Does luck spoil sport? For example, a tightly fought soccer game goes into the last few seconds tied. A player has a long but open shot on goal but his kick results in a poorly struck shot that is off line and too high. But as he kicks, the wind changes direction and an unexpected gust shifts his ball back on goal. Its erratic path allows it to escape the goalkeeper's desperate dive. The kick was not particularly skillful, but the wind gust led to victory. Did the better team win or was the game marred by luck, good for one team and bad for the other but deserved by neither? That luck spoils the sports contest, or at least tends to undermine its point, follows from what might be called the Skill Thesis. According to the Skill Thesis, competitive sports contests are tests of the competitors' skills designed to determine which opponent is more skillful in the sport being played. If a contest is decided by luck, it has not determined which of the participants is most skillful and so the game is spoiled or, at the very least, has not determined which of the competitors has best met the test of competition. As Nicholas Dixon recently argued, "unlucky losers . . . provide another category of failed athletic contests" (4: p. 17). Some of my own remarks, such as the claim that "competition in sports is supposed to be a test of the athletic ability of persons," also suggest such a view (10: p. 83). Does luck spoil the sports contest? If so, as Sigmund Loland has asked, should the possible influence of luck on sports, good and bad, be minimized (5: p. 88)? Concerns about the role of luck in sport, as Dixon has pointed out, reflect larger concerns about how luck should influence our moral evaluations--concerns raised famously by Thomas Nagel in his paper "Moral Luck" (6). If A and B both drive while intoxicated, and A hits a pedestrian but B, who is just as intoxicated as A, does not injure anyone simply through pure luck, is B any less blameworthy than A? If we view even our character and our skills as unearned consequences of what Rawls has called "the natural lottery," it remains unclear how much of our behavior is truly under our control and how much is attributable to the luck of the draw. Indeed, if one pushes the natural-lottery argument hard enough, it suggests that desert is not a fundamental moral notion and perhaps not applicable to the world of sport at all. If so, the athlete or team that plays best cannot deserve to win in any important sense, because the notion of desert has, at most, limited applicability to sport, and perhaps to all other areas of life, as well. So while the Skill Thesis may suggest that luck spoils the game, some versions of the lottery argument suggest that because of the luck of the initial draw of talents, skills, and abilities, overall outcomes in sports ultimately are more the result of luck than we might think. If so, the significance of claims of athletic desert and merit is greatly reduced, assuming they are not expelled from the playing field altogether. On the contrary, I first want to support and further develop the view, also advanced by Sigmund Loland (5: esp. pp. 87--92), that luck may not always undermine the good sports contest in the way suggested previously, and in some of its manifestations, may even be compatible with the Skill Thesis. It all depends on the kind of luck involved. Indeed, in some cases, it may be plausible to say the athlete in question deserved to be lucky. Second, I want to question whether plausible versions of the lottery argument do eliminate or significantly reduce the significance of desert claims in sports and athletics. While I realize that my arguments need fuller development, I hope to at least ask enough questions to suggest that the role of luck in sports raises issues that may be both complex and interesting and warrant further exploration within the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]