Sunday, March 02, 2008
Sports, In this Issue...

Cheatin’ ain’t a crime

Hey, Senator Specter, Let the Kids Play the Game

CREDIT: Jim Rogash/Getty Images
New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick

By Chris Renaldp

Did you hear about the U.S. Senator who used the media spectacle that is Super Bowl week to speculate about possible Senate hearings to investigate the National Football League and the New England Patriots’ “Spygate” brouhaha? 

The notion of the Senate looking into cheating (and a possible “coverup”) in the NFL is disturbing on many levels, none of which involve the purity or ethics of the NFL or Bill Belichick. What is disturbing is the fact that the senator in question made his bones on the Warren Commission foisting something called “the single bullet theory,” which supported the belief that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

I should add, since this is a sports column, that former Durham Bull “Crash” Davis (Kevin Costner) in the movie “Bull Durham” also believed that Oswald acted alone. And yet, in the Oliver Stone film “JFK,” New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison (also played by Costner) questioned the veracity of the Warren Commission’s findings and the plausibility of the “single bullet theory.” Perhaps Sen. Specter needs to investigate Kevin Costner?

Call me radical, but I believe it is the role of government to investigate all theories (from plausible to bizarre) surrounding the murder of the President of the United States. Making a federal case out of an NFL cheating scandal? Not so much.

For about as long as teams have played football, other teams have used photographs, videotapes and scouting reports, which are usually the result of human intelligence (spying), to prepare for games. Spend some time on any NFL sideline and you’ll see the quarterback and offensive line flipping through Polaroid stills of defensive alignments from the previous series. 

As with Major League Baseball’s silly effort to police itself in the performance enhancing drugs arena (are you taking a good drug or a bad drug?), I find it silly for the NFL to permit teams to videotape or photograph players on the field (for immediate or future study), but prohibit the videotaping or photographing of the opposing coaching staff.

And I find it the mother of all silliness to have the United States Senate chime in on the subject. And because I’m such a freedom-loving, patriotic American, I offer the following note to Arlen Specter: Investigate the Patriot Act. Investigate the destruction of evidence (tapes) of CIA torture. Investigate the outsourcing of military operations to “private contractors.” And let Roger Goodell and the NFL investigate (and punish) Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots.

It might also be worth noting that NFL defensive linemen complain that NFL offensive linemen “hold” on nearly every play. When can we expect the House Subcommittee on Illegal Use of Hands?

In 1980, I was on the University of Maryland football team. While breaking down film, one of our defensive coaches noticed a “tip” on the part of the University of Pittsburgh center. It seemed that when Pitt was going to pass, he held the ball one way.  When they intended to run, he held the ball another way.

We had real-time (valuable) actionable intelligence, and yet Pittsburgh beat us 38-9. You see, what a team knows, and when it knew it, doesn’t mean much when the other team knows how to perform at a higher level. (The 1980 Pitt team had a plethora of future NFL first-round picks, including a skinny quarterback named Dan Marino.) The Maryland defensive coordinator could have sat in the Pitt huddle and the final score would have been the same.

Let’s be honest. All this cloak-and-dagger stuff is amusing, but it really doesn’t mean much between the lines. And while Spygate’s more relevant namesake, Watergate, taught us that sometimes the coverup is more criminal than the crime, in the NFL, if you ain’t cheatin, you ain’t tryin’, so cheatin’ ain’t a crime. SP

CHEATING IN SPORTS: ARE THE TIMES A’CHANGIN’?

Dishonesty in the sports world has been around forever. It dates much further back than the use of performance enhancing drugs by today’s athletes, both famous and not. Major Leaguer Sammy Sosa used a corked bat, while Little Leaguer Danny Almonte lied about his age. Florida State football players cheated on an online test, while excessive recruiting improprieties at SMU resulted in that school’s football program receiving the death penalty.

One-time Olympic sprint champion Marion Jones is heading to jail for lying about cheating, while Rosie Ruiz’s lie was caught by Boston Marathon officials, who learned she took the subway in winning the race. Figure skater Tonya Harding had rival Nancy Kerrigan clubbed in the leg, while Salt Lake City Olympic judges from Russia and France conspired to rig the outcome of the pairs competition. There were numerous college basketball point-shaving scandals in the 1950s, while last summer NBA referee Tim Donaghy plead guilty to two federal charges related to his involvement with gambling. The examples go on and on.

“We’ve got problems in sports, there’s no doubt about that,’’ former Atlanta Braves great Dale Murphy tells The Sunday Paper. “We’ve got to help change that.’’  

Murphy’s doing his part in helping bring about such a change with his Web site, IWontCheat.com. The site and Murphy’s iWon’tCheat! Foundation are dedicated to eradicating drug use in sports and getting athletes at all levels to compete ethically.

It’s a lofty goal, and it won’t be easy, considering the long history of sports cheating scandals. In Athens, Greece, in the oldest parts of the sporting grounds at Olympia, is a temple to Pelops, the founder of the Games and grandson of Zeus. To gain the hand of the beautiful princess Hippodameia, Pelops had to first defeat her father in a chariot race.

After watching a dozen previous suitors fail, and in turn lose their lives, Pelops had the metal wheels of King Oenomaus’ chariot replaced with wax. When the race began, the king’s wheels melted, and he was thrown from the chariot and dragged to his death. Cheating has been a part of human nature for as long as the globe has been spinning.

“It’s really not so much a thing about sports as it is about making the right decisions with your life,’’ Murphy says. “We want to help young people make those correct decisions.’’

Hey, at least it’s a start.—Hunt Archbold