Cheating in Sports
In sports, there have been different degrees of a team or player trying to get an upper hand on their opponent, not by getting better players or practicing more, but by cheating. Cheating comes in many forms and sizes in present-day sports. One of the more common acts of cheating is playing using Performance Enhancing Drugs, otherwise known as PED’s. This drug gives the player an edge over their opponents, increasing a player’s muscle mass and strength. You may see a player in any type of sport using these drugs and will do anything to give themselves an edge over their opponents.
I believe this is one of the largest ethical dilemmas we can see in sports. On one hand, the athlete is putting their body at risk of depression, liver damage, cardiovascular disease, and other health concerns. On the other hand, you have athletes discretely and outright cheating, depleting the integrity of the sport. However, this has not stopped athletes over the years.
Another example of teams doing everything they can to win comes from a different aspect of sports, the use of technology. The 2017 Houston Astros perfectly displayed this. The organization used cameras, TVs, buzzers, and signals to relay to the batter what pitch was coming. This is another example of one of the largest cheating scandals in the modern era, and using technology to do so. With their use of technology to aid in sign stealing, the Astros went on to win a national championship in 2017, but baseball fans worldwide may have an asterisk next to it.
The reason I am writing about this topic is I have been obsessed with sports my entire life, and have been a Yankee fan my entire life. Seeing my team miss out on a championship because of the cheating of another team automatically makes me invested in other cheating involved in sports.
