It is easy to define cheating, but
tricky to use only one, unchanging definition in sports.
During the 2012 Olympic Games in
London people were shocked when four women’s badminton teams purposely tried to
lose a final match in the round robin pool stage of the Olympic tournament to gain
a more favorable draw in the knockout rounds eventually leading to the gold
medal match.
The teams were disqualified, the
players were shamed, the coaches were investigated, and officials from china,
South Korea, and Indonesia—the nations of the offending teams—were quick to
issue apologies and try to restore their standing in the word of Olympic
sports.
But despite the condemnations and
apologies, the practice of “gaming the game”
has a long history in sports, and is naïve for IOC and Badminton World Federation
(BWF) officials to think otherwise. They know that this occurs regularly in
tournaments organized in this way where teams often have an incentive to lose in
order to eventually win a medal or prize money.
Whenever the stakes for winning a
medal or money are high most professional coaches and athletes will use
strategies to achieve their ultimate goal, even if the strategies violate game rules,
or involve under-performing or strategically losing in the short run to be
successful in the long run. In fact, when they don’t do this, many fans and
commentators accuse them of being naïve or incompetent.
Most of us who follow sports know that
strategic rule violations and strategic “tanking” (not trying to do one’s best
or win a game, match, or contest) occur regularly. For the most part, we see it
as “part of the game.” Examples include the following:
·
Strategic
rule violations: Basketball players are taught to commit “good fouls” and “hard
fouls,” and NFL teams deliberately take penalties by letting the 30-second play
clock run out so they can gain better field goal position or waste time at the
end of a close game.
·
Strategic
under-performance: Baseball pitchers intentionally walk a batter instead of using
their skills to face the batter directly, basketball teams try to run out the
clock by holding the ball rather than trying their best to score, top swimmers slack
off during qualifying heats to save their energy for the ultimate medal race, and
playoff-bound NFL teams use second and third team players instead of their best
players in late season games that they can lose without affecting their place
in the playoffs.
·
Strategic
losing: Tennis players tank matches to be eliminated early from low status
tournaments to save their bodies and let injuries heal before upcoming high
status tournaments, and NBA teams don’t try to win late-season games so they
can be placed in a team lottery for the number one draft pick.
Of course, there’s a difference
between violating rules in an effort to win and not trying to win or purposely
losing. But this difference becomes fuzzy when the outcome of an end-of-season
NFL game has no bearing on winning subsequent playoff games and the Super Bowl.
Similarly, losing or tying a match in a group pool badminton match to gain an
advantage in the draw for the knock out rounds in the Olympics can be part of
an overall strategy to win a medal.
So what is cheating and what isn’t?
When are violating rules, under-performing, and losing—or at least not trying to
win—a form of cheating and when are they part of an accepted strategy for
obtaining an ultimate win? These were the issues raised by the badminton
teams during the 2012 Olympic Games.
To put this in perspective for people
in the United States, imagine that Misty May and Kerri Walsh, the best beach
volleyball team in the world, strategically lost a match that would not affect
their quest for a medal but would prevent them from meeting and possibly eliminating
another skilled US team that also had a chance to win a medal. Imagine further
that this strategy put both teams in position to win gold and silver medals by
allowing them to play each other in the gold medal match. Imagine even further
that the US beach volleyball coach told them to use this strategy and their
sponsor—also the sponsor for the other US team—told them that this strategy was
a win-win for everyone involved.
With all this at stake, let’s
imagine that May and Walsh cleverly tank their match and eventually meet the
other US team in the finals, guaranteeing them the gold and silver medals. Additionally,
this double win increased the fund raising power of the USOC and the volleyball
federation, and increased visibility for their sponsor that gave endorsement contract
extensions to the four women and additional money to promote beach volleyball among
young people in the United States.
This may sound like a far-fetched
scenario, but it is very similar to the scenario facing the Chinese team in the
badminton scandal. Given this similarity, here are questions from a U.S.
perspective: What would be the response
of fans in the U.S. where Olympic medals are used as part of a global scorecard
for nations? Would they condemn May and Walsh as cheaters or praise them as
wise tournament bracket managers? How would media commentators represent May
and Walsh to their audience—as cheaters or “team players”?
Here are questions from perspectives
outside the U.S.: If the Olympics were in Rio, Brazil and many Brazilians of
moderate means had sacrificed to buy ticket to see the best in the world play during
the day of the tanked match, would they see May and Walsh as cheaters and demand
refunds for their tickets? How would Sky TV commentators represent May and
Walsh to their European audience—as ugly or loyal Americans? And how would the IOC and other officials Rio
Olympics respond?
These questions raise issues about
who draws the line between cheating and acceptable strategy in various
situations and how they make their decision. For example, if there were no
spectators or only nonpaying spectators who knew the players, there would be no
issue and certainly no moral condemnations of the players. In fact, in this
situation, the team benefiting from a loss might just forfeit the math so the
rest of the competition schedule could continue.
But the cheater versus acceptable strategy
line shifts in the case of commercial sports where sponsors seek revenues,
promoters seek legitimacy, and paying spectators seek excitement. This is why Sebastian
Coe, the chief organizer of the London 2012 Olympic Games said in response to
the badminton scandal, “It’s depressing. Who wants to sit through something
like that?” Of course, what he meant was that “we set high ticket prices (about
$115 for the badminton session) with the promise that spectators would see
athletes conform to the spirit of the Olympic Games. Coe is familiar with the reality
facing athletes for whom winning medals is usually a life changing achievement,
but he chose to view the situation from the perspective of the spectators.
However, neither he nor other officials refunded money to those who bought
tickets to the tanked matches.
The athletes who make it to the
Olympics are well aware of “spirit of the Olympic Games,” but many of them have
heard it so many times from people who profit from saying it that they see it more
as a marketing slogan than a non-negotiable, all-encompassing principle. They
also know about the overwhelming commercialization of the Olympics, the power and
influence of corporate sponsors and media companies, the billions of dollars that
change hands in connection with the games, and the life changing stakes
associated with winning medals. And this makes it beyond naïve for IOC and BWF officials
to think that the abstract notion of “Olympic Spirit” will be the sole guide for
athletes in the Olympics. So why did they organize the badminton competition in
a way that gives teams an incentive to tank matches in a quest for medals?
Of course, the spectators who
consume the Olympics and believe myths about the “essential purity and goodness
of sports” are likely to condemn competitors that fail to reaffirm their
beliefs. It is easier for them to condemn individual athletes and coaches than
it is to revise long held beliefs that sport somehow transcends the realities of everyday life.
