From today's USAToday:
Agony of deceit in sports comes from the game of life Updated 8/2/2006 12:29 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Subscribe to stories like this
Cheating is part of humanity. When it comes to dishonesty in sports, the venerated Greeks were gold medal worthy of guilt thousands of years ago. In baseball, cunning underhandedness is sacrosanct. And when it comes to taxes and speed limits, who shall be the first to cast a stone at the moral minority? So, cheating isn't disappearing anytime soon.
Many experts believe cheating — or "trickeration" in the fractured syntax of Don King — is more pervasive. That alone should be troubling enough if you're a sports fan who insists on a level playing field.
I don't know if world-class cyclist Floyd Landis, the son of Mennonites, cheated to win the Tour de France. I'm not sure we'll ever know, even when the next result of his urine sample is released. Landis will forever deny he knowingly took anything that abnormally altered his body's testosterone ratio. The same with world champion sprinter Justin Gatlin, who faces a possible ban after flunking a drug test and claiming a therapist rubbed testosterone cream on his legs without his knowledge. (Only slightly more believable than Barry Bonds' flaxseed oil defense.)
What drives much of this competitive overdrive is not only the stated goal to be No. 1, but to be the best compensated and most lauded. That self-centeredness is reflected in the philosophy of It's All About Me.
More people seem driven to commit various forms of integrity suicide and, in the case of those who use performance-enhancing drugs, perhaps unintentional medical chaos. A couple of years ago, noted business author and lecturer David Callahan wrote the book The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead. His thesis is that incentives for betraying honorable behavior are more lucrative — that cheating is now a rational endeavor because of what is at stake, and if everyone's doing it, why not me?
"Nothing is conclusive about Landis right now, but cycling is one of the most drug-saturated sports in the world," he said. "I think that the logic for many cyclists has been, 'Hey, the real rules of the game are that you dope.' It's a pharmacological arms-race. As the financial rewards in sports escalate beyond anything we've ever seen before, we shouldn't be surprised that more people will cut corners to obtain them."
It isn't only Americans who have a death grip on deceit and deception despite our fascination with pseudo-heroes who juiced their way to prosperity. Suspected cheaters come in all stripes and occupations. In the Philippines, a widening scandal involves cheating on nursing board exams. In India, scam artists have sold access to test answers for medical students.
In England, one league soccer boss — annoyed by a World Cup riddled with phony injury tactics — has sworn to crack down on fakery.
Competition can be a wonderful thing. In sports, we can think of hundreds of examples of intense nose-to-nose battles that delivered thrills for millions. Watching our favorite players perform acts of supreme athleticism is something to behold and applaud, particularly when it is genuine and minus illegal chemistry.
Competition without moral conscience is something else. Or haven't you noticed those pop-ups on your computer offering instant graduate-course degrees?
A poll of 25,000 U.S. high school students revealed nearly half concurred with this statement: "A person has to lie or cheat sometimes in order to succeed."
Increasingly, students plagiarize. They use test banks and cyber-essays and pop drugs to remain alert. In some ways, none of this is new — the techniques only are more sophisticated. I recall one guy in my high school Spanish class who got busted for "fudging" on a grammar quiz. He scribbled a couple of verb conjugations — on his desk. (I guess I could've been dumber, but I don't know how.)
In search of lucrative journalism prizes, some reporters fabricate stories. CEOs finagle accounting methods to fictionalize greater profits, artificially pump up stock prices and trigger bonuses.
Consequently, our most feted conquerors are those who win the race toward massive accumulation of wealth and assets. We are fascinated by conspicuous consumption, intrigued by the power of those phony captains of industry who are really lowly first mates in their own self-absorption and ultimate destruction.
"The money-celebrity culture has changed peoples' values and elevated ends over means," Callahan said. "You have a natural human impulse to (gain an unfair advantage) filtered through changing incentives and societal values, which I suggest creates more cheating. It's a self-fulfilling dynamic. People think they need to cheat just to compete on an even field."
I asked him if he were offered a psychotic drug that would enable him to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, would he ingest it? "Good question," he said.
"Yeah, I probably would."
He is honest, which is a lot more than some athletes. Then again, that only makes them more like us.
--------
"When you stop trading time for money, and spending money to eat up time, you opt out of a perpetual cycle that is keeping you basically imprisoned in a corporate system."
