The Cheating Era: Is There a Double Standard in College and Pro Sports?

The last few months in both college and pro sports have posed some serious questions.

First Spygate broke the news that the New England Patriots may have cheated in their past few seasons—in particular, in their Super Bowl Victory over the St. Louis Rams. This was reported in February by the Boston Globe—the team's hometown newspaper.

Then Outside the Lines reported that O.J. Mayo had received thousands of dollars in money and a flat screen T.V. for his dorm room during his short stay at USC. Before that, Reggie Bush reportedly was staying in a house provided by a USC booster.

Now, with baseball finally trying to clean up except for the fact Barry Bonds gets a pass and Roger Clemens gets caught, you have to wonder if the NCAA, MLB, and NFL have a double standard when it comes to sucessful teams and players.

Why should you ever have to lure a Reggie Bush or O.J. Mayo to USC? The answer is, you shouldn't—and whether or not the coaches knew anything, there had to be suspicions by those around the program.

Knowing O.J. Mayo had come from a poor family in West Virginia, why was he seen sporting expensive new shoes and clothes, having a large flat screen T.V. in his dorm room, and being seen with prime seats at Lakers games?

USC has so far escaped NCAA prosecution for compelling allegations that star tailback Reggie Bush and his family were given an expensive home by an aspiring agent while playing for the Trojans. 

Now, there is this "Outside The Lines" report, that goes into stunning detail about the money and gifts star guard O.J. Mayo allegedly received before and during his one season at USC.

According to the OTL investigation, Mayo received thousands of dollars' worth of clothes. A flat-screen TV for his dorm. Hotel rooms for him and his friends. And receipts for all of them, provided to ESPN by Louis Johnson.

All this was financed by a man named Rodney Guillory, who previously had gotten former USC guard Jeff Trepagnier in trouble for accepting agent kickbacks. Despite this, Guillory has been a fixture on USC's campus

Johnson told ESPN that he believes USC did not know about any of the kickbacks Mayo allegedly received. 

"I think after the Reggie Bush fiasco that they would have definitely taken steps to prevent this type of thing from happening again," Johnson said.

Assuming USC didn't know, the ongoing trend of rent-a-player for one year in college basketball should be considered at least mildly disturbing. USC is just the first school that is really getting caught, but there are many others with similar circumstances. High profile players getting in trouble with the law—and magically the charges get dropped and they are allowed back on the team? Hmm...  

It's a problem the NCAA needs to get a grip on if college athletics is going to maintain its amateur status. In some instances it feels like programs are being run like the minor leagues, so to speak.

Now to the Spygate fiasco...

Former New England Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh dismissed Patriots coach Bill Belichick's attempts to minimize the impact of the team's illegal taping of opponents' coaching signals.

" ... it was something that they continued to have me do throughout the two years I worked in video, under Coach Belichick," Walsh told HBO's Andrea Kremer in an interview scheduled to air Friday night on "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel."

"If it was of little or no importance, I imagine they wouldn't have continued to do it, and probably not taken the chances of going down onto the field in Pittsburgh or shooting from other teams' stadiums the way we did."

The Spygate investigation began after the NFL confiscated tapes from a team employee who recorded the New York Jets' defensive signals during the 2007 opener. Belichick was fined $500,000, while the team was fined $250,000 and forced to forfeit its 2008 first-round draft choice.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell essentially declared an end to the case after a 3½-hour meeting Tuesday with Walsh, who supplied the league with tapes of coaches' signals made by the Patriots. After meeting with Walsh later Tuesday, Sen. Arlen Specter called Wednesday for an independent investigation. The senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Specter criticized Goodell, saying he has made "ridiculous" assertions that wouldn't fly "in kindergarten."

Walsh told HBO that his superiors coached him on how to evade NFL rules limiting the number of camera operators per team to two, and that team officials instructed him on ways to avoid detection.

"The line of reasoning that we would give to other teams for why we need a third camera setup was, 'Well, our coaches want to have a tight shot of the kicker and the holder ... exchange just to go over with the guys in meetings. You know, they want a tight shot, you know, of the quarterback, you know, just to go over the quarterback's footwork and mechanics in meetings,'" said Walsh, who mentioned Patriots video coordinator Jimmy Dee as one of the superiors who coached him.

"If I was in the end zone, we would say, 'Well, we just want to have two end zone shots of the game because our coaches like always seeing the view of our players' backs.'"

Kremer asked Walsh about Belichick's comments about his lack of familiarity with Walsh and his actions, referencing a comment that "I couldn't pick Matt Walsh out of a lineup?"

"Um, it's funny. The first time I heard that was when somebody in Hawaii brought the quote to me, too. And my first hand answer to them was, 'Well, I wonder if he can pick me out on one of the three team pictures we're in together.'

"I don't know, if I was just that forgettable and he can't remember me, or if he was just trying to distance himself from this whole situation as best as he could.  I think Bill's got a pretty good memory."

"When I was doing it, I understood what we were doing to be wrong," Walsh said. "We went to great lengths to keep from being caught. Just saying that the rules were misinterpreted isn't enough of an apology or a reasoning for what was done. 

"Coach Belichick's explanation for having misinterpreted the rules, to me, that really didn't sound like taking responsibility for what we had done, especially considering the great lengths that we had gone through to hide what we were doing."

It seems that there is indeed a double standard for successful teams and players in both college and pro sports right now. The real question is "Will it ever end?"