What happened to winning with honor?

The sports world used to be about athletes trying to prove they were the best. I'm fine with that. Now, athletes only care about personal glory. They will do whatever it takes to win, and that includes abandoning all honor.


Lance Armstrong became a good example of this. He reluctantly admitted to his doping. He downplayed his wrongdoing by insisting that doping was a big part of the cycling world. He didn't have to have honor because he felt no one else did.

I could go with a more recent situation, the so-called deflate gate. I'm not going to go into the investigations and rulings for this one. Instead, I'm going to bring up a reaction that became too common. People would insist that everybody cheats. This makes Tom Brady's actions irrelevant in their eyes. In a sense, Brady's fans didn't care if Brady had honor. This is because they feel that athletes no longer need honor because of widespread problems. Personally, I don't want to expect all athletes to abandon honor due to our weakened expectations of them.

Another argument people made in favor of Brady was that it was the referees' fault. They handled the ball and should have caught the problem. Really? If the refs don't catch it, are we really supposed to fine with it?

I also wanted to bring up comments from Pedro Martinez. He went on The Late Show and talked about Manny Ramirez giving his team shots with Viagra. This was because Ramirez felt that the drug would enhance their performance. Although I do not know about performance-enhancing characteristics of Viagra, the intent is clear. The Red Sox have essentially admitted to taking what they perceived as performance-enhancing drugs during a run that ended with them winning the World Series. I'm personally surprised that this wasn't a bigger story. It wasn't an amusing anecdote, but rather proof that the Red Sox won without honor.

In many ways, people who defend this sort of behavior have a point. These problems are so widespread that it is nearly impossible to win any form of championship while maintaining honor. For me, that's not an excuse to support it. This is an argument for reducing support for major sports leagues. After all, why watch an event that is more about who excels at cheating when I care more about the actual skills that are being diminished?