One of baseball's biggest stars, Alex Rodriguez, recently admitted to cheating by using performance enhancing drugs while a member of the Texas Rangers. Although many baseball fans are appalled and shocked, I'm not.
Over the past few years, many star athletes have been caught taking drugs to enhance their game. Rodriguez wasn't the first to get caught cheating and he won't be the last.
As children, we are taught that cheaters never win and winners never cheat. If a child believes this going into high school, he or she may end up on the chess club instead of the football team or cheerleading squad.
We are now learning that cheaters are only getting younger.
Not only are high school students cheating in sports by taking performance enhancing drugs, they are also cheating on exams and plagiarizing their term papers.
The pressure to make good grades may decide whether your child attends Harvard or Nameless U. The stakes are high when it comes to competing for academic and athletic scholarships.
So why do people cheat? We cheat to get the edge on competition or to just get ahead in life. We live in a competitive society where winning at all costs is the only thing that matters.
If you don't believe me, just refer to the NFL.
The NFL is the biggest game in America. It's a game that makes millions, if not billions of dollars. Team owners shell out millions to coaches and players they perceive to be potential winners. But when an NFL season ends, losing coaches get discarded and winning coaches get contract extensions. This is a ritual in a sport that only wants winners.
To sum it up...society smiles upon winners and frowns on losers...only performance matters.
Someone once said that winning isn't everything...and if you believe that statement, you are either naive or played football for the 2008 Detroit Lions.
