Sports Figures Who Cheat And The Public That Loves Them

             In December 2003 ten players of Major League Baseball (MLB) were called to testify in the grand jury investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO). Since then, a steroid controversy has shaken the world of professional baseball to its very core, placing some of its most famous and beloved athletes directly in the middle. However, despite this illegal activity by the “Boys of Summer,” Major League Baseball continues to experience yearly record-breaking attendance figures while its athletes receive record-breaking salaries.

            In September 2007 the defending National Football League (NFL) champion New England Patriots were caught filming the sidelines of the opposing team during a game. Other accusations of unethical behavior by the team’s head coach Bill Belichick have been brought forward both before and after the “Spygate” controversy. However, the organization’s admitted rule breaking means little to its fans or the media who simply love a winner.

            In February 2006 the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) “Lowes 48″ Racing Team was penalized for making modifications to the car that were not allowed by NASCAR. Teams in America’s top-ranked driving circuit have been bending and breaking the rules for decades. Yet, NASCAR continues to gain nationwide popularity and rule-breaking teams continue to win championships, as well as millions of dollars.

            Sports figures appear to have the attitude that they are not cheating unless they get caught. What does our acceptance of that attitude say about the values of the American public? As bank accounts, accolades, and acclaim rise with each victory, what is the motivation for a sports figure to do the right thing?

Major League Baseball

            Major League Baseball has had a rich history of unethical behavior going back before the turn of the twentieth century. Players in the 1870s were routinely bribed to intentionally perform poorly in games so that their team might lose and a gambler might win.[i] The bribes continued into the twentieth century, and finally came to a boil with the 1919 Black Sox scandal, in which eight players on the highly favored Chicago White Sox were paid to intentionally lose the World Series.[ii] By the time the scandal had ended, thirteen people had been indicted on conspiracy charges, and the eight guilty players were banned from the sport of professional baseball for the rest of their lives.[iii]

            However, today’s unscrupulous baseball players do not cheat to lose like those players of old. Instead, they cheat to win. And their favorite tools of deception are anabolic steroids and human growth hormones. Anabolic steroids became prevalent in baseball at the end of the 1980s, when Jose Canseco entered the league and began to show people exactly what could be accomplished by using the largely unknown substances. Steroids work by increasing testosterone levels, which increases muscle mass and stimulates muscle growth.[iv] In his book “Juiced,” Canseco credits himself with bringing steroids and human growth hormones to the game,[v] and credits those substances with his success playing it:

And I can tell you now: Steroids were the key to it all. I was such an improved player, and I think it was because steroids not only give you a lot of physical strength and stamina, they also give you a mental edge…. It pumps up your confidence like you wouldn’t believe, and for an athlete, that’s a very potent combination.[vi]

Steroids And The Race For The Home Run

            During the 1998 MLB season, two powerful sluggers competed for the single-season home run record. Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs ran neck and neck in a home run race that ran the duration of the season. McGwire finished the year with seventy home runs, shattering the old record of sixty-one that was set by Roger Maris in 1961. Sosa finished with sixty-six home runs, and was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player. The race was said to have revived baseball after a 1994 player’s strike had tarnished the game in the eyes of the fans.[vii]

            Jose Canseco confesses to having injected Mark McGwire with steroids countless times while they were teammates on the Oakland Athletics, beginning in 1987. While he admits that he does not know Sammy Sosa and cannot speak for him, Canseco is confident that McGwire had to have taken many doses of the illegal drug to break the record that summer.[viii] Prior to 1998, Sammy Sosa had not hit more than forty home runs. After 1998 he had five consecutive seasons with forty or more.[ix] Likewise, Mark McGwire had never hit more than fifty-two home runs prior to 1998, but followed that record-breaking year with sixty-five home runs the next season.[x] Neither Sammy Sosa nor Mark McGwire has ever admitted to having taken anabolic steroids at any time in their career.

