When cheaters prosper

This week, eight men will be inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. The deserving group includes Fred “Curly” Neal of the Harlem Globetrotters; football players Leo Hart of Duke and Ken Huff of UNC; coaches Jack Jenson of Guilford College and North Carolina’s Roy Williams; administrators Tom Butters of Duke and Bill Hensley of Wake and N.C. State; and NASCAR’s Richard Childress.

Honors go to “those persons or teams who by their excellence in the world of sport brought recognition and esteem to themselves and the state of North Carolina,” according to nominating guidelines posted by the Hall of Fame. No standard related to personal character is mentioned.

That differs from the College Football Hall of Fame, which earlier this month announced 15 inductees to be enshrined next summer. One of the football organization’s four criteria for inclusion is that a nominee has “proven himself worthy as a citizen after his football career, carrying the ideals of football forward into his community.”

The focus on post-career personal integrity may mitigate the inclusion of coach Lou Holtz, who “highlights” the covey of 2008 honorees, according to a College Football Hall of Fame press release.

Holtz was repeatedly caught cheating en route to the Hall of Fame. Yet he continued to get good coaching assignments, and landed a lucrative spot as a commentator on ESPN football telecasts after resigning at South Carolina just ahead of a 3-year probation for multiple infractions. Now Holtz will be counted among the game’s greats.

Something is wrong with this picture. Something is wrong when cheating, including directly handing money to players, is not mentioned in news reports of Holtz’s induction, or in commentary about the message in celebrating his achievement.

Holtz’s first major head coaching job was at N.C. State, where from 1972-75 he posted a 33-12-3 record overall, 16-5-2 in the ACC. Each of his four Wolfpack squads got bowl bids in an era when such invitations were fairly uncommon.

There was no hint of scandal before Holtz left Raleigh for a 13-game fling directing the NFL’s New York Jets. Power plays with athletic department staff, yes. A confrontation during which he had a math professor arrested for jogging within sight of his football practice, to be sure.

The cheating came later, following a seven-season stint at Arkansas, where Holtz famously opined, “I don’t expect to win enough games to be put on NCAA probation.”

Holtz coached at six schools during his career and took each to a bowl game, an unmatched achievement. He also is unparalleled in taking four schools to top-20 finishes in the polls, N.C. State among them. The program builder compiled a 249-132-7 career record at William & Mary, N.C. State, Arkansas, Minnesota, Notre Dame, and South Carolina. His 1988 Fighting Irish squad was undefeated, beating Miami for the national title.

On its face, then, Holtz’s record makes him a worthy choice to be honored.

Except for one small detail: Holtz got half of those six schools, the last three at which he coached, on NCAA probation.

The infractions in one case included handing money directly to prospects. Minnesota went on probation in 1991, Notre Dame in 1998 for the only time ever, and South Carolina in 2005, all courtesy of actions taken while Holtz was head football coach.

Unfortunately, we are increasingly inured to cheating, encountered with numbing regularity in politics, business, and classroom.

“Widespread cheating is undermining some of the most important ideals of American society,” David Callahan wrote in his 2004 book, “The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead.” “The principle of equal opportunity is subverted when those who play by the rules are beaten out by cheaters, as happens every day in academics, sports, business, and other arenas. The belief that hard work is the key to success is mocked when people see, constantly, that success comes faster to those who cut corners.”

Oddly, we are far less likely to disdain wrongdoing by a coach than by an athlete.

We probe, moan, and pontificate when we discover an athlete knowingly took drugs to gain an advantage, as with track’s Marion Jones or baseball’s Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Roger Clemens. Yet with scarcely a ripple of protest we honor people in positions of leadership who habitually violate rules to get ahead. We name buildings after them, for goodness sake.

So why the difference in treatment? If we give coaches a free pass because they succeed, shouldn’t we do the same for athletes?

Callahan believes athletes’ corruption bothers us more because we are attached to the iconic records they challenge and break, such as Major League baseball's mark for career home runs.

“I guess that when athletes cheat it seems particularly sad because they are often breaking records set by athletes in earlier years who didn’t have performance-enhancing drugs,” Callahan said in a telephone interview. “It feels like there’s some very sacrosanct athletic tradition spanning decades that has been violated.”

To Callahan’s mind, coaches are not subject to a similar depth of scrutiny, and for a chilling reason. “The coach’s job is to win,” he said. “It’s assumed that college athletics is a dirty game, and most coaches cheat one way or another.”

Callahan likens cheating by coaches to manipulations by “Wall Street tycoons” who bilk people of millions of dollars, incur relatively minor punishments, and emerge with their wealth and public standing largely intact. “The ends are remembered and the means are forgotten in a way,” Callahan said the other day. “Maybe that’s true with coaching.”

Most of us prefer to trust the coaches with whom we are familiar. We hold fast to that belief amid a climate in which top coaches command ridiculous salaries, privileges, and acclaim, to an extent sure to turn most heads.

“The thing about coaching is, the incentives for winning are huge and the penalties for losing are equally large,” Callahan noted. Given the money and prestige involved, for coaches and those eager to boost a university, “the incentives are certainly stacked in favor of cutting corners,” he said.

If we truly respect integrity, then, we must not denigrate honest performers by lumping them with those who cheat to get ahead, especially in record books and Halls of Fame.