What we love about sports, what captivates us most, is the uncertain anticipation of extraordinary human achievement.
Bob Beamon’s gravity-defying long jump in Mexico City, the fulfillment of Joe Namath’s Super Bowl guarantee, the improbable triumph of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, the 2004 Boston Red Sox and Boise State’s overtime win last season all took us by surprise.
There are few things in life purer than the interaction of human will and athletic challenge. Sports epitomizes that relationship and allows us to identify with often quixotic quests that have the potential to turn out heroic. The longer the odds, the more compelling the victory.
At the core of that heroism is the presupposition and belief in a level playing field. Take away that level playing field and with it vanishes the very mystery and uncertainty of sports.
The WWE and the Harlem Globetrotters are entertainment, not athletic competition. The outcomes are prearranged, and both the participants and the audience know it.
Cheating threatens to undermine the integrity and the future of spectator sports. Ask yourself how you would feel as a sports fan if after watching in absolute awe and disbelief Beamon’s seemingly superhuman long jump you discovered he had first taken performance-enhancing drugs.
How would you feel after watching Joe Namath win Super Bowl III if you discovered that his coach was stealing all of the Baltimore Colts’ defensive signals and sending them in to Joe before each play? And what would your feelings toward sports be at that moment if you happened to be a lifelong Colts fan?
Steroid use in baseball, football and track and field will ultimately render records of human achievement over time incomprehensible and meaningless.
Who would have ever believed that the man who would break one of the most hallowed records in sports (Hank Aaron’s home run mark) might conceivably end up in jail for how he did it? And now with MLB’s Mitchell Report, we are left to wonder what record remains sacrosanct, and which star remains above suspicion.
In his book “How,” published last summer, corporate CEO and astute social observer Dov Seidman makes a powerful case for “how” what we do matters most — in business and in life.
MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and players union
chief Don Fehr testified before Congress about
information in the Mitchell Report.
In commenting on Barry Bonds’ milestone, Seidman wrote in a blog: “Now that Bonds has surpassed Aaron as the most prolific home run hitter of all time, most of us will turn and walk away. Not from his achievement, but from the journey it represents — one which does not embody our highest aspirations nor our dreams of physical perfection, but, in fact, one that betrays those very ideals.
“Hopefully we will take with us the clear realization that in a world where we can easily see past the numbers, it is no longer what you do, but how you do what you do that now matters most.”
Cheating by coaches, referees and players throughout sports may at first result in a few additional victories and a few more records. But once exposed, cheating spreads a cancer of cynicism about the sanctity of sports from which we may never recover.
And cheating is not relegated only to the high-stakes economics of professional sports. When collegiate athletes resort to stabbing teammates higher up on the depth chart, we have to wonder about the importance of athletic success.
But it is so much more than that because sports has become in our society a metaphor, or perhaps a surrogate, for life.
As fans, the compact that we have with our athletic heroes is based on a code of honor and fairness. When those heroes are neither honorable nor fair they are jeopardizing our belief in the code.
Already I hear fans of players and coaches who cheat excusing the behavior with rationalizations such as “It’s not a big deal. Everybody does it.” Or “If we didn’t cheat also, we would be at a competitive disadvantage.”
It is a slippery slope. Because we, and especially our children, idolize and idealize athletes in our society, the athletes’ behavior and their role modeling take on added significance.
We imbue the athletes with the power to either champion or erode our values. Kids begin to think, “If my hero lies or cheats a little bit, maybe it’s not all that bad.”
The time may not be too far off to redefine our notion of the heroic. Some athletes are destroying our capacity to trust any sporting outcome.
The quarterback might be clean, but did his receiver cheat? The pitcher is clean, but what about the third baseman?
When by cheating you remove the uncertainty of sports, with the same deadly stroke you also cut out its heart and remove the mystery.
If this troubling trend continues, we risk not only the future of spectator sports but also a part of our souls.
Marc Pollick is the founder and president of The Giving Back Fund, a national nonprofit that assists professional athletes and others with their philanthropy.