            Three years after the 1998 home run race, San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds blasted seventy-three home runs to break the record set by Mark McGwire. Bonds had been playing in the major leagues for thirteen years prior to 1998, and had never hit more than forty-six home runs in a season, while consistently stealing thirty or more bases per year. After 1998, Bonds could not muster more than fifteen stolen bases, yet his hitting power was noticeably increased as he had five consecutive seasons with forty-five or more home runs. In 2001 Bonds broke McGwire’s single-season record with seventy-three home runs, and in 2007 he set what is arguably the most coveted record in all of professional sports by hitting his 762^nd career home run.[xi] Bonds has been named in the BALCO steroids scandal that has rocked the world of professional baseball, and has admitted to taking steroids known as “The Cream” and “The Clear.” He maintains that he was not aware the substances were steroids at the time.[xii]

The National Football League

            The National Football League has remained relatively free of steroid scandals, largely because it has been generally assumed that many professional football players have taken steroids and growth hormones to gain strength and size for the game. However, as the 2007 regular season kicked off, a new type of cheating scandal emerged in the league. “Spygate” is the videotaping scandal surrounding the New England Patriots and their head coach Bill Belichick, in which the team has been shown to record the sidelines of opposing teams in violation of league rules.

             During the 2007 season opener between the rival New England Patriots and New York Jets, the Jets’ chief of security caught a Patriots employee videotaping the Jets sideline in order to steal the defensive hand signals used to relay plays onto the field. The camera and tape were immediately confiscated and league officials were promptly notified. The Patriots won that game by a score of 38-14, [xiii] and went on to finish the season with eighteen consecutive victories on their way to a loss in the Super Bowl. The team was fined $250,000, head coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000, and the team will be forced to forfeit its 2008 first-round draft selection.

            This was not the first time the New England had been caught in the act of videotaping their opponents, and more allegations continue to pour in from other teams around the league. During a game against the Patriots in 2006, the Green Bay Packers discovered “someone with a Patriots official pass” videotaping the game from the Green Bay sidelines. The videographer complied with a request to put the video camera away and return to the Patriots’ sidelines, and the Packers organization did not press the issue further.[xiv] New England players who wish to remain anonymous have claimed that the team has been filming the sidelines of opposing teams since the 2000 season when Belichick debuted as the team’s head coach.[xv]

            But Belichick’s unethical coaching practices have gone on since well before becoming the head coach of the three-time world champion New England Patriots. In his book “LT: Over The Edge,” NFL veteran Lawrence Taylor writes candidly of advice given by Belichick as defensive coordinator of the New York Giants. Taylor claims that one particular year Belichick told his defensive players to disrupt the fast-paced offense of the Buffalo Bills by kicking the ball after officials had placed it on the field, and to slowly rise up from the pile after making tackles. Taylor bluntly states:

It screwed the Bills up, yes it did. So if you’re going to ask me if I’m surprised Belichick won the Super Bowl in 2001 with the Patriots, the answer is no.[xvi]

Bill Belichick has been coaching in the NFL for thirty-two years. He has coached on five championship teams, with three as the head coach of the New England Patriots, where he has a winning percentage of nearly 75%.[xvii] After being caught and punished for cheating in the opening game of the 2007 season, Belichick was named the 2007 NFL Coach of the Year by the Associated Press.[xviii]

National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing

            Rule infractions in America’s premier stock car racing association have been commonplace since its inception sixty years ago. NASCAR mandates certain specifications for its participating cars, and race teams are constantly pushing the envelope of right and wrong in order to gain any advantage in fuel mileage, aerodynamics, or horsepower. According to legendary driver Darrell Waltrip, NASCAR has often looked away when cars failed inspection, and only recently began issuing fines and suspensions for such infractions.[xix] In his book “DW: A Lifetime Going Around in Circles,” Waltrip boasts that he was “a rule maker, not a rule breaker:”

Guys like me (and all my crew chiefs through the years) weren’t breaking the rules; we were being smart and creative about the gray areas, innovating in areas where there were no rules. Sometimes NASCAR would find things they didn’t like or agree with, and they’d have to make a rule to prevent it. I promise you, NASCAR added a lot of pages to the rulebook to keep up with us. [xx]

Racing in the gray area brought Darrell Waltrip three NASCAR Cup championships and eighty-four NASCAR Cup races in his 809 career starts, tying him for third on the association’s all-time win list.[xxi]

