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Bigger, Stronger, Faster*

Cheaters never prosper. B.S. Cheaters like Coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots win Super Bowls. Cheaters like Mark McGuire, Barry Bonds, and Sammy Sosa set homerun records. Cheaters like Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis win the Tour De France. Cheaters like NASCAR drivers Richard Petty and Ricky Rudd have won races with the help of “foreign devices” and “substances.” Cheaters like track star Marion Jones win Olympic Gold medals. Cheaters like pitcher Gaylord Perry are in their sport’s Hall-of-Fame. Cheaters like UFC fighter Sean Sherk win the big bout. The only thing the above mentioned people did wrong is they got caught. If there is any moral lesson that modern sports have taught our youth it is that cheating is the American way. Cheating gets you the big contract. It helps you win the games. It assists you in setting the records. It gets you on the front page of the newspaper. It allows you to lie down on your bed of money at night surrounded by Maxim models that will do things to you that would make Linda Lovelace blush. Cheating makes you a hero in the eyes of children across America. God bless cheating. God bless this country.

Americans have always taken a very Polly-Annie attitude towards cheating in our national religion, sports. I would guess that there are very few professional sports stars that are not bending the rules on their way to fame and glory. Before you think that our body-enhancing chemical cocktails have changed sportsmanship, cheating has been around for decades. Pitcher Jim Bouton detailed baseball players popping speed pills, “greenies,” like they were M&Ms in the 1970s because they helped speed up natural reflexes. College coaches have for generations bent institutional rules to get kids admitted to their schools and then help the kid find underhanded ways of maintaining the necessary credits and GPA so they can suit up. At Iowa State University for example, I have personal knowledge of a former basketball player who somehow managed to take two summer school classes that met at the same time, on opposite ends of campus and he somehow passed both of them. A former football player, who had the words “Heisman candidate” mentioned in the same sentence as his name in the newspapers, who flunked a class, should have been ineligible, but, surprise, surprise, the kid was gridiron gold that fall and probably knee deep in bleached blondes right after. In baseball, hitters have been corking bats, runners sharpening spikes, and pitchers greasing up balls since the origins of the game. As far back as 1951, the New York Giants were placing a coach in the centerfield stands to steal the opposing catcher’s signs, but who wants to imply that Bobby Thompson’s “shot heard around the world,” the home run that got them the pennant, one of the greatest moments in baseball history, might have been aided with a little inside information.

Our youngsters have gotten the message. One of the biggest myths in this society is the Greek notion that sports are always a positive panacea. In 2004, the CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition did a survey among our nation’s high school athletes. While 90 percent of athletes believe their coach is a good role model, what that means is not clear. Forty-five percent of male athletes believe it is acceptable for a coach to show them illegal holds, or for them to push opponents if the official does not catch them. 42 percent think it is okay to use a stolen playbook from the other team, a similar percentage think it is all right to fake an injury to get an extra time out, and 38 percent think using profanity and insults to motivate the team is perfectly acceptable. Fifty-eight percent believe that the deliberate infliction of pain to intimidate an opponent is just part of the game. One in three of these athletes believe that winning is more important than sportsmanship and 56 percent agreed with the statement "in the real world, successful people do what they have to do to win even if others consider it cheating.” This percentage also thinks it is okay to fool the referee, and only 22 percent think it is improper not to say anything if a referee misses a call that helps your team win the game. Sixty-eight percent of these golden children admit cheating in school. Do you want to know who high school gunmen usually hunt down? The football hero and the cheerleader are the first targets. 69 percent of males and 50 percent of females admit they have bullied, teased, or taunted another student in the last year. Fifty-five percent of males and 29 percent of female athletes have used racial slurs during this same time period.

Another survey asked top college athletes if they were offered a pill that would make them a champion in their sport, but take 5 years off their lives, would they take the thing. If you want the answer just check the obituaries when an athlete dies and check the age. Let’s just say that no President has ever won in a landslide as big as the percentage of high school and college kids who would be downing that pill. Increase the life penalty to a decade and the takers don’t drop off much. Welcome to steroids. Director Christopher Bell examines this win at all costs mentality, especially when it comes to steroids, even detailing his brothers and their steroid use. Every coach and anyone who preaches the virtues of sports need to watch this documentary. It is a fastball right down the center of the plate of our national religion.

Before you think that athletes are abnormal, they are just following the sins of the rest of our nation. They are just like every other kid. Sports are just the golden temple our sins are perfected in. In a recent Rutgers' Management Education Center survey of high school students, 75 percent admit having engaged in serious cheating. Half of them have plagiarized work off of the Internet. Are you ready for the kicker? The same percent of youths don’t believe there is anything wrong with cheating on a test. Only 16.5 percent claim to have “strong feelings of remorse.” Before you say what these kids need is a good old case of religion, another survey recently stated that “religious students are more likely to cheat (65.4 percent) than those who aren’t religious (58.3 percent).” Little Betty might love Jesus, but she is going to have to look at her crib sheet to confirm it. So are the kids in general just bad? No. They mirror their parents and the larger society. Fifty to seventy percent, depending on the study, of married men (between 38 and 53 million men) have cheated or will cheat on their wives. Women, at 30 to 40 percent depending on the survey, have some ground to make up if they want to win, but now that they are in the work place, Nellie bar the door. The Republicans, the party of Jesus and family values, have made an art form out of cheating in elections and lying about things like torture, wire tapping, the war, corruption, altering governmental global warming reports, etc. I have yet to hearing any of the pastors on the far right express outrage over our current Pinocchio and chief. “Brownie, you’re doing a good job.” “We do not torture.” "If anyone in this administration was involved in it [the leaking of Plame's identity], they would no longer be in this administration." “We know where the WMDs are.” “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” “I did not trade arms for hostages.” “The American people want to know that their president is not a crook!" Kids can read lips too. Lyndon Johnson lied us into Vietnam. Bush did the same thing in Iraq. Cheating gets you elected to office and keeps you there. Cheaters have nice Christian parents defending them. Cheating, whether it is over billing the government, fudging environmental regulations, cooking the books, or hiring illegals, makes you a business success. Cheating will make you the hometown hero on the sports field. Cheating makes the world go round. Disagree? Prove me wrong. Please, for the love of God… prove me wrong.

Verdict: A Challenge To Our National Religion