphor originates from spots, because, so far as I am aware, certain sports are the only human activities that actually rely on playing fields, and where lack of levelness in those field can potentially lead to unfairness.
Well, metaphors do, actually. Or do you think that the words “level”, “playing”, and “field”, when used in the context of business, politics, or whatever, are not metaphorical at all, but are really quite different words that just happen to sound (and be spelled) the same as the ones used in the context of sport?
Switching ends is an effective measure, in the context of the relevant sports, to mitigate the unfairness that would otherwise result from a non-level field. Bulldozing the soil around until the field is actually flat would work too, but it expensive and inconvenient in this context.
However, in the realms such as politics, economics and business, where the metaphor of a non-level field is used to indicate unfairness, the most reasonable ways to reduce that unfairness are nearly always more analogous to bulldozing the field flat rather than switching ends. A socialist, for example, might seek to “level the economic playing field” by distributing wealth more evenly throughout, society, taking from the rich and giving to the poor in order to level things out. Many people have thought this would be a good idea, and there have been numerous attempts to implement something like it, some of which have had moderate degrees of success (e.g., western European welfare states, or even progressive income tax in the USA). No-one has created a perfectly level economic playing field yet (and, arguably, it can’t and shouldn’t be done), but things have been leveled out a bit in many places.
What would a “switching ends” version of eliminating economic unfairness be like? Letting the rich be rich for half their lives, then taking almost all their their wealth away and giving it to the poor, so that they are rich for the second half of their life? Is there anyone, anywhere, who has ever seriously thought that anything like that would be a good plan?
In all the cases that I can think of, in the context of metaphorical playing fields as opposed to real ones leveling is a much more appropriate metaphor than switching ends for any plausibly practicable methods through which one might seek to make things fairer.
I’ll admit to being quite ignorant on the subject of sports, but wouldn’t professional and college sports teams generally be playing on fields that had been leveled? Whenever I see football fields, soccer fields, etc. on TV they look pretty flat, and I’m assuming that stadiums are not built only on naturally flat terrain.
No, I’m saying that there didn’t ever have to be an actual, literal instance of a sport being played on an unlevel playing field for someone to conceive of the intrinsic unfairness of one.
