Mark's Blog

No, not the president—not either one of them—nor their good wives! I’m talking about Reggie Bush, who won the Heisman Trophy in 2005, the award given to the best player in college football.  For those who don’t follow college football, don’t worry. I want to talk about cheating, not football.

In June of this year, the NCAA (which regulates large college sports) found the University of Southern California—where Reggie Bush played football—guilty of major violations, so guilty that they banned their football team from participating in any bowl games for two years, put them on probation for four years, and stripped them of thirty scholarships—AND, USC had to forfeit all of their games for 2004, which was their national championship year.

The reason for these very severe penalties was that the institution knowingly allowed Reggie Bush to receive “improper benefits” from USC supporters, but continued to report him eligible to play.  Interestingly, both the NCAA and USC—and Bush–everyone agrees that Reggie Bush took money from supporters, which is a violation of his amateur status and would make him immediately ineligible.  Now the Heisman Trophy Trust appears to be on the verge of stripping Bush of his Heisman trophy—which he won in a year when he was playing illegally.  That makes sense, doesn’t it?

It’s the outcry about how wrong this action against Bush is that is so disturbing to me. The main arguments seem to sound like this:

• He was a college kid playing college football, so what’s wrong with that? (Just pretend there is no rule—and there won’t be !)
• “Improper benefits” are everywhere! He just got caught because he is so good!(Everybody is doing it! OR, they are just after him!)
• Bad rule. We should make all college players professionals, then you don’t have to worry about it. (Take away the parking meter and you have no more parking violations! True, but do you then have parking problems—or city financial problems?)

Here’s what I think I hear in all of these responses though: cheating is just really not so bad.

When I was teaching college English at a Christian university where over 80% of the students were from Christian homes, integrity questions appeared every semester—with multiple students. I’m talking about

• Students who purchased term papers and submitted them as their own.
• Students who paid or cajoled other students to write their papers for them.
• Students whose parents wrote their papers for them.
• Students who stole journals and submitted them as their own.

And I have not even hinted at the infamous bane of all students plagiarism yet!  Plagiarism is using words or ideas that aren’t uniquely yours but claiming them as uniquely yours.  I don’t want to get into the gray areas that you might want to get into.  Let’s just stay with copying an entire chapter out of a reference book, or copying whole paragraphs out of research articles, stringing them together, adding an introduction and conclusion and turning it in as your own research paper.  These are blatant examples of plagiarism and were extraordinarily common among students.

If you cheat in English class, then it must be OK to cheat on the football field. If you cheat on the field, then it must be OK to cheat on your taxes—or vice versa. If you cheat on your taxes, what about  . . . ?  Where does it end?

The virtue of integrity borders on being indefinable in today’s culture. I’ve tried to think when respect for the idea of integrity started to fade.  It may have been Nixon’s lies about Watergate that suggested that nobody in power is really honest, so why should anyone else be?  What’s your theory?

All I know is that honesty and integrity should be not only respected, but expected! I know we live in an age of all kinds of cheating that we are half-truths, marketing, spin, business, and politics, ad nauseum.

What if you and I agree to always tell the truth and to never cheat? And what if you and I agree not to make excuses for those who do?  What if we Christians really become the people who love the truth?