Game of deception

As cheating abounds, critics rant and fans boo - but everyone shows up when the gates open, By: Jim Armstrong

4/15/2007

Judging from the headlines of the day, someone in the sports world is cheating as you read this. If a baseball player or linebacker isn't taking a performance-enhancing drug, a pit-crew member is putting a little extra zip in a carburetor. Either that or some Tour de France hopeful is changing his blood more often than his boxers.

While the technology to facilitate it might be new wave, cheating in sports seemingly has been going on since the first athlete broke a sweat. Today's sports figures? If all those reports are true, many bend the rules.

The story isn't so much that sports figures cheat - they have, they do, and, given the big bucks involved, they will continue to - but rather that fans are flocking to the ballpark, arena or superspeedway in record numbers anyway. And if they're not in the stands, they're in front of their big screens generating television ratings that provide the money that makes the sports world go around.

Question is, why? Given the media scrutiny, sports fans know all about the cheating. Yet they continue to show up and pay dearly for the privilege. Case in point: Barry Bonds, the poster boy for Major League Baseball's steroids era.

Coors Field fans no doubt will boo him every time he steps to the plate when he's in town this week, but they will do it with $6 beers in hand.

"He's the biggest draw in baseball," said John Brennan, owner of the SportsFan memorabilia stores. "I have a friend who has season tickets in the first row. He's only going to three games this season. The Yankees and Cubs, I can understand. The only other time he's going is to see Bonds. It's almost like a P.T. Barnum-type thing. It's a freak show."

Somewhere in there lies a commentary about the state of our society. And if you look closely enough, there's an inherent contradiction, too.

Media types clamor about all the cheating, but fans can't keep their eyes off the perpetrators, alleged or otherwise. They say it bothers them, frustrates them, infuriates them in some cases, yet they keep buying tickets. Either that or tune in to the NFL Network, ESPNU, MLB Extra Innings or any number of other networks that have popped up to feed the frenzy.

Given the gaudy attendance figures and TV ratings, there's no denying fans tolerate cheating. They love this stuff, needles and all. Now for the ultimate deep-thought question: Are they attracted to it despite all the cheating or, in part, because of it?

"All in all, fans have factored in their displeasure about sports and its various scandals and have decided, for any number of reasons, that, warts and all, it still provides the necessary diversion they seek from their daily grinds," said David Carter, a sports business professor at the University of Southern California. "(They) are the sports industry's wolf-criers. They always seem to posture about their displeasure and disgust about athlete behavior and indiscretions, and yet they never materially change their consumption patterns."

Matter of human nature

Just as Britney Spears' post-rehab concert tour figures to be a smash hit with curiosity seekers, Bonds' mere presence helps fill ballparks. And if he happens to hit a home run, the reaction invariably will be mixed, but, more to the point, loud. A buzz will fill the air, the likes of which players without Bonds' baggage couldn't hope to generate.

"I think there's something to that," said former Broncos offensive lineman Mark Schlereth, an analyst for ESPN. "We love that dirt. There's an attraction to it. It's like a car wreck. We can't look away. It's a sick, twisted, human nature kind of thing."

Said Shawn McCarthy, director of the League of Fans, a Washington-based sports reform project founded by Ralph Nader: "Part of the entertainment industry does run on these tabloid stories. And there's a certain aspect of that in sports as well. It's certainly a part of it. It's why people like pro wrestling."

Some find it puzzling, this primal attraction fans seem to have to the Boys of BALCO and all the other alleged cheaters out there. The old saying that nice guys finish last? Today, more than ever, there's something to it.

"It's very interesting and a little confusing," said Nova Lanktree, the vice president of marketing services for the Chicago-based Coordinated Sports Management Group. "You go 'duh' a little bit. Maybe after you read a story Monday about Barry Bonds doing something wrong, you forget about it when you get to the game with your dad and the hot dogs and beer arrive. It's like our pleasure trumps our disdain."

That's it, end of story, according to Denver attorney Neil Ayervais, a Rockies and Avalanche season-ticket holder and a regular caller to the city's sports-talk shows. When fans are at the ballpark, he says, they're too caught up in the game to think about the off-field issues of the players they are watching.

"I'm not thinking about who's taking steroids or scuffing the ball or stealing signs," Ayervais said. "You're in the moment, you're being entertained. I don't think it's thriving because of the cheaters. It's thriving because of the entertainment value it provides, how it markets itself, the diversion it provides."

Which brings another interesting twist and turn to the story: Amped-up athletes, or cars for that matter, make for a more entertaining show. All the cheating has helped create a more dramatic story line, more compelling theater, more must-see replays.

Athletes use steroids or HGH to become bigger, faster and stronger, and when it comes to watching games people play, bigger, faster and stronger is better entertainment. Case in point: Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa matching home run for home run in the summer of 1998, a passion play that most observers credit with re-energizing baseball fans after the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. Seven years after hitting his then-record 70th home run, McGwire told Congress that he didn't want to talk about his bulging biceps. At least he responded to the questions. Sosa, when pressed for answers on whether he used steroids, claimed he didn't speak English.

