I agree with the idea that people that cheated aren’t really the winners under the rules, but I also disagree with the idea of changing the history books and awarding the win to someone else. But whoever came in second didn’t actually win either, even if the only person ahead of them was a cheater. Can we say for sure that that person would have won if the person in front of them wasn’t a cheater? Can we say for sure that person wasn’t also cheating but just wasn’t caught because they weren’t under as much scrutiny since they didn’t win? There’s no way to account for that and it doesn’t change what ACTUALLY happened and how people remember it.
It’s even worse when history is modified because of things that aren’t actually part of what happened in the competition itself. Like with Penn State, they absolutely deserve to be punished, but I’m not sure how an administrative cover-up has any impact on the actual results on the field. Had the whole Sandusky thing never happened, they would have won exactly the same number of games. Or, like with Shoeless Joe Jackson, pretending he isn’t one of the best players ever, especially when there’s no on-field proof of impact (didn’t he have some of the best stats of players for both teams?).
I think the best way to handle these situations is to record how it played out, add an asterisk, and let it work it’s own way out. Hell, that’s half the fun of sports, arguing about all of those sorts of distinctions. Sure, if someone cheated and they got anything extra like money, I’m fine with taking that away since they didn’t win legitimately, but I think anything more than an asterisk is doing more harm than good.
No, being towed isn’t riding a bicycle any more than riding a taxi is. Read post #14 again. There’s a judgement call everyone has to make when they decide just what constitutes a sport. For me, riding a bike using your own muscle power as fast as you can is the essential element of the Tour de France. Blood composition is not. Other people disagree and that’s cool.
I’m not trying to cover anything up, I’m arguing against the USADA coverup. Everybody should know Lance Armstrong was accused of doping and didn’t fight it, implying, but not proving, he did drugs during the races. It should be prominently written in books about him and the TdF. But it is up to each and every person who reads that information to judge whether or not that disqualifies him according to their definition of the sport.
For me, it doesn’t, because he still rode his bike faster than everybody else. To other people with an inordinate preoccupation with bodily chemistry, it makes all the difference and he should be considered a loser. So be it. My argument is that everyone should get to make that call. Don’t paper over the fact that Armstrong was there and he rode his bike from start to finish faster than everyone else.
It depends on part on the event. For example, suppose Ben Johnson had been disqualified from the 100m final at the Seoul Olympics because he ran out of his lane. Would it be “right” to say that Carl Lewis was the winner? Why is this different from Johnson being disqualified for a positive drug test?
On the other hand, it makes no sense to say that if the winner of a single-elimination tournament is subsequently disqualified for a condition that had applied during the entire tournament (e.g. having illegal players), then the runner-up is declared the winner; what about the other teams that the disqualified team beat? (Case in point: the team on which the movie Friday Night Lights was based - they lost in the Texas state semi-finals to a team that won the final, but later that team was disqualified for having illegal players, and the team it beat in the final was declared the state champion, and never mind that the team that lost the semi-final came the closest to winning.) The NCAA gets this right by simply saying that there is no champion (or, as I like to say, the title goes to “Vacated University of Indianapolis” (which is where the NCAA Headquarters is located) when this happens.
Here, I agree - and, in fact, I have little doubt that the “vacating wins” penalty was targeted at Paterno and his “most wins in college football” title more than at the school. Normally, when the NCAA releases a public report on a school’s penalties, no names are mentioned; for example, when USC was hit with sanctions a few years ago, it said that football wins that were vacated had to be removed from “the head coach’s record” without mentioning Pete Carroll by name. However, the Penn State report mentioned Joe Paterno by name when it said that the wins had to be stripped from his record.
…its not about “your” definition of a sport. You can define it any way you like in your head. Its about “the” definition of a sport. And if you are a cheater: your are a cheater. And just because you personally don’t think someones a cheater doesn’t stop them from being a cheat!
Yes, this is based on sort of a narrow interpretation of what a record book is. An actual history of the sport is going to include all of this stuff and even a basic reference like Wikipedia includes notes about championships that were later stripped. A list of winners might not go into all the details, but it’s not like USADA is going to pretend Lance Armstrong never ran in the race. He won’t be recognized as the winner of the Tour de France for those years. Like I’ve said in other threads, yes, this stuff gets ridiculous after a certain point. But the alternative is honoring cheaters and saying they got away with it, which is not a great option either. That’s where baseball is, and people are resigned to it but not happy with it.
