Where does acceptable behavior in sports stop and cheating starts? It is just less than a month now that world renowned tennis superstar Maria Sharapova astonished the world, with an announcement that she has used a banned substance and withdrew from all international tournaments. Stories like this are becoming commonplace, and it is a hotly debated topic, both publicly and in sports psychology. Sport deviance is more easily recognized when negative activities ensue, like criminal behavior, arrests, cheating in the game or academically, and gambling; but less conspicuous occurrences and covert incidents like fixing matches, unfair recruiting, on or off the field dirty play and use of performance enhancing drugs are included, but are more difficult
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Naughton & Wechsler (as cited by Danielson, 2010) revealed that in a study of 17,500 student at 140 U.S. colleges, 61% of male athletes as against 43% male non-athletes used binge drinking. Sexual assault rates are reportedly higher but more studies are needed in this area as evidence is not forthcoming. Crosset et al. (cited by Danielson, 2010) gives sexual assault reports in 30 U.S. universities where a high number of sexual assault cases were …show more content…
As demonstrated in Blue Chips sport deviance is wide-spread and even up to today athletes are risking their reputation and bodies to outperform for rewards and fame. A line between fair play and cheating is disappearing. It appears that sports is more into finding ways to cheat and cover it up with more sophisticated methods, and these are outstripping detection methods by far. The Olympics, World Cup Football, World Tennis, World Cup Cricket, amateur sports and on and on it goes- all having major problems with sports deviance. The efforts at deterring deviance in sports by many organizations, on the other hand, raise serious questions. Today we are applauding the runners up of 2016 college basketball North Carolina, a school embroiled in academic fraud allegations, where students for years did not even have classes but received grades. The NCAA and other such organizations are either reluctant or impotent to punish these sports appropriately-handing down just meager sentences. So athletes are just getting off and getting braver. This whole issue has got to blow up in their faces one day. Coach Bell summed it up at the end of Blue Chips: “it’s all about money! not about playing
Naughton & Wechsler (as cited by Danielson, 2010) revealed that in a study of 17,500 student at 140 U.S. colleges, 61% of male athletes as against 43% male non-athletes used binge drinking. Sexual assault rates are reportedly higher but more studies are needed in this area as evidence is not forthcoming. Crosset et al. (cited by Danielson, 2010) gives sexual assault reports in 30 U.S. universities where a high number of sexual assault cases were …show more content…
As demonstrated in Blue Chips sport deviance is wide-spread and even up to today athletes are risking their reputation and bodies to outperform for rewards and fame. A line between fair play and cheating is disappearing. It appears that sports is more into finding ways to cheat and cover it up with more sophisticated methods, and these are outstripping detection methods by far. The Olympics, World Cup Football, World Tennis, World Cup Cricket, amateur sports and on and on it goes- all having major problems with sports deviance. The efforts at deterring deviance in sports by many organizations, on the other hand, raise serious questions. Today we are applauding the runners up of 2016 college basketball North Carolina, a school embroiled in academic fraud allegations, where students for years did not even have classes but received grades. The NCAA and other such organizations are either reluctant or impotent to punish these sports appropriately-handing down just meager sentences. So athletes are just getting off and getting braver. This whole issue has got to blow up in their faces one day. Coach Bell summed it up at the end of Blue Chips: “it’s all about money! not about playing