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For The Men
Cheating Has Always Been Here
Mr. Dow Ford wrote an article for our local newspaper, The Hattiesburg American. In it he tells of the downfall of many sports pros. This, of course, is not limited to sports. Current news reports of fraud and poor judgement tell where some men place value. Maybe this is a good time for you, a husband, a father, a community leader, a man young or old, to re-evaluate priorities. Yes, cheating has always been here, but we choose whether or not we want to be a part of that crowd.
By Dow Ford
(Printed with permission)
Any coffee shop discussion worth its grouds these days seems to contain the name Barry Bonds, A-Rod or Roger Clemens. "What have we come to with all this cheating and doping in sports?" we cry. There is a two-part answer to this quesiton, and neither part is comforting.
First of all, there have always been cheaters in sports. As far back as 399 B.C. the boxer Eupolus from Thessaly bribed three opponents to "take a dive" in the Olympic games. Some years later, the Emperor Nero, was declared the winner of the chariot race in the Summer Games, even though he failed to finish the race. High tech "doping" in the old days involved giving atheletes a mixture of herbs and funguses, many hallucinogenic.
Roman athelets often ingested caffeine, strychnine and bread that had been baked with juices of the poppy.
Not only have there always been cheaters in sports, there are cheaters in all sports. Who can forget Joe Niekro or Gaylord Perry and the way they cleverly "redesigned" the baseball to suit their specifications? Air pressure in soccer balls, basketballs and footballs is regularly manipulated to create advantages for one team or player.
Baseball fields are carefully maintained by groundskeepers to keep live and dead spots where balls trickle down the baseline and stay fair or going foul to a team's advantage.
No sport is sacred or safe. You may remeber, "Bumper Gate." In 1982 Bobby Allison won the Datonya 500 after his rear bumper had been knocked off early in the race. Test on the car, later, proved that it ran better and ran faster without a bumper. Allison was accused of "tacking" the bumper on so it woujld fall off at the least little tap and that is exactly what happened on race day.
If an athelete can't manipulate or redesign the ball or a race car, they often manipulate their bodies or uniforms. Fred Biletnikoff didn''t invent the product "Firmgrip" but he made it famous. He applied so much of it to his football uniform that it has been stated that his hands were't really intergral to the catching of a pass.
Competitive swimmers have been known to wrap their legs in cling wrap to trap air and incrase buoyancy before they don wet suits. They have also been known to, ahem, insert air into their bodies to create additional buoyancy.
The lines concerning cheating blur as we look into the advances in medicine. No one would accuse a swimmer of cheating by having Lasik surgery to improve eyesight, but is it fair for andOlympic sharpshooter or archer to have eyesight that is surgically readjusted? Would a baseball player have a better chance if his vision was perfect?
Oscar Pistorius, a blazingly fast double-amputee sprinter from South Africa, was banned in January of 2008 by the international Association of Athletic Federations as having an unfair advantage over atheletes with normal legs. That decision was overturned in arbitration. Pistorius did not compete in the 2008 Olympic games due to a technicality, but others will follow. It's hard not to root for a gusty athelete like Pistorius. Who could accuse him of cheating?
The culture screams to the athelete that winning is what really counts. The heart whispers to the athlete that playing the game to the best of his or her ability is all that matters. The athlete who listens to the culture often makes the headlines, but the story we all want to tell our children and grandchildren - is about the athlete who listens to the heart.
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