:Sports cheating: the most recent controversy involves Michigan football. Why is following the rules so difficult?
Any sports fan should not have been familiar with the name Connor Stalions. He was identical to any of the dozen coaching hopefuls that the public observes every Saturday on college football sidelines throughout America, despite their terrible fit. He was trim, goateed, and frequently spotted with an ill-fitting hat.
He was only one tiny part of Michigan football’s enormous machine, a team that takes great satisfaction in being the first and only in the history of the game to win 1,000 games since the team’s founding in 1879.
However, there was an easy explanation for why Stalions— at least—Presid this fall, in a location marked by well-known personalities like Fielding Yost, Bo Schembechler, Desmond Howard, Tom Brady, and even ent Gerald Ford
He was unfaithful.
For as long as there have been games with established rules, there will always be some who are prepared to break the rules in order to gain fame, fortune, or, in the case of the Stalions, the unrelenting pursuit of career progress through unethical methods. Fans, sportsmen, and academics are still fascinated by the centuries-old proof of it.
According to Clark Power, a psychology and education professor at the University of Notre Dame who also serves as the director of a nonprofit organization that supports justice and character development in child athletics, “the Iliad wrote about cheating in the chariot races.” “In a way, it’s a human-nature problem.”
What initially drives someone to cheat? What about the gray areas of game play that don’t quite fit the definition of blatant cheating but still don’t follow the rules? And with so many prepared to cheat, is there any chance for genuinely fair competition?
“Sports will bring out whatever is inside of you and me,” stated John White, a practical theology professor who founded the Faith & Sports Institute at Baylor University. “Is it bringing out the best version of me or the worst version?”
This fall, the sport was rocked by the news that Stalions, an analyst making $55,000 a year, had assembled a network of amateur spies to film the sidelines of future Michigan opponents in an elaborate effort to decipher their play calls.
It prompted the NCAA, which forbids in-person scouting, to launch an investigation. Not only did it cost Stalions his job, but Chris Partridge, the coach of the Michigan linebackers, was also accused of attempting to tamper with the evidence after the discoveries were public. Even though there was no proof that head coach Jim Harbaugh approved of the plan or even knew about it, it caused the Big Ten to punish him for three games.