However, venturing into the gray areas is not exclusive to the pioneers of the sport of stock car racing. Today’s top racing teams are given regular fines and suspensions for failing to meet standards mandated by NASCAR. As the 2006 racing season kicked off in Daytona Beach, Florida, driver Jimmie Johnson and his “Lowes 48″ racing team failed a post-qualifying inspection when his car could not fit inside the templates used by NASCAR to measure the automobile’s aerodynamics. As punishment, Team 48 was forced to start the race at the back of the field. Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus was suspended for the race and the three that followed, and fined $25,000. Jimmie Johnson went on to win the race at Daytona Beach, as well as the 2006 NASCAR Cup championship.[xxii] He is currently the defending 2007 NASCAR Cup champion.

The Rewards For Cheating

            The rewards for cheating in sports can be many; giving sports figures a great deal of incentive for unethical behavior. Victory and success leads to increased salaries and long-term contracts. The average salary for a Major League Baseball player in 2007 was $2,944,556.[xxiii] Barry Bonds received $15,533,970.[xxiv] Likewise, the average 2007 salary for a head coach in the National Football League was approximately $3,400,000. In 2007, Bill Belichick is reported to have signed a contract extension with the New England Patriots for between $6,000,000 and $8,000,000.[xxv] NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson received $15,313,920 in winnings for 2007, falling just under his 2006 record-setting earnings of $15,770,125. Johnson’s career earnings equal $59,531,336.[xxvi]

Public Acceptance of Cheating

            The American public shows its acceptance of cheating in sports by continuing to purchase tickets for sporting events in order to see their favorite winners win week after week. Major League Baseball set its fourth consecutive attendance record in 2007 with a total of 76,215,082 tickets sold; an average of 32,710 per game.[xxvii] The average cost of an MLB ticket (excluding premium seating) in 2007 was $22.69.[xxviii] The National Football League set its fifth consecutive attendance record in 2007 with a paid attendance of 17,341,012, averaging 67,000 fans per game.[xxix] The average cost of an NFL ticket in 2007 was $67.83, with the New England Patriots topping the list at $90.91.[xxx] And although somewhat lower than in previous years, the 2007 average attendance per event for NASCAR’s premier circuit topped all of professional sports with approximately 130,000 over forty races, equaling more than 5,000,000 for the season.[xxxi]

Conclusion

            Athletes, coaches, and teams in the world of professional sports will go to any lengths in order to give themselves an advantage over their competition. They will inject themselves with dangerous illegal substances in order to grow bigger, stronger, and quicker in the shortest possible amount of time. They will use underhanded tactics to attack an opponent’s game plan, or use the latest technology to spy on them in order to gain insight into that plan. And they will use the rulebook as a guide to what rules they don’t have to follow rather than as a guide to what rules they do have to follow.

            The rewards for these actions are great. Money, prestige, and lasting fame are all on the table for sports figures who will do whatever it takes to win. The incentives to deceive are compounded by the lack of meaningful punishments that are handed down by officials when people are caught cheating. And an adoring public who continues to show its acceptance of the situation by purchasing tickets at an ever-increasing rate and price finances it all and assures it will continue.

            Our acceptance of cheating and unethical behavior in the world of professional sports proves that Americans care more about winning than we do about honesty, and that personal ethics are really the only motivation for an athlete to do the right thing. As long as we continue to allow the ends to justify the means and permit cheaters to prosper, we will find a level playing field in professional sports to be an uncommon commodity.

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[i] Eliot Asinof, Eight Men Out (New York: Owl Books, 1963), 11.[ii] Ibid., 20-30.[iii] Ibid., 225-275.

[iv] I. G. Brodsky, et al, “Effects of testosterone replacement on muscle mass and muscle protein synthesis in hypogonadal men–a clinical research center study,” The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism, no. 10 (Oct. 1996): 81.

[v] Jose Canseco, Juiced (New York: Regan Books, 2005), 3.

[vi] Ibid., 51.

[vii] Sports Illustrated, “McGwire puts exclamation point on bid for baseball immortality,” CNN/Sports Illustrated, 27 September 1998, <http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/news/1998/09/27/mac_king/> (14 March 2008).