Agony of deceit in sports comes from the game of life Updated 8/2/2006 12:29 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Subscribe to stories like this
Cheating is part of humanity. When it comes to dishonesty in sports, the venerated Greeks were gold medal worthy of guilt thousands of years ago. In baseball, cunning underhandedness is sacrosanct. And when it comes to taxes and speed limits, who shall be the first to cast a stone at the moral minority? So, cheating isn't disappearing anytime soon. Many experts believe cheating — or "trickeration" in the fractured syntax of Don King — is more pervasive. That alone should be troubling enough if you're a sports fan who insists on a level playing field.
I don't know if world-class cyclist Floyd Landis, the son of Mennonites, cheated to win the Tour de France. I'm not sure we'll ever know, even when the next result of his urine sample is released. Landis will forever deny he knowingly took anything that abnormally altered his body's testosterone ratio. The same with world champion sprinter Justin Gatlin, who faces a possible ban after flunking a drug test and claiming a therapist rubbed testosterone cream on his legs without his knowledge. (Only slightly more believable than Barry Bonds' flaxseed oil defense.)
What drives much of this competitive overdrive is not only the stated goal to be No. 1, but to be the best compensated and most lauded. That self-centeredness is reflected in the philosophy of It's All About Me.
More people seem driven to commit various forms of integrity suicide and, in the case of those who use performance-enhancing drugs, perhaps unintentional medical chaos. A couple of years ago, noted business author and lecturer David Callahan wrote the book The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead. His thesis is that incentives for betraying honorable behavior are more lucrative — that cheating is now a rational endeavor because of what is at stake, and if everyone's doing it, why not me?
"Nothing is conclusive about Landis right now, but cycling is one of the most drug-saturated sports in the world," he said. "I think that the logic for many cyclists has been, 'Hey, the real rules of the game are that you dope.' It's a pharmacological arms-race. As the financial rewards in sports escalate beyond anything we've ever seen before, we shouldn't be surprised that more people will cut corners to obtain them."
It isn't only Americans who have a death grip on deceit and deception despite our fascination with pseudo-heroes who juiced their way to prosperity. Suspected cheaters come in all stripes and occupations. In the Philippines, a widening scandal involves cheating on nursing board exams. In India, scam artists have sold access to test answers for medical students.
In England, one league soccer boss — annoyed by a World Cup riddled with phony injury tactics — has sworn to crack down on fakery.
Competition can be a wonderful thing. In sports, we can think of hundreds of examples of intense nose-to-nose battles that delivered thrills for millions. Watching our favorite players perform acts of supreme athleticism is something to behold and applaud, particularly when it is genuine and minus illegal chemistry.
Competition without moral conscience is something else. Or haven't you noticed those pop-ups on your computer offering instant graduate-course degrees?
A poll of 25,000 U.S. high school students revealed nearly half concurred with this statement: "A person has to lie or cheat sometimes in order to succeed."
Increasingly, students plagiarize. They use test banks and cyber-essays and pop drugs to remain alert. In some ways, none of this is new — the techniques only are more sophisticated. I recall one guy in my high school Spanish class who got busted for "fudging" on a grammar quiz. He scribbled a couple of verb conjugations — on his desk. (I guess I could've been dumber, but I don't know how.)
In search of lucrative journalism prizes, some reporters fabricate stories. CEOs finagle accounting methods to fictionalize greater profits, artificially pump up stock prices and trigger bonuses.
Consequently, our most feted conquerors are those who win the race toward massive accumulation of wealth and assets. We are fascinated by conspicuous consumption, intrigued by the power of those phony captains of industry who are really lowly first mates in their own self-absorption and ultimate destruction.
"The money-celebrity culture has changed peoples' values and elevated ends over means," Callahan said. "You have a natural human impulse to (gain an unfair advantage) filtered through changing incentives and societal values, which I suggest creates more cheating. It's a self-fulfilling dynamic. People think they need to cheat just to compete on an even field."
I asked him if he were offered a psychotic drug that would enable him to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, would he ingest it? "Good question," he said.
"Yeah, I probably would."
He is honest, which is a lot more than some athletes. Then again, that only makes them more like us.
--------
"When you stop trading time for money, and spending money to eat up time, you opt out of a perpetual cycle that is keeping you basically imprisoned in a corporate system."