Scandals can be a deadly aspect in sport. It can bring a sport into disrepute. It can set a bad example for the youth. Cheating isn't acceptable in all aspects of life. When someone gets caught cheating, they will find themselves in boiling hot water. The punishment served can be light or, in most cases, very severe.
History has shown that despite the knowledge of the consequences, athletes have, and will continue to, find ways to do it. Even if they find creative ways to do it, they will eventually get caught doing it.
In a 1952 journal article titled, Crime and Punishment in Greek Athletics, Ohio State professor, Clarence Forbes, detailed some of the athletic scandals in ancient Greece, including a boxing bribery incident at the 98th Olympics in 388 B.C.. Eupolus of Thessaly allegedly bribed all three of his opponents to let him win, prompting games organisers to impose "heavy fines" on all four men. The money, according to Forbes, was then used to erect six bronze statues near the entrance to the stadium in Olympia, with inscriptions on four of them criticising the men and warning against future cheating.
The marathon at the 1904 Summer Games in St. Louis has been described by Olympics.com as, "The most bizarre spectacle in Olympic history." One runner was reportedly chased off the course by a pack of wild dogs. Another stopped at an orchard to eat some apples, developed stomach cramps, took a nap and finished fourth. A third man was supposedly hallucinating and carried by his trainers over the finish line. The apparent winner was American, Fred Lorz, who spent 11 miles riding along in a car. He was called out and admitted to cheating before he could be awarded a medal.
The Black Sox scandal was the first bombshell scandal in professional baseball and perhaps the most flagrant. In 1919, members of the Chicago White Sox accepted money from professional gamblers to effectively throw the World Series. Eight players were implicated in the scheme, with each of them later being indicted by a Chicago grand jury on conspiracy charges. Though they were all acquitted in the criminal trial, commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, still permanently banned them from organised baseball.
Thirty years after the Black Sox scandal, a group of college basketball players, starting at City College of New York, decided to take money from bookmakers, this time in exchange for manipulating the scores of games. A whopping 32 players from seven colleges eventually admitted to accepting bribes in the point-shaving scheme. Two of those players and at least 10 other fixers, agents or bookies went on to serve jail time (as per ESPN).
It was in the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico that the infamous, "Hand of God" goal was scored. This infamous goal by Diego Maradona led Argentina to a 2-1 win over England in the quarter-finals, which his team would eventually win. He initially said it was the "Hand of God" that knocked the ball into the net, rather than his own. However, in his autobiography 14 years later, Maradona fessed up. "What hand of God?" he wrote. "It was the hand of Diego! And it was like stealing the wallet of the English, too."
Cheating incidents in sports rarely involve acts of violence. In a brazen assault, a man named Shane Stant attacked top U.S. figure skater, Nancy Kerrigan, with a baton after practice. It was later revealed that Stant had been hired to attack Kerrigan by the ex-husband of her main rival, Tonya Harding, in hopes that the injury would prevent Kerrigan from competing in the national championships at the 1994 Winter Olympics. Kerrigan was forced to pull out of the national championships but recovered and won silver at those Games; Harding also competed in Lillehammer and finished eighth.
Perhaps one of the most shocking and oft-forgotten cheating scandals took place at the 2000 Paralympics, involving Spain's intellectual disability basketball team. The team won gold in Sydney but was later found to be fraudulent, with 10 of the 12 players having faked their disabilities. The incident had a number of devastating ripple effects, with Paralympic organisers deciding to suspend the entire intellectual disability classification at each of the next two Games, leaving athletes with legitimate disabilities on the sidelines for eight years. The two Spanish players who actually had intellectual disabilities had to forfeit their medals, just like their team-mates.
Baseball's steroid era remains the biggest doping scandal in history. Dozens of players were implicated, including Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and several other big-name stars. Congress even got involved. Major League Baseball was forced to overhaul it's drug-testing policies. While the time period has covered the "peak" of the era, including the 1998 home run record chase between McGwire and Sammy Sosa, it's effects stretched well beyond this window − from the Mitchell Report to Barry Bonds' trial for perjury.