[viii] Jose Canseco, Juiced (New York: Regan Books, 2005), 201.

[ix] Major League Baseball, “Sammy Sosa Career Stats,” MLB.com, 2008, < http://www.mlb.com/stats/individual_stats_player.jsp?playerID=122544&statType=1> (3 March 2008).

[x] Major League Baseball, “Mark McGwire,” MLB.com, 2008, < http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/historical/mlb_player_locator_results.jsp?playerLocator=McGwire> (3 March 2008).

[xi] Major League Baseball, “Barry Bonds Career Stats,” MLB.com, 2008, < http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/player_locator_results.jsp?c_id=mlb&playerLocator=Bonds> (3 March 2008).

[xii] George J Mitchell, Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation Into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances By Players in Major League Baseball (Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, 2007) 160-166.

[xiii] Rich Cimini, “Patriots caught allegedly taping Jets’ coaches,” The New York Daily News, 10 December 2007, < http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/jets/2007/09/11/2007-09-11_patriots_caught_allegedly_taping_jets_co.html > (1 March 2008).

[xiv] Tom Silverstein,  “Packers might get a call from league regarding Patriots’ latest film flap,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10 September 2007, <http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=659604> (9 March 2008).

[xv] John Branch and Greg Bishop, “New Claim of Taping Emerges Against Patriots,” The New York Times, 22 February 2008, <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/sports/football/22patriots.html?_r=1&oref=slogin> (1 March 2008).

[xvi] Lawrence Taylor,  LT: Over The Edge (New York: Harper Collins, 2003) 134.

[xvii] National Football League, “New England Patriots Head Coach,” NFL.com, 2008, < http://www.nfl.com/teams/coaches?coaType=head&team=NE> (3 March 2008).

[xviii] Associated Press, “Belichick is AP Coach Of The Year,” KPIX TV, 3 January 2008, < http://cbs5.com/sports/Belichick.coach.award.2.622578.html> (9 March 2008).

[xix] Darrell Waltrip, DW: A Lifetime Going Around in Circles (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2004) 100.

[xx] Ibid., 99.

[xxi] Ibid., 3.

[xxii] David Newton, “Knaus suspended through Atlanta,” NASCAR.com, 22 February 2006, < http://www.nascar.com/2006/news/headlines/cup/02/21/jjohnson_cknaus/index.html> (3 March 2008).

[xxiii] Associated Press, “MLB Salaries,” CBS Sports, 2008, < http://sportsline.com/mlb/salaries/avgsalaries> (3 March 2008).

[xxiv] CBS Sports, “25 Barry Bonds, LF,” CBS Sports, 2008, < http://sportsline.com/mlb/players/playerpage/7447> (3 March 2008).

[xxv] Rob Demovsky, “Success likely to pay off for McCarthy,” Packersnews.com, 18 November 2007, <http://www.packersnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071118/PKR01/711180663/1989> (3 March 2008).

[xxvi] Associated Press, “Big money for defending NASCAR champ,” NBC Sports. 30 November 2007, <http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/22047505/> (3 March 2008).

[xxvii] Major League Baseball, “MLB breaks season attendance record for fourth straight year,” MLB.com, 24 September 2007, <http://mlb.mlb.com/news/press_releases/press_release.jsp?ymd=20070924&content_id=2227457&vkey=pr_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb> (3 March 2008).

[xxviii] Associated Press, “Boston has highest average for 10^th straight season,” ESPN, 30 March 2007, < http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2819597> (3 March 2008).

[xxix] Associated Press, “NFL: Attendance up for fifth straight year,” The Honolulu Advertiser, 3 January 2008, <http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2008/Jan/03/br/br2734095861.html> (9 March 2008).

[xxx] “NFL ticket prices in 2007,” 19 January 2008, KHOU.com, < http://www.khou.com/sports/texans/stories/khou080119_tnt_nfltickets.3ac0e203.html> (3 March 2008).

[xxxi] Liz Clarke, “While NASCAR Takes Stock, Racing’s Popularity Wanes,” Washington Post, 4 November 2007, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/03/AR2007110300986_pf.html> (3 March 2008).