Feeling Cheated?
Listed in: MultiSportSo I click over to ESPN.com (yes, a weakness, I know) today and what do I see splashed all over the front page? Cheat Wave '07! Oh no.
The first question they ask is "can fans trust sports anymore?" I don't quite see what all the hubbub is about. First of all, cheating in some form or another has been a part of professional sports since the beginning. Whether we're talking about point shaving in basketball, players throwing the 1919 World Series, or even gambling scandals in pro football, it's not as if cheating is some brand new construct.
However, it's also foolish to ignore the fact that the stakes have changed as more and more money has entered professional sports. 50 years ago, players were willing to shave points and fix games because the amount of money they made was fairly small: they were paid similar wages to the people who watched the games. Think of it: if you were offered 25% of your salary to do a poor job at work (perhaps by a competing company who wanted a leg up), wouldn't you at least consider it? Would you be shocked if one of your co-workers took that offer?
Now, the stakes have gone up. The difference between being a career minor-leaguer and making the big leagues is massive in terms of money and security. Even being a journeyman sets you up for life, assuming you're smart with your money. If taking PEDs can get a player to the Major Leagues, or to the NFL, are we surprised that players do them? Plus, if you suspect that a lot of the players around you are cheating, doesn't that just increase the pressure to cheat in order to keep up? If you look at the list of players who have been busted by MLB, they're mostly minor leaguers or fringe major leagues, the very players who have the most at stake. Sure, by taking steroids Bonds was able to set the all-time HR record, but he was already a Hall of Famer who in 1993 signed the richest contract in the sport's history. Now compare that to someone like Giambi, who was a borderline MLB player until he started taking steroids...suddenly, he's an MVP and getting $100 million+ from the Yankees. You think other players don't notice that?
In my mind, it's essential to delineate between the types of cheating that attempt to get a leg-up on the competition (stealing signs, late hits, roiding, scuffing balls, etc.) and types of cheating that throw the very integrity of the contest into question (point shaving, throwing games, etc.). While the former may be hard to stomach, they don't fundamentally call the entire contest into question, especially if you believe (as I, and most of the people close to the sports do) that a sizable percentage of players are cheating. The latter, however, can bring down leagues.
But what bothers me most about this whole "Cheat Wave" thing is that ESPN is acting like a victim in this whole mess, as if they have been wronged by players cheating. As if they haven't profited from McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds, or from football players cheating, or even from the Tour de France. I find their outrage almost insulting. Where were the ESPN.com articles in 1998, when it was clear that McGwire and Sosa were cheating. Where's the questioning of the NFL for letting a guy who failed a test (something Bonds has never done) play in the Pro Bowl? Or where's the discussion of whether it's even possible to get PEDs out of sports? No one really thinks that's possible, even if the Players Associations agreed to full-on blood testing.
Or where's the questioning of the leagues. If you took ESPN and their articles and fan polls at face value, you'd be lead to believe that cheating is something that comes solely from the players, despit ethe best efforts of the leagues. Of course, when you realize that baseball had, until 2004, been at least tacitly endorsing steroid use by (on Bud Selig's orders) turning a blind eye to the clearly evident fact that players were using steroids, and had been for at least 15 years, it becomes harder to condemn the players. They're the ones who have a vested financial interest in their own careers. Instead, we should ask why the owners, and the media, who knew what was going on, kept quiet. Is it possible that these noble and scrupulous characters, who have no compunction about lambasting players for cheating, might have been a bit dishonest in the services of their own financial interests? No, of course not.
The truth is, with the amount of money at stake for everyone involved, players are not going to stop cheating any time soon, and the ownership groups are going to be extremely hesitant to call them out. And you know what? I don't care. I'm not a pro athlete, so I'm not faced with the dilemma of whether I should or should not use. Sure, it's a bit distressing that young athletes will feel compelled to cheat in order to get a leg-up, but banning PEDs at the pro level won't do anything other than reinforce that they work. It's a Brave New World we live in, and instead of griping about it and concocting impossible scenarios about how it could be made perfect, we should just shut up and enjoy the games. Or do something else. No one ever died from a lack of sports.