Deflategate was a weird one and one of the greatest quarterbacks in National Football League (NFL) history was in the middle of it. The accusation was that Tom Brady, then of the New England Patriots, asked team equipment staffers to deliberately underinflate footballs in the AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts, which the Patriots won. Brady was suspended for four games and appealed that suspension all the way to a U.S. appeals court and the NFL commissioned a 243-page investigative report into what happened. Deflategate, as it came to be known, wasn't as dramatic as Spygate or as sinister as Bountygate but it will likely go down as the most memorable cheating incident in recent NFL history, given the quarterback involved.
The Spygate scandal was an NFL controversy during the 2007 season, in which it was discovered that the New England Patriots were videotaping opposing coaches' signals during games under head coach, Bill Belichick.
It began when the New England Patriots were disciplined by the NFL for videotaping New York Jets' defensive coaches' signals from an unauthorised location during a 9 September 2007 game. Videotaping opposing coaches is not illegal in the NFL, per se; there are designated areas allowed by the league to do such taping. The Patriots were instead videotaping the Jets' coaches from their own sideline during the game, NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, deemed it to be in violation of league rules, stating that the act represented a calculated and deliberate attempt to avoid long-standing rules designed to encourage fair play and promote honest competition on the playing field.
After an investigation, the NFL fined Patriots head coach Bill Belichick $500 000 (the maximum allowed by the league and the largest fine ever imposed on a coach in the league's history) for his role in the incident, fined the Patriots $250 000, and docked the team their original first-round selection in the 2008 NFL draft which would have been the 31st pick of the draft.
As part of their probe into the allegations, the NFL required the Patriots to turn over any and all notes and tapes relating to the taping of opponents' defensive signals. The Patriots refused to allow the video tapes to leave their athletic facilities; in turn, at Goodell's ordering, league officials went to the Patriots' facilities and smashed the tapes.
The tapes were immediately smashed and never thoroughly examined by league officials, the size and scope of Spygate remains largely unknown. This led to criticisms against Goodell for destroying mounting evidence that could have exposed the Patriots organisation. The destruction of the tapes was criticised on 1 February 2008 – 2 days before Super Bowl XLII – by U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, who requested to meet with Goodell. After meeting with Goodell on 13 February 2008, Specter reported that Goodell told him that Belichick had been engaged in the practice since he became head coach of the Patriots in 2000. Belichick said he believed he was operating within the rules as long as the tape was not used during the same game.
Some whistleblowers within the Patriots organisation revealed that the videotaping practices went back as early as the 2000 season. For instance, the Boston Herald published a story (which it later retracted) that the Patriots had also videotaped the St. Louis Rams' walkthrough practice prior to Super Bowl XXXVI in February 2002, an allegation denied by Belichick and later retracted by the Boston Herald. Meanwhile, Matt Walsh, a Patriots video assistant in 2001 who was fired after the team's 2002 season, told the media the same week that he had information and materials regarding the Patriots' videotaping practices but demanded an indemnity agreement before speaking with the NFL.
The NFL reached a deal with Walsh on 23 April 2008 and arranged a meeting between Goodell and Walsh. Before the meeting, Walsh sent eight videotapes, containing opponents' coaches' signals from the 2000 through 2002 seasons, in accordance with the agreement.
Goodell and Walsh met on 13 May 2008, at which time Walsh told Goodell he and other Patriots employees were present at the Rams' walkthrough to set up video equipment for the game but that there was no tape of the walkthrough made; as a result, Goodell told the media no additional penalties would be brought against the Patriots. Less than 24 hours later, the Herald issued an apology for the article about the alleged walkthrough tape.
The New Orleans Saints bounty scandal, colloquially known as "Bountygate," was an illegal program in which the New Orleans Saints of the NFL placed bounties on opposing players. The consensus around the program was that if a targeted player was knocked out of a game, a bonus would be paid to the defensive player that made the hit. A slush fund for paying the bounties was found to have operated from the 2009 season (the year in which the Saints won Super Bowl XLIV) to the 2011–12 playoffs.
Goodell responded with some of the most severe sanctions in the league's history and among the most severe punishments for in-game misconduct in North American professional sports history. Defensive co-ordinator, Gregg Williams, was suspended indefinitely, though this would be overturned the following year. Head coach, Sean Payton, was suspended for the entire 2012 season—the first time since Chuck Fairbanks in 1978 that a head coach had been suspended and the first time a head coach was suspended by the league. General manager, Mickey Loomis, was suspended for the first eight games of the 2012 season—the first time that a general manager was suspended by the league for any reason.
