Tor Constantino looks at how cheating at professional sports trickles down to our kids
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Leading up to the Super Bowl earlier this month, you couldn’t throw around a Nerf football without hitting a newspaper or broadcast story regarding “deflate-gate.”
In case you forgot, the stories focused on the New England Patriots alleged use of under-inflated footballs that may have given veteran quarterback Tom Brady enhanced ball grip and control during the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts in January.
While the NFL’s investigation into the case has continued, two NFL referees have been disciplined by the league, and the Patriots went on to win the Super Bowl becoming world champions again—despite allegations of cheating.
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Fast forward to last week, to a different sport altogether and several layers removed from professional athletes—when cheating allegations were leveled against the 2014 Little League champions in baseball.
Ultimately, the assertions against Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West little league program were verified, and the club of preteen kids were stripped of its title. It seems that the coach and team administrator tried to gerrymander their team’s recruiting district to ensure the best players on the team.
The adults involved have rightfully been kicked out of their respective roles. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it right or heal the affected kids.
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I genuinely feel sorry for those preteens in the program who practiced and played their hearts out during the regular and post-seasons—only to have every earned title of the season vacated due to the recruitment shenanigans.
However, are we surprised?
It seems that professional and college sports are rife with degrees and assertions of cheating ranging from deflate-gate to performance enhancing drug use to Lance Armstrong to A Rod to college recruitment violations to NCAA student athlete payment scandals and on and on and on….
Are we surprised that cheating has become child’s play—literally?
Even though it was the adults associated with the Jackie Robinson program who broke the rules, kids can’t help and become desensitized to right and wrong when their sports heroes push the boundaries of ethical athletics.
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The saddest part of this trend is that “how you play the game” seems to routinely be sacrificed on the altar of winning at all costs.
That’s simply too high a cost, especially when it costs kids their dreams.
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Unfortunately, the phrase “it is not whether you win or lose, its how to play the game” has gone out the window now. It is win or lose in sports but also in life.
Tor, Thank you for writing this. While I was disappointed that the Seahawks lost (I’m from Seattle), I was more upset by who we lost to. I’m sorry, but Tom Brady had to have known at the very least he was throwing deflated balls during the AFC Championship game. The man has no integrity whatsoever. He had the opportunity to do the right thing, but instead he keep his mouth shut. He cheated to get ahead. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. At the end of the day, I don’t think the NFL cares if the Patriots cheated. They… Read more »
Living near Seattle, I’m sort of ashamed that someone like Donavan is representing our area with such tunnel vision. Not all of us is this part of the country think the same Brady, taking a snap from center in the pouring rain, focusing on dynamic defensive schemes and disguised coverage, trying to determine who is going to open in 2 seconds, can hardly be expected to detect small differences in ball pressure. The pressure does change with the weather (despite what that other local embarrassment, Bill Nye, claimed), not just in this game, but in every game where the temperature… Read more »