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The Bock’s Score: Track and Field Corruption
Olympic Sport on the Precipice? How long can the Olympic rings, and the global athletics movement those rings represent, survive the spate of governance scandals now plaguing international sport? The urgency of this question became more apparent in the wake of the second report by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Independent Commission (IC) investigating the Russian—IAAF (International Federation for the Sport of Track and Field) doping scandal issued January 14, 2016. IAAF on the hot seat The IC’s most recent report was focused on evidence that the IAAF facilitated doping by Russian track and field athletes, permitting Russian athletes who should have been banned to compete. In advance of the report, IC chairman Dick Pound promised “shock value.” The report delivered on that promise. The Pound Commission’s report describes a shocking new low in the governance of international sport, finding that the actions of high ranking IAAF officials “allowed dirty Russian athletes to compete and alter the results on the playing field.” Long running bribery and extortion permitted a number of Russian athletes, who should have been suspended, to compete and win medals in the 2012 London Olympic Games and the 2013 IAAF World Championships. The second IC report is part travelogue, relying on witness testimony and access to travel records, to detail how IAAF money was spent by IAAF emissaries jetting to far flung and exotic locales to extort bribes from dirty athletes and their handlers. Like some medieval trading caravan, the trail of bribes stretched from Monaco to Istanbul to Moscow. Reflecting the modern global…
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The Bock’s Score: Discontent and a Criminal Enterprise
The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) was John Steinbeck’s last novel. Steinbeck said that the wrote Discontent to address the moral degeneration of American culture during the 1950s and 60s. I am no John Steinbeck, and have never written a novel. However, I think chances are good that 2015 may in the future be looked upon as international sport’s Year of Discontent – a year in which the public began to become aware of deepening degeneration in governance in international sport. FIFA President Sepp Blatter Suspended In early October the FIFA Ethics Committee issued ninety (90) day suspensions to two of the most powerful men in international soccer, FIFA’s Swiss President Sepp Blatter and European soccer’s French President Michael Platini. Make no mistake, the elimination of Blatter and Platini from their powerful positions is permanent and a watershed moment that signals that the corruption that thoroughly permeated world soccer has finally eroded the once impregnable status of these former potentates of the beautiful game. Yet, for all its portent, last week’s action by FIFA should be met with a single question: “What took you so long?”
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The Bock’s Score: A Question of Legacy
For most athletes who achieve a career of any substance the “legacy question” eventually becomes the defining ambition in their careers. Virtually all athletes ultimately seek to place themselves in the context of the history of their sport and to give an account of how they measure up. Think of Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods – can anyone doubt that for these great athletes and for so many more like them, the question that most preoccupies their mental exertions is that of legacy? Why then does the legacy question frequently seem to have not been adequately considered by athletes before they become embroiled in ethical peccadillos? Whether the circumstances include domestic violence, banned drugs, corked bats, deflated footballs, stolen signs, or other questionable conduct, consideration of the impact of conduct on legacy seems too often to get short shrift. The problem is, of course, that frequently athletesdo not adequately contemplate the impact an ethical transgression will have upon their legacy before their competitiveness, their fear of losing, their desire for glory or their greed leads them to break the rules. The legacy tradeoff: The cost of compromise There are many examples of how a “win at all costs” mentality pushes athletes, coaches and teams to abandon what is right ethically, hoping they do not get caught, and thinking the injury to their conscience will be minimal. Invariably, however, they find that they have underestimated the true cost of such compromise.
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The Bock’s Score: Deflategate and Deterring Cheating in Sport
Tom Brady knew that the footballs he used in the first half of the AFC Championship Game were intentionally deflated in order to give him a competitive advantage, so concluded Ted Wells, the lawyer hired by the NFL to investigate the scandal dubbed “Deflategate.” Debating suspensions As quickly as the league moved to suspend Brady for four games and to fine the New England Patriots a million dollars and eliminate first and fourth round draft choices, Brady apologists, including his agent, Don Yee, and the Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft, called the penalties overblown. Vigorous debate ensued over whether Brady’s conduct was ethically culpable, some even calling it commendable, asking if it was not the duty of a gladiator such as Brady to do whatever he could to help his teammates win. National pundits quickly weighed in. No less an authority than Morning Joe Host Joe Scarborough called Brady’s suspension extreme, adding, “I just don’t get this.” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, perhaps hoping to energize support in New England for his presidential bid, currently mired in the single digits, joined a chorus of Bay Staters, labeling the suspension “too harsh.” Debates over similar questions re-emerge each time an athlete is penalized for misconduct. Was the sanction sufficient? Was it too harsh? How should the fairness of the penalty be assessed? Should our hero (or nemesis) have even been sanctioned at all? Isn’t it the duty of the athlete to try to win at all costs?
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The Bock’s Score: Pete Rose and a Lifetime Ban
Bill is a partner at Kroger Gardis and Regas, serves as the general counsel for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and is an expert analysis contributor at Sports Law360 They played a major league baseball game on Tuesday night, July 14, 2015, in Cincinnati, and Pete Rose took the field to the raucous cheers of the hometown fans. . . That lead sentence would not have been jarring for any 40, 50 or 60 something had we read it on any summer morning in our youth. Starting in 1963 when he was the National League Rookie of the Year, through three world championships, and a record 4,256 lifetime hits, #14 of the Cincinnati Reds became practically the embodiment of the North Star in the sports world of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Preternaturally burning intensity With preternaturally burning intensity, Rose forged his legacy the old fashioned way. As an E.F. Hutton commercial used to say, he “earned it.” Some were blessed with power or great speed, like my two favorite childhood heroes, Pete’s Cincinnati teammates, Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan. Rose, on the other hand, seemed to wring every ounce of performance from somewhat lesser skills, and, yet, by the end of his career eclipsed virtually all of his peers through dent of indefatigable effort. Rose may have been only my third favorite player from those great Reds teams of the 70s, but it was from him that I learned life lessons. Not directly, of course. Rose played a hundred miles away from my small Indiana hometown. …
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