Assistant head coach, Joe Vitt, was suspended for the first six games of the 2012 season. The Saints organisation was penalised with a $500 000 fine and forced to forfeit their second-round draft selections in 2012 and 2013. In May 2012, four current and former Saints players were suspended after being named as ringleaders in the scandal, with linebacker, Jonathan Vilma, also being suspended for the entire 2012 season.
However, former commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, overturned all sanctions against the players in December 2012 after finding that although the players were "very much involved," the coaches and the Saints organisation were primarily responsible for the scandal.
Sign-stealing has always been a part of baseball but the Houston Astros took it to a whole new level when they began using a camera in centerfield to zoom in on an opposing catcher's signs to his pitcher. The second part of the scheme was far less technologically sophisticated; The Astros would bang a trash can to signal to their team-mate that a breaking ball was coming, or not bang it to signal a fastball. The incidents cast a pall over their 2017 World Series title led to several suspensions, firings and fines. Years later, there was an introduction of PitchCom, a way for catchers and pitchers to communicate their signs wirelessly.
Also known as "Crashgate," Nelson Piquet Jr.'s crash didn't become scandalous until a while after it occurred. In a race in 2008, Piquet had somewhat of a large crash with an opponent. It didn't seem like such a big deal because, in Formula 1 (where Nelson raced), crashes were anything but a rarity.
However, a while later, after Nelson pulled out of his team (Renault F1), allegations surfaced that the crash was on purpose, solely for the purpose to get Fernando Alonso a victory in the race. Nelson came out and spoke to the FIA and claimed that, indeed, he had been asked by his coach to stage the crash.
The case was intense for a while, with lots of charges from the team against Piquet and vice versa. Since then, though, it has simmered down and now Nelson is a certified NASCAR racer.
Bloodgate was a rugby union scandal involving English team, Harlequins, in their Heineken Cup quarter-final against Irish side, Leinster, on 12 April 2009. Harlequins wing, Tom Williams feigned an injury using a fake blood capsule in order for Harlequins to make another substitution late in the game.
The incident resulted in bans for Williams, director of rugby, Dean Richards and physiotherapist, Steph Brennan, as well as a fine for the club. It has been described as "rugby's biggest scandal".
Club manager, Dean Richards, had promised Williams a lofty increase in pay if he agreed to keep a blood capsule in his sock and insert it in his mouth and then bite upon contact to make it seem like he was bleeding and thus stop the time.
The first problem ensued when, in front of live cameras and hundreds in attendance, Williams dropped the capsule and had to pick it up and then start all over again.
He later admitted that it was indeed a blood capsule and suffered a four-month suspension, yet luckily nowhere near the four-year suspension of Richards.
The 2018 Australian ball-tampering scandal, also known as Sandpapergate, was a cricket cheating scandal surrounding the Australian national cricket team. In March 2018, during the third Test match against South Africa at Newlands in Cape Town, Cameron Bancroft was caught by television cameras trying to rough up one side of the ball with sandpaper to make it swing in flight.
Captain, Steve Smith and vice-captain, David Warner, were found to be involved and all three received unprecedented sanctions from Cricket Australia. Although he was found not to have been directly involved, Australia's coach, Darren Lehmann, announced he would step down from his role following the scandal. Smith was replaced by Tim Paine as captain in all formats before Aaron Finch took over from Paine in ODI's and T20i's.
Following Smith's admission, Australia's Prime Minister at that time, Malcolm Turnbull, said it was a "shocking disappointment." He phoned Cricket Australia (CA) Board chairman, David Peever, directly to express that disappointment and concern, saying that there has to be the strongest action taken. The Australian Sports Commission requested that Smith stand down immediately and the incident was widely condemned by former international players and officials.
In a press release dated 25 March 2018, CA CEO, James Sutherland, apologised to fans and confirmed that both Smith and Warner had agreed to stand down from their roles of captain and vice-captain, respectively, for the remainder of the match. In the same release, David Peever announced that Tim Paine, the team's wicket-keeper, had been endorsed by the Board of CA to step in as acting captain,= and Smith and Warner would take to the field under him. South Africa went on to win the Test match by 322 runs, Australia were dismissed cheaply for 107 in the fourth innings.
Cheating will never go unnoticed. Someone is bound to take notice of it. When it does, there will be a massive media storm. Reprecussions will be demanded. No one is immune from punishment. Sadly, scandals will continue to happen time after time after time.