"It's interesting that performance-enhancing drugs might have had a part in helping with (baseball's) recovery," McCarthy said. "We don't know for sure, but the idea of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa filling seats in the late '90s, I'd like to see what organizations knew, what leagues knew, what owners knew. Because I don't think it just stops with the players."

Entertainment is prime factor

Major-league owners and commissioner Bud Selig have been roundly criticized for not taking action in the midst of widespread allegations that many of the game's biggest stars have pharmaceutically padded their stats. But the impact of the steroids era on the industry's bottom line has been nothing short of revolutionary, running step for step with an attendance and TV ratings explosion that has tripled the game's gross revenues in little more than a decade.

Why? There's only one logical conclusion. Fans are willing to overlook all the allegations of cheating as long as they are being entertained. Chicks dig the long ball, as the saying goes, and apparently so do their dates.

"It's exciting to see a 480-foot home run," Ayervais said. "In that instant, we're being gratified, we're being entertained."

University of Colorado psychology professor Gary McClelland once saw Sosa hit three home runs at Wrigley Field. While he was disappointed to hear of Sosa's alleged involvement with steroids, he was hardly surprised. It's a societal thing, he said. We live in a culture in which people speed on the highway, fudge on taxes and overcharge clients. Is it any wonder they're able to shrug off the notion of athletes trying to get an edge?

"Most people think it's no worse in sports than anywhere else, and it's probably better in sports," McClelland said. "You've got corporations cooking the books. Within the context of that, tweaking a carburetor doesn't seem like a bad thing. It might not be quite so strong as to say we rationalize cheating, but we expect and aren't surprised by cheating.

"We may not think it's the right thing to do, but we think there's a rationale for it. And, even if someone is cheating, we don't want it to ruin our fun at the ballpark."

That acceptance doesn't sit well with Dale Murphy, a former two-time National League MVP who ended his career with the Rockies. He is so concerned about wayward athletes' impact on the younger generation he has launched a foundation called I Won't Cheat.

"I get frustrated when I hear fans echo the phrase, 'If you're not cheating, you're not trying,' " Murphy said. "It's just the nature of our society and where we put sports and entertainment. People like to be entertained. I don't think they come because they think guys are cheating. But when they hear about guys cheating, they're not surprised.

"It's like everything else on the front page. We've got corruption, shady business stuff, Enron, government scandals. The theory is, if you want to cheat, you can do it."

It isn't just business executives and ballplayers. Cheating goes on in various forms, in various age groups, throughout American culture, and starts early - witness those video-game "cheat codes" that teenagers routinely track down on the Internet.

"They give kids extra power, extra ability in their video games," Ayervais said. "It's almost like Barry Bonds is the embodiment of cheat codes in baseball. He's got cheat codes in him to make him bigger and stronger."

Cheating accepted

The general acceptance of cheating in sports could be found in a recent ESPN.com SportsNation poll. The website asked fans what their reaction would be if their favorite athlete were alleged to have used a performance-enhancing drug. Of the 138,840 respondents, 48.4 percent said they would continue to support their athlete, and 43.5 percent said they wouldn't. Another 8.1 percent said it would have no impact.

The Enron perpetrators are sent to prison, and Joe Nacchio's fate is being determined as we speak, yet when it comes to an alleged cheating scandal in sports, our society seems to shrug. League officials, meanwhile, suspend those caught using steroids for a few games or, in the cases of Bonds and Gary Matthews Jr., stand aside as their legal issues play out away from the diamond.

"In our culture, some people are above the law and some aren't," Lanktree said. "We don't have anybody being punished if they take steroids or gamble or whatever. They get continued opportunities to show off their talents. And they do it because they keep raking in the money. If you're a revenue-generating machine, we can look past it."

The SportsFan's Brennan is a sports junkie - a long-suffering Cubs fan, in fact - who makes his living selling images of players and teams to the public. When he looks at the state of today's sports world, in which fans flock to watch amped-up athletes, he can't help but cringe.

"It's very tough to explain and still have any kind of principles," Brennan said. "If you have to cheat to win, people look the other way. It's not a pretty picture morally. There are a lot of moral contradictions in sports. You see it every day. But nobody cares."

A moral dilemma for fans? McClelland won't go that far. Nor will Ayervais.

"It's only a moral dilemma if you care," Ayervais said.

Bill Vizas, owner of Bill's Sports Collectibles, the region's largest memorabilia outlet, sees a rainbow coalition of fans wander through his store every day. Ask him about fans and their willingness to overlook cheating in sports and he laughs.

"'It's kind of hilarious," Vizas said. "Some people are flabbergasted by it, but it's common knowledge that players have been doing it for years. How many people do you see walking down a mall who look like an NFL player? Nobody. Then you see the guy from Detroit (Kenny Rogers) scuffing the ball in the World Series and nothing happens. It's the American way."