live from the big apple

Cheating and Sports

One of the biggest problems I have with sportswriters is their lack of solutions to problems they identify. Yes, they’re very good at getting “dirt” but I always ask: to what end? Of course there are many exceptions to this rule, but the majority of the time sportswriters preach to us instead of offering solutions.

If you ask me, knowing about a problem is only useful to the extent that you use this knowledge to find or develop a positive solution. Knowing dirt for the sake of knowing dirt doesn’t get you anywhere. Taking these words to heart, I’m going to give baseball and football a solution to their cheating problem.

The Problem

Let’s face it: there’s a huge cheating problem in professional sports, and it doesn’t just affect baseball. In fact, you could argue football has the most obvious steroid problem and Bud Selig pointed this out last week. You can’t avoid the rash of cheating scandals in the press: Spy gate, BALCO, Alomar, Mcguire / Sosa, Clemens / McNammee, the Mitchell Report…unfortunately the list keeps expanding.

Cheating, broadly defined, means breaking the established rules in order to gain a competitive advantage. A lot of people in sports claim “I didn’t know video taping signals was illegal” or “I didn’t knowingly take steroids.” These claims are pure bullshit and probably the worse excuse for cheating. As an athlete you have the responsibility to understand the rules; people should not have to remind you of them. Cheating is cheating and I think most people know it when they see it.

The cheating problem exists because the stakes are so high and the penalties are so low for breaking the rules. For example, if you had to choose between making $20 million dollars per year or wasting away in the minors, why would a 50 game or season-long suspension deter you from taking steroids? (Note: I’m not saying its right, only that money makes people do a lot things they wouldn’t otherwise – think about the movie Wall Street).

We also know that because the stakes are so high, the competition in professional sports is fierce. And since the competition is stiff, human nature will dictate that some people break the rules to get ahead at the expense of others. I hope no one argues with me on this one since its human nature to find shortcuts and sometimes bend the rules.

The problem has cultural roots: American fans demand record setting and heroic performances. The Pats 19-1 season led to massive ratings and the Sosa / McGuire battle catalyzed baseball’s ratings. Fans also don’t care if rules are broken along the way; they reward record-setting behavior by paying large sums to the owners and leagues. The kicker is that you don’t get caught or proven to be a liar to Congress.

Enforcing league rules, let alone the drug laws of our country, is extremely difficult. Drugs are readily available to people who want them and local and federal law enforcement do not have the time, manpower, or resources to catch every athlete doing these drugs. Maybe the leagues can do a better job enforcing the rules, but alternative enforcement mechanism to prevent usage is very weak.

There is a massive gap between the technology to test for performance enhancing drugs and the advanced drugs available to athletes. In other words, the science of testing for drugs cannot catch the full suite of drugs available to an educated cheater. The topic of testing could easily be the subject of an entire blog post, but I’ll leave it with this: having the league be responsible for their testing creates a major conflict of interest. And not having a third party test for drugs compounds the technological barrier to testing which I think we can all agree exists.

How it can be fixed

Here is a solution, inspired by the LA-Times (note: this article does a great job of laying out a template of what sports could do to fix their cheating problem):

1. Admit there is a problem bigger and badder than anyone expected (AA
anyone?). And don’t just expect your fans to forget about the problem or pretend like it never existed. Come out and say there is a huge problem that needs fixing and ask for a mea culpa. This is what baseball and football officials could say to their fans:

Baseball: steroid use is rampant and virtually out of control. Unlike other sports, most players use steroids to either revive their career or inflate their stats, which then leads to higher contract numbers. Our current system of testing is inadequate, younger players use them extensively, and everyone knows stats have been inflated as a result.

Football: steroid use is widespread due to the physical strain put on our athlete’s bodies. These guys play incredibly long seasons and are expected to play 110% every down. Even worse, their bodies are ruined by a career in the NFL and injuries are always around the corner. Tack onto these problems the difficulty of making a roster and thengetting paid large amounts…steroid use is frequent in our league and we haven’t addressed it yet.

2. Apologize (publicly) for not doing enough to fix the problem so far. Hold a press conference and have all the high ranking officials by the commissioner’s side. Again, don’t assume your fans are not analyzing your actions, reading the news, or listening to what the league is doing; an apology would go a long way towards fixing this problem.

