Floyd, Marion, Major League Baseball, et al.

With Marion Jones's coming clean this past week regarding her steroid use, and with Floyd Landis's illegal performance enhancement stripping him of his Tour de France title, and with the gradual, persistent, layered and labyrinthine implosion of the big muscles in Major League Baseball, and with the ongoing problem with steroid usage in interscholastic and intercollegiate athletics (especially, but not only, in football), and with whatever other substance abuse is going on in sport that has yet to surface in the media, perhaps genuinely concerned parties need to look at the issue not more closely, but in a different way.

In The Quality of Effort in 1991 I made the following general points about drug-enhanced performance in sport:

• Such performance cheats the athlete of ever knowing what he or she might have achieved without the drug.


• It burdens the cheater with the knowledge that he or she does not deserve the honor, although this burden may not be felt immediately, and may only become conscious if and when the athlete develops ethically to the point that such behavior is wrong.


• It also cheats opponents, irreversibly, of much more than a ribbon, medal, trophy or plaque. To use track and field as an example, this type of cheating is also a theft that steals from others the unique experience of crossing the finish line first, taking the victory lap, and standing on the winner's stand in real time to be acknowledged by those who witnessed the victory.

Athletes are often motivated by loyalty to a team or tribe (school, community or other organization); by a self-centered desire to satisfy personal needs by any means necessary, regardless of consequences; by a willingness to work and sacrifice for a greater good (God or country); by a desire to be one's best by working hard, setting goals, and discovering the optimum strategic approach to achieving them; or even by a desire to be in community with others who enjoy the same sport. The best coaches (and athletes) are aware of each of these motivators at some level, be it conscious or not.

It is possible that one's loyalty to team, tribe, or greater good might be so strong that cheating appears on the horizon as a viable option, but it is within that second motivator above, that self-centered desire to do what it takes without guilt or remorse, that drug-enhanced performances emerge. Understanding the issue requires a more complex, integral approach than many sports administrators and journalists have taken. I do not mean this in the sense that we should feel sorry for those who cheat; they should be held accountable according to the relevant criminal and civil laws and organizational bylaws. I mean it in the sense that anyone who is truly interested in addressing and stopping this type of cheating in sport needs to understand the array of individual, cultural and social factors that lead athletes to cheat.

The above five "motivators" are loosely based on the values research done by Clare Graves and continued today by Don Beck and others.