In the women’s’ 4x400 final at the 2000 Olympics, Marion Jones cuts through the infield in one of the turns during her leg, helping the USA win the gold medal.
In the women’s’ 4x400 final at the 2000 Olympics, Marion Jones is aided by her drug use (which she admitted to doing seven years later), helping the USA win the gold medal.
What’s the difference?
In #1, the entire team is disqualified.
In #2, the Court for Arbitration in Sport ruled that the other three runners get to keep their gold medals and it still counts as a “USA gold medal.”
The way I see it is this. Big time sporting events are, by nature, a Dionysian experience. It’s all about the big game and thousands or millions of fans coming together to share the experience of rooting for a victory. The idea of “sports” reaches an apex when a competition is decided by a close margin. In such situations the outcome will necessarily depend on the officiating, and from time to time the officials will make a mistake. A team will break the rules, the officials won’t notice, and that team will go on to win anyway.
Record books exist to contribute the experience by helping people remember the great moments, great performances, great individuals, and great teams in the history of sports. If we decide that record books should be endlessly rewritten years or decades after the fact to reflect new revelations about who cheated, people’s feelings about steroids, criminal behavior of the coaching staff, and so forth, that undercuts the reason for the record books to exist. Which is more enjoyable: watching your team win and knowing that they’ll be recorded as the champions, or watching your team win and having no idea if the championship will be revoked fifteen years later?
I think I agree with you, but I’m not sure we can reconcile the concepts of “Dionysian experience” and “record book.” If you’re viewing it as a Dionysian experience, who cares what a record book says later- especially years after the fact?
Most of this is wrong. Armstrong won the Tour de France by huge margins most years. And for example Penn State won some close games, but not all of them. Second, a close content does not “necessarily depend on the officiating.” The can be the case, but it doesn’t have to be. And I think you’re also wrong to conflate breaking the rules and cheating. Rules violations can include fouls and even infractions that don’t necessarily confer a competitive advantage. Cheating is always intended to create a competitive advantage (even if the facts later show that some types of cheating, like corked bats, do not work). So I think you’re combining several different concepts in a way that confuses the issue. Even if referees screw up and it affects the outcome, that’s not the same thing as cheating. No fan likes seeing the refs screw up, but we understand that it happens. That’s not the same as a competitor breaking the rules to gain an advantage.
Unless that’s not why they exist.
The enjoyable part is watching the team win. The clauses afterward aren’t as significant.
He’s being hosed by urine test results that show he was doping.
I’m having trouble taking you seriously now. He rode his bike from start to finish fastest because he was cheating. If there was a minimum weight requirement for bikes, and Armstrong’s was under it, that would be cheating too. If he took a shortcut, guess what? Still cheating.
Part of the difference is that that distinction can be made at the time of the event. If, for instance, someone is found to have be positive for drugs before running an event, they never run in the first place. Although, I do think something like a 100m is a bit of a special case because, well, there’s going to be very little argument over who would have won had the winner not cheated.
My greater concern is when things are discovered after the fact and trying to correct for them. Especially with a sport like football, if one player is ineligible or juicing, if a team still won 40-7, would that single player not having been there made them lose? Probably not. In that sense, it doesn’t seem fair to me to force the whole team to vacate the victory, especially if they can’t prove anyone else knew. However, if the game is a lot closer it gets a lot fuzzier, especially if that player had a major role.
That’s sort of why I’d rather just leave the history as is and just mark it accordingly, because I don’t think there’s any real objective way to draw that line precisely because it’s outside the rules.
This sort of thing does really bother me, specifically when reassigning the winner. I can kind of understand vacating a win, but unless it’s objectively clear who would have won had the cheaters not won, it seems like it’s particularly unfair. Hell, imagine if something like that happened in a major sport and the super bowl winner was disqualified and they gave it to the super bowl loser, possibly made worse if the loser to the cheating team lost on a last second field goal and had beaten the other team in the regular season or something. The NCAA can vacate a title, but a major sport can’t not have a champion.
I wasn’t aware of that, but it’s a fair point. If they were particularly going after Paterno, considering he was complicit in the whole fiasco. I guess I feel less bad about that now.