3. Prove beyond a doubt the intensity and sincerity of the apology. This is the hardest part because it really involves admitting your league or organization is (was) wrong did not take the appropriate action. Here is a flavor of what the leagues could implement if there was the proper support and leadership:

* Give players in every sport a one time chance to come clean for steroid use and not be penalized. If they’re found guilty of steroid use after this one-time amnesty, see below.

* Have the league and players union jointly pay for third party drug testing. Having the league test their players creates a conflict of interest because it’s clearly not in the team’s or league’s interest to have their players, especially the really good ones, test positive for steroids. Third party testing also has to be funded properly so as to avoid the technological gap I discussed earlier. The third party should have the highest level of integrity and separation from the leagues and teams. The league shouldn’t have to pay for this either – the players union should collect more money from their players in order to pay for this testing.

* Institute harsher penalties for drug use or rule violations. Right now the penalties are still not harsh enough to change behavior. Consider how much money Belichick makes and then look at the fine he got. Can he afford this fine? Of course. If the fine was half of his salary, do you think he cheat again? If your bonus was at risk or a lifetime ban from your sport was on the line (for first time offenders, not second time), I promise you players would take a harder look at breaking the rules. Yes, the leagues have made some progress here, but more needs to be done. The pain threshold has to move higher than it is now because millions of dollars are on the line for people who improve their performance with drugs.

* Have the leagues publicly file disclosure of their testing and results. Fans have a need to know and these results should not be kept secret. Public scrutiny, similar to corporations releasing their earnings or profit forecasts, has an interesting way of making businesses follow the rules on the books…

* Have the league send its players to schools to discuss the dangers and ethics of drug use. Better yet, have Mcguire or Sosa do this, and have Bonds act as the key-note speaker at these events. Do this type of outreach in Latin America, too. Find a way to have Spanish speaking players travel throughout the feeder leagues in Latin America and talk about how drug use won’t fly in the majors.

* Have Congress make a meaningful threat between better testing or the maintenance of baseball and football’s monopolies. If league officials were under the impression that their tax breaks and anti-competitive rules were on the line, I assure you teams would improve their testing programs. Right now these officials answer to pretty much no one.

* Do background checks on people hanging around the clubhouse or athletes. In other words, worry about whose hanging around the players. This would have the affect of keeping McNammees out of the clubhouse and hopefully out of the player’s lives. The weird thing about this Clemens mess is that all these players became friends with this random guy around the clubhouse. Even worse, they bought drugs from him, perpetually opening themselves to unlimited blackmail for the rest of their lives.

* Have teams cooperate with law enforcement. I’ve always wondered why teams or leagues don’t report their positive tests to federal or local authorities. Isn’t it weird that the leagues find out about illegal behavior but don’t report it and then act on their own? Think about it: if teams started getting positive tests from an athlete and then shared that info with the cops, both groups could work towards an arrest or prosecution much faster than if the police did it on their own. I know this will never happen because teams want to protect their athletes, but they definitely could cooperate if they had the will.

Analysis

I think it’s clear that the current state of testing is inadequate and teams don’t do enough to attack the root of the cheating problem. But let’s face it: making money is paramount to professional sports and to take these steps would involve cracking down on their most valuable assets: the players. Furthermore, if drugs were really eliminated from the leagues, fewer home runs would be hit and ratings would suffer. That means less money for the owners and smaller contracts for the players. No, I am not saying there is a conspiracy, only that owners do not have the best motivation to crack down on their players.

But what if the risk of doing nothing or offering weak solutions may be higherthan owners think? So far the fallout from these cheating scandals has been contained, but the longer term affects may eventually surface. How or when they’ll surface, I have no clue, but I can tell you people are fed up with cheating in professional sports and the leagues will suffer in some capacity.

Final Words

Professional sports are feeling the cumulative effects of a massive hangover stemming from ten-to-twenty years of nonstop success. It’s been the gilded age of massive contracts, record breaking ratings, and unprecedented popularity for sports. So maybe this cheating problem is halting the bull market in professional sports? I had a thought the other day: you can compare the rash of cheating scandals to the sub-prime housing crisis because they seem to have a lot of similarities; specifically in that they:

A. keep getting worse from the public’s point of view
B. affect more people than previously thought
C. may ruin the markets, teams, and organizations they come from
D. are losing people a lot of money, respect and jobs
E. results from a period of unbridled success that never seemed to end (boom and bust so to speak)

Let’s only hope the leagues follow my advice and fix this mess before its too late.