What Happened to Sports?

News this week of the New England Patriots having video-taped opponents during games in order to decode their hand signals has been fairly wide spread. Word came today that the Patriots coach has been fined $500,000 and the team fined $250,000 along with the loss of 1 or 2 draft picks next season depending on how the Pats finish this year.

The story you might not have heard about is the penalty that was slapped on the McLaren team in Formula 1 auto racing. It seems that one of McLaren's employees ended up with a technical "dossier" from the Ferrari team involved in the same racing series. Ferrari fired the guy who gave up the documents and FIA fined McLaren $100,000,000. Yes, that's One-hundred Million US dollars (maybe the Patriots got off easy?). In addition, they stripped the team of "constructor's" points - the equivalent in NASCAR would be manufacturer's points - for this year. It got so bad that the McLaren drivers cooperated with the investigators in order to get immunity and avoid losing their driver's points in the 2007 standings (oh, by the way, the McLaren drivers are ranked 1st and 2nd in the standings and the Ferrari drivers are ranked 3rd and 4th).

I don't remember a year with more sports cheating stories in it. Think about it. You've got the on-going baseball steroids scandal, repeated NASCAR suspensions and deductions for equipment violations, the NBA referee betting fiasco, the Patriots trying to get on i-Caught, and the aforementioned F1 debacle (anything involving a $100 million fine is a debacle).

On one hand these are all sports stories and one could argue that they are less important than if they were all related to corruption in government or scandals in our churches (there have been a few of each of these this year too if you think about it).

But here's why I think this matters: Who do your kids look up to? What do they pay attention to? Maybe not F1 racing or NASCAR, but I'll bet a lot of little boys and girls for that matter (and not so little boys and girls) are paying attention to the Patriots situation and the NBA referee case. What does it communicate to them when the athletes and teams they look up to can't even manage to play their sport fairly? I'm not even picking on an NFL team for being full of thugs (Michael Vick, forgot that one earlier), this is even more basic. Character is character. While Bill Belichick may not have a criminal rap sheet (I have no idea if he does or not), clearly he had a lapse of character here (or simply lacks character). If you don't see why the video-taping of opponents was a big deal keep in mind that it is something the NFL has a rule against - so at the very least they were knowing breaking a policy of the league they play in.

So what are we to do? I don't think there's an easy answer. With money, power and prestige come temptations that can bring down even well intentioned people. The pressure to win (and keep winning in the case of the Patriots and McLaren) is so great in many sports that teams will go to any length to get to and stay on top. I love sports, but I think this is becoming an increasingly sad testimony about the priorities of our society. I get frustrated with people who repeatedly talk about how terrible the U.S. is (I'm referring to U.S. citizens who just bash all the time), but today it's me doing the bashing. Sport and competition are beautiful things in their pure form. Inject enough media attention and the money that comes with it and they can become very ugly as we've seen.

Even sadder still is that we see performance enhancing drug use and cheating starting to pop up even within youth sports. It's not uncommon for an athlete to be suspended from a high school football team for steroid use. Where does it end? How do we turn it around? I don't know. I do know that as someone who hopes to have kids who play sports someday it concerns me. I guess the first line of defense is going to have to be parents who are not willing to go to any length to win and are paying attention to what their kids are doing and are teaching them things like integrity and character. But to do that, those same parents will have to display those traits in their own lives, if not, their kids will see through it very quickly.

I'll quit now, I think I've passed the point of actually making a coherent point.