Sometimes, cheaters don't prosper
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2007 6:50 PM
We’re told as kids that cheaters never prosper, but as we grow up we have our doubts. This is no less true in sports, where the game’s narrative for too long has been about cheaters.
What’s strange is how few people seem to catch the moral of the story, which is that in the stories we tell, the cheaters always get caught.
Floyd Landis, the defrocked champion of the 2006 Tour de France, is the latest example. Though he fought with every bit of tenacity $2 million worth of legal fees will buy, a three-judge panel in France decided he’s guilty as charged of doping during the race.
Landis maintains his innocence, but so do most of the others caught over the years. All we have to go by is what the machines and the guys in the lab coats tell us, and that is that Landis had more testosterone in his system than nature provides.
We don’t know how many athletes cheat. But we do know that a lot of the top ones get caught, especially in cycling, track and field, swimming, weight-lifting and other Olympic sports. Even cheating coaches get caught, as the Bill Belichick sideline spying episode so recently showed.
Obviously, a lot get away with it. Everybody in track and field was convinced Florence Griffith-Joyner -- whose sprint records set in Seoul in 1988 have yet to be broken -- was cheating, but was never caught. That was the same year that Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold medal. And if one gets away and wins a gold medal to boot, others are going to follow.
The rewards are great -- riches and fame and free front=row tickets to the ESPYs. I guess to the athletes they seem worth the risks.
But is anything worth what happened to Landis or any of the dozens of other cheats in the Tour de France? Is it worth the disgrace of Ben Johnson? Is it worth even the half million dollar fine and the animosity Belichick reaped with his little sideline spying game?
Contrary to what your mother told you, cheaters sometimes prosper. But it seems that if you keep cheating, eventually it will catch up to you. Just ask Marion Jones. Once, the track star was worth millions. Today, she can’t even afford bus fare. And drug allegations made it all happen.
The only place where cheating doesn’t hurt players seems to be the NFL. Get banned for a month there for drugs, and you came back as big a hero as ever. Belichick may have been flayed in the court of public opinion, but Shawne Merriman is still a highly popular and praised linebacker for San Diego. It’s only if you get tossed for a year or more, as Ricky Williams did for marijuana and dietary supplements, that people get on your case.
But the bottom line is if you get caught, your professional life is pretty much over. In baseball, even if you don’t get caught because there are no rules against it and no testing for it, you have to go through life being labeled a cheat. Mark McGwire will never shake the rumors around his accomplishments, nor will Barry Bonds.
The rewards of winning are enormous, but so are the risks of cheating. I’d hope kids -- and adults -- would notice that. I’d hope they’d look at Landis, the latest person ruined by his own greed for victory, and say, ‘I don’t want that to be me.”
