“For nothing can seem foul to those that win,” penned William Shakespeare. Could he have foreseen that state of professional sports in the United States, lo those many years ago?

Marion Jones recently recanted statements she has made over the last seven years and admitted cheating, cheating by using banned substances on her way to winning just about every accolade she could win in track and field.

The Olympic Committee is horribly embarrassed. The International Olympic Committee has instructed Jones to return the five medals she won in the 2000 Olympic Games and is revising the official results to exclude her performances because she cheated.

The New England Patriots were recently fined $750,000 by the NFL and will be penalized a first-round draft choice in the next NFL player allocation draft. Why such harsh penalties? The winners of three of the last six Superbowls were found guilty of using video equipment to record another team’s defensive signals. This was a blatant disregard for the written rules. Head Coach Bill Belichick said he misinterpreted a simply written rule that had been specifically emphasized at the winter owners’ meetings. This was blatant cheating.

With the retirement of Lance Armstrong, the sport of professional cycling lost its last superstar. The last two Tour de France races have been a pathetic sham with the majority of the sports best cyclists being thrown out of the competition before the race even started due to banned substance positive tests and allegations.

Even the initial winner of the 2006 Tour de France, American Floyd Landis, was stripped of the title due to use of banned substances. He cheated.

Balco. Major League Baseball. Mark Maguire. Sammy Sosa. Barry Bonds. Without question the data is overwhelming. Baseball’s negligence in policing its players borders on malicious intent. They wanted the long ball and turned a blind eye to the things many players had been doing since the late eighties. Cheating.

Why?

Has the pressure to win become so great? Or has the reward for winning surpassed the intent for which the games were created? Historically, one of the first sporting events ever was the Olympics.

The current Olympic Creed states: “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well.”

Ultimately, sports in this country have been tainted. The formerly ‘level playing field’ is a thing of the past. That field has been tilted by capitalism. The pursuit of the almighty dollar. Advertising. Forever more the majority of sports will be about entertainment, with an implied policing of the franchises and participants.

For true sport, one will have to go back to the true amateurs. Youth.

Youth before imprudent parent involvement, scholarship competition, and school pride. Back to the unbridled power of play. There is a lesson for many professional athletes to be learned there.

I will leave you with this quote from the 16th century Scottish poet Scott Alexander:

“All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.”