A functional analysis of cheating and corruption in sports

ABSTRACT

My main goal here is to develop a functional analysis of cheating and corruption in sports, and to differentiate cheating within the broader category of corruption. Whereas officials can act corruptly, they cannot cheat. In contrast, sports participants, since they occupy two roles, can do both. I argue that although acts of cheating are acts of corruption, not all corrupt acts by competitors are acts of cheating. I also respond to some skeptical challenges and criticisms of the concept of ‘cheating’ by providing some opposing arguments and a provisional definition. I argue that cheating in sports occurs in the context of a complex institutional practice. It transpires due to some failing in the efforts and/or limitations of sports officials to prohibit it. In central cases it consists in both the functional and ethical violation of the constitutional norms of a sport in the service of obtaining unearned victory for the cheater.

KEYWORDS:

• Cheating
• corruption
• adversarial ethics
• process ethics
• institution
• constitution

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor, Paul Gaffney, for their helpful comments and criticisms. I would also like to thank Paul for his guidance. The remaining errors and shortcomings are, of course, mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I believe that Nagel (1979, 85) is the source of this directional metaphor which contrasts the perspective of the competitors, who face each other parallel to the plane of the field (or horizontally), with the non-competitive perspective of the officials who stand on the field (vertically) but rise above and are independent of the competing. This metaphor also reflects the right-angled contrast between contesting and officiating similar to the vertical (or y) axis and the horizontal (or x) axis of a two-dimensional graph.

2. S.K. Wertz believes that players are ‘not obligated not to cheat, only expected not to’ (1981, 24). But this is too weak. Players agree to play by the rules, and this entails that they have an obligation not to cheat.

3. Does this mean that the ethical conduct of sport presupposes its good functioning? Oftentimes perhaps but not necessarily because frustrating the good functioning of immoral sports could be ethical. For more on this point see MacRae (2019, 343–344). The general point here is that perfectionist value and ethical value are different. However, ethical compliance with the norms of a sport presupposes its good functioning. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer or the editor for raising this matter.

4. There are a multiplicity of win-win ethical acts and outcomes. They can be classified in terms of the type of cooperation they embody. These include economies of scale, gains from trade, risk pooling, self-binding, and information transmission. See Heath (2006) for a wealth of examples.

5. On the distinction between System (or Type) One and Two forms of cognition see Kahneman (2011).

6. For an explanation of this distinction see MacRae (2021, 76-77).

7. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer or the editor for pointing out that in the sort of case I have just described, we can imagine that the conduct of play was functionally perfect despite the game being thoroughly corrupted, and so whereas cheating is a form of corruption that presupposes a functional failing in the conduct of a competition, this is not a necessary condition of corruption. This shows that some acts of corruption can ‘altogether break’ a competition in a way different than the ways in which cheating can ‘altogether break’ or corrupt one, that ‘corruption’ and ‘cheating’, in other words, are distinct concepts.

8. I owe this question to an anonymous reviewer.

9. Note that this convention is different than the strategy at the end of a close game where the leading team dribbles out, or tries to dribble out, most of the shot clock to limit the number of possessions their opponent might have to mount a comeback.

10. This point also explains why not all the conventions of a sport are part of what D’Agostino characterizes as that sport’s ethos. See D’Agostino (1981, 14–15).