U N I T 9 S p o r t s & F i t ne ss 1
Cheating in Sports
Pre-Reading Questions
Think about the following questions.
1. How do you think professional athletes cheat?
2. Which sports are the most violent?
3. Who is usually to blame for cheating, players or coaches?
Vocabulary Preview
Match each word or phrase with the correct definition.
1. ingenious a. clever
2. loophole b. not earned; not merited
3. opponent c. a rival; an enemy
4. single-mindedly d. with all one’s attention or thought
5. sluggish e. slow; moving like a slug
6. undeserved f. a missing part of a rule allowing people to avoid the rule
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Cheating in Sports Track 33
S
ports are about competition. The goal of every athlete, or every team, is
to win. Unfortunately, two factors have been pushing American sports
in an unhealthy direction. One of these factors is the obsession with
winning, no matter what the cost. The other factor is money. These two factors
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put extreme pressure on both players and coaches to focus single-mindedly on
winning. This has resulted in a problem that is spreading and becoming more
serious. That problem is cheating.
Of course, there are rules in all sports to penalize cheating. So coaches and
players have had to come up with ingenious ways to get around the rules.
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Getting a competitive edge, even unfairly, is seen as a “strategy” rather than
cheating. Illegal acts are now even being accepted as part of the game. Coaches
encourage players to cheat, or coaches simply look the other way when they
know players commit illegal acts during games. And referees rarely do
anything to discourage cheating, or they impose minimal penalties.
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A professor of sports and recreation, Dr. James Frey, introduced the term,
“normative cheating” to refer to the methods of cheating commonly used in
sports today. This refers to strategies used to create conditions of some advantage
over an opponent. These strategies do not actually break the
rules. Instead, coaches and players have learned how to use
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loopholes in the rules to gain a competitive advantage.
There are many forms of normative cheating. In
basketball, for example, it is common for a player to
pretend to be fouled in order to receive an undeserved foul
shot. In football, players are typically coached to use illegal
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techniques to hold or trip opponents without referees noticing.
2
factors --- things or situations that cause a result
3
obsession --- extreme single-minded focus
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penalize --- to punish
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encourage --- to support; to inspire
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referee --- a judge for a sport
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discourage --- to prevent by causing others to lose will or desire
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impose --- to require; to demand
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doctor --- to change or fix in an illegal way
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recruit --- to seek new members
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letter of the law --- the exact wording of the law
And in baseball, home teams often “doctor” their fields to
suit their strengths and minimize the strengths of their
opponents. For example, if a home team knows they will
face a fast team, they will spread water or sand between
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bases to slow down the runners of the other team. Other
techniques used by home teams to cheat include increasing
the heat in the visitor’s locker room to make the athletes
sluggish. And some schools even use psychological tricks
such as painting the visitor’s locker room pink, a color said to
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reduce strength and make people less aggressive.
Normative cheating extends to off-the-field areas of sports as
well. Colleges compete to recruit the best high school players in
the country. Although there are rules about when and how often colleges can
contact recruits, coaches are adept at bending these rules. For instance, it is
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against the rules to send newspaper clippings about a university sports team to
players being recruited. However, if a newspaper clipping is attached to the back
of a letter, it is technically OK, even if the letter has only one sentence.
Normative cheating has even crept into American high school sports. If a
good athlete wants to play for a school far away from where he lives, he may
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move to the home of a relative or friend that does live near that school. That
way, he technically lives within the school district of his new school. He has
obeyed the letter of the law, but not the spirit.
Reading Time _______ minutes _______ seconds 537 words
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R eading Comprehension
A Mark each statement as either true (T) or false (F) according to the
reading.
1. ____ Both coaches and athletes are to blame for widespread cheating in
sports.
2. ____ Pink is a good color for a locker room.
3. ____ Not all forms of cheating break the rules of sports.
4. ____ There are rules against cheating in sports.
B Choose the best answer.
1. What is the definition of “normative cheating”?
a. Cheating by changing the rules
b. Cheating normally used to break rules
c. Cheating that gives an edge within the rules
d. Cheating that is easily noticed
2. Which is NOT an example of normative cheating?
a. Acting as if you have been hit by another player
b. Creating a bad atmosphere in another team’s area
c. Hitting another player on purpose to hurt the player
d. Hold or trip opponents without referees noticing
3. Which statement would the writer probably agree with?
a. Athletes who cheat should be banned from participating in sports.
b. Everybody cheats, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
c. If cheating is not controlled, sports will suffer more and more.
d. Just because an action is technically not cheating doesn’t mean that it is
OK to do.
C For the next two questions, look for the answers in the passage and
write them on the lines provided.
1. What is primarily responsible for the increase in cheating in sports?
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
2. How has normative cheating made its way into high school sports?
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
S ummary
Fill in the blanks with the phrases from the list. Use each phrase only once.
normative cheating cheating is illegal loopholes in rules
a team might undeserved foul shot athletes and coaches
Because some 1 __________________ are single-minded and focused on
winning no matter what the cost, cheating has become more common in sports. Of
course, 2 _________________, so players and coaches have come up with
ingenious ways to get around the rules. They have found 3 _________________
that allow them to cheat to get an advantage over opponents. This kind of cheating is
called 4 _________________. One example of this kind of cheating is when a
player pretends to be fouled in order to get a(n) 5 _________________. Or
6 _________________ set the heat very high in the opponent’s locker room to
make players on that team sluggish during the game.
V ocabulary Extension
Here are six words that are related to the topic but are not in the reading.
Fill in each blank with the best word from the list. Use each word only
once.
spectators umpires tactics leagues injured season
1. Baseball has __________, not referees.
2. The baseball __________ starts in early spring.
3. There were over 10,000 __________ at the stadium for the final game
of the World Series.
4. Many sports have amateur and professional __________ that athletes play in.
5. The hockey player __________ his leg in the game.
6. Some teams use unfair __________ to try to win. For example, they try to hurt
the other players so they can’t play as well.
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S upplemental Reading
Drugs in Sports Track 34
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he International Olympics Committee has established special rules
banning drugs to enhance performance. However, some athletes are
experimenting with new drugs that are difficult to detect.
The IOC forbids athletes from using steroids as strength builders. The most
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popular steroids are man-made forms of testosterone, a hormone already
present in the body.
Another popular performance-enhancer is EPO. EPO, or Erythropoientin,
regulates red blood-cell production. These cells deliver
oxygen throughout the body. The oxygen boost it provides
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can improve an athlete’s performance in a 20-minute run by
thirty seconds. In a marathon, it could give an athlete a
4-minute advantage. EPO is dangerous because it can make
the blood too thick for the heart to pump.
Human growth hormone, a third commonly used
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enhancer, is a naturally occurring amino acid which helps
control growth from birth to adulthood. Genetically
engineered HGH became available in 1985. Athletes use
HGH to develop bigger muscles and then take steroids to
strengthen the muscles. The drug is hard to detect because
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it passes out of the body in less than 45 minutes.
The newest wave of performance enhancement is through a blood substitute
called Hemopure. The effect of using Hemopure is similar to the effect of EPO.
However, there is no current test that can detect Hemopure in the blood.
Discussion
Discuss the following questions.
1. Do you think athletes should have the freedom of choice to use
performance enhancing drugs? Why or why not?
2. Some say that mandatory drug testing is a violation of a person’s right to privacy.
Do you agree or disagree?
