Ethics Newsline®

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The high-stakes arena of professional sports was rocked by a series of ethics scandals last week, leading many in the mainstream media to wonder if athletics have suffered incalculable and irreparable damage to their credibility.

As stated in a July 25 editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “Pro bike racing has run itself into a ditch. Scrutiny of the National Basketball Association’s oversight of its referees may call the league’s integrity into question. When Barry Bonds breaks the home run record, the celebration will be muted by Major League Baseball’s history of willful blindness to a growing steroid problem. If sports leagues fail to elevate their level of ethical play, they deserve all the public backlash they will receive.”

Brief details of those and other stories:

• NBA commissioner David Stern, facing what may be the worst crisis in professional basketball’s history, blasted a referee under investigation in an alleged betting scandal, calling him a “rogue, isolated criminal.” The Chicago Tribune reports that former referee Tim Donaghy, who resigned July 9 after finding himself in the crosshairs of an FBI probe, is alleged also to have provided information that could have given an advantage to someone who bet on the game. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti contends that the incident is of the absolute worst order: “Leagues can survive almost any scandal these days, from steroids to Pete Rose to dog fighting, but the scab that never heals is when a fan no longer trusts the official who controls a game. The manipulation of outcomes by a ref poisons the very core of why people invest their money, time, and energy into sports. For their family-of-four, $350 investment, consumers should expect an honest product above reproach. Without that trust from league-employed officials, pro basketball might as well be pro wrestling.” Donaghy had not been officially charged with any crime as this issue of Newsline went to press.
• Cycling’s premier event has been rocked by three alleged incidents involving performance-enhancing substances. In the most widely reported incident, yellow-jersey leader Michael Rasmussen was yanked by his Danish team after it was disclosed that he had missed several drug tests, reports the Canadian National Post. Before Rasmussen’s sacking, the French Confidis team withdrew after one of its riders failed a drug test. And before that, Kazakhstan’s Astana team withdrew after its leader, Alexander Vinokourov, failed a blood-doping test. Vinokourov has contested the results of that test.
• Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and two co-defendants pleaded not guilty to federal charges relating to dog-fighting last week as his team, stunned by the allegations, prepared to open training camp without him. A fourth man pleaded guilty on Monday, promising to cooperate with prosecutors, reports the Associated Press. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, whether Vick can play at all during the upcoming season is unclear and depends in part on the results of a league investigation of the charges. Those charges, which include gruesome allegations of alleged fights and executions of losing dogs, prompted demonstrations by animal-rights activists and resulted in the suspension of some advertising contracts involving Vick’s endorsements.
• San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds was on the verge of tying Major League Baseball’s home run record last week, but the buzz was not entirely about batting: Much of the media coverage dealt with how league officials and fans planned to react to what many view as a tainted record because of Bonds’ alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. Other than Bonds, the most visible player in the drama, reports Newsday, is commissioner Bud Selig, who announced last week — after a month of deliberation — that he would attend games in which Bonds was likely to hit his historic home runs. Selig said he decided to attend “out of respect for the tradition of this game, the magnitude of the record, and the fact that all citizens in this country are innocent until proven guilty.” While Bonds has been linked to the use of performance-enhancing drugs through the statements of others and has testified before a grand jury that he may have unwittingly used a steroid-based cream or liquid, he has not been formally accused of any wrongdoing, notes the official Major League Baseball site MLB.com.