Sports these days is a deadly serious business. Despite the fact that most sports are essentially children’s games played by adults, the amounts of money tied up in leagues, franchises, TV rights, merchandising, and salaries surpasses the gross domestic product of most countries. That ain’t monopoly money being tossed around.
All of this money puts tremendous pressure on teams to win. Couple that with the naturally competitive nature of the games themselves and you create an atmosphere where just about anything goes in order to glean some kind of advantage from your opponent.
Such has been the case recently as two major cheating scandals have rocked the sports world. The authorities in each sport have come down like a ton of bricks on the transgressors with huge fines and other serious penalties. But the thought that even these draconian punishments will deter others from attempting the same tricks is a chimera. The next one’s who try it will just be more careful, that’s all. In the cutthroat, winner take all world of professional sports, it pays to cheat.
The first scandal broke in July in the rich and glamorous world of Formula 1 racing. A 780 page technical manual belonging to the Ferrari team was found in the home of McLaren’s chief designer Mike Coughlan. The book contained extremely detailed information about not only the technical aspects of the car but also the way the team set the car up for each race including tire pressure, weight distribution, and other secrets.
The manual had been sold to McLaren by a Ferrari mechanic who was summarily fired. Just recently, it has been revealed that emails between two time champion McLaren driver Fernando Alonso and his back up driver prove that the two men knew of the manual and were using information from it to set up their own car.
McLaren tried to downplay the entire matter, saying “The evidence today was primarily e-mail traffic between our drivers, and in one instance, Mike Coughlan.”
“These were a few e-mails and the drivers have stated categorically that no information was passed to the team, and of course, the team had no knowledge of this e-mail traffic at any stage.”
Pay no attention to that Ferrari behind the curtain.
The governing body of the sport F1A took something of a different view, noting that “the information has been disseminated, at least to some degree (e.g. to Mr. de la Rosa and Mr. Alonso), within the McLaren team, and included secret information regarding Ferrari’s sporting strategy.” They further stated that “There was a clear intention on the part of a number of McLaren personnel to use some of the Ferrari confidential information in its own testing.”
To show McLaren and the rest of the sport that they meant business, the F1A slapped a $100 million fine on the UK based racing group and stripped it of its constructor points for the season. Further penalties for the 2008 season may be forthcoming.
F1 racing is the most expensive sport in the world. It is also one of the most popular with hundreds of millions of people following the Grand Prix circuit every week. The $100 million fine might sound excessive but it costs millions to design, develop, and build these cars in the first place. It takes many millions of dollars more to maintain them, get them ready to race, and move them from venue to venue. For McLaren, the $100 million is not a drop in the bucket but will hardly break them. With revenues alone of over $550 million, the net worth of their parent McLaren Group is over $2 billion. These are huge corporations vying for a prize that carries with it enormous prestige in the auto world as well as tens of millions in prize money and merchandising fees. The incentive to get any edge possible is apparently too much to resist for some.
A little closer to home, the will to win led the New England Patriots to videotape the defensive signals coming from the sidelines of one of their arch rivals, the New York Jets. In this case, a little birdie told the league that the Pats were cheating.
Former Bill Belichick assistant Eric Mangini, now head coach of the Jets, knew all about the Pats attempts to steal signs. That’s because he used to do it himself when he was with New England. Unable to catch the Pats red handed in 5 previous meetings between the two teams, Mangini tipped off Jets security what to look for and when they had concrete proof on Sunday, they went to the NFL.
The NFL confiscated the tape right on the sideline, catching the Pats doing what some observers say many NFL teams do on a routine basis; try and steal an opponents offensive or defensive signs. In New England’s case, suspicion has fallen on them before, most notably after their unexpected Super Bowl win over St. Louis in 2001. Very few gave the Pats any chance to defeat the mighty Rams whose offense was the terror of the league that year. But the New England defense held the Rams to 17 points while Tom Brady engineered a 57 yard drive with no timeouts and 1:30 left for the winning field goal. No one has ever proved that New England was stealing signs back then. But now that the cat is out of the bag, you can bet there will be plenty of talk around the league and questions asked.
Belichick was fined a hefty $500,000 and the team $250,000 for spying. Commissioner Roger Goodell also ordered New England to give up a first round draft pick if they make the playoffs this year or a second and third rounder if they miss the post season.
These are the most stringent penalties ever handed down by the league for violating long standing policy against having video recording devices along the sidelines or in the coaching booth. And penalizing the team by taking away high draft choices should get the message across loud and clear that a repeat will not be tolerated.
But by far the greatest venue for spies in professional sports is in the dugouts of Major League baseball teams. It is here that the art of sign stealing reaches legendary proportions and games are won or lost as a result of a stolen signal.
There is a written rule in baseball that prohibits stealing signs using “electronic means.” Even here there are legendary transgressors. For years, opponents believed that the Boston Red Sox had a spy in the scoreboard relaying signs between the pitcher and the catcher to the bench. Nothing was ever proved and to this day, the legend remains a rumor, a twice told tale related by old timers to illustrate how good the Good Old Days used to be.
But there is nothing in the rule book that prohibits gifted spies from stealing signs from the dugout. Watching a third base coach giving signs to the batters and runners can be very confusing. The coach gets his instructions from the manager in the dugout using one set of signs – sometimes verbal signals like shouting a certain phrase will tell the coach what the play is.
The third base coach then goes through a confusing series of arm motions, hand pats, wipes, and slaps. Somewhere in there is the “indicator” or the sign that says “The next sign I give is what I want you to do.” It’s not as hard as it sounds if you ignore everything except the indicator and the sign after it.
But the clever dugout sign stealer has a knack of finding that indicator. Once that is done, it is a simple matter to steal the signs for everything else. Some spies are so good, they can pick up a team’s signs in a couple of innings.
There are counter moves that can be made if a team feels its signs are being stolen. They can change the indicator sign or even change what the indicator means (the second sign after the indicator instead of the first, for example). It has been going on since the earliest days of the game and legends have grown up around the master spies like Brooklyn’s Charlie Dressen, the man who managed the famous “Boys of Summer” back in the 1950’s.
The only stipulation about stealing an opponents signs is don’t get caught. If the other team suspects sign stealing is going on, one of your better players is liable to get a fastball in his ear. In such ways are the “unwritten” rules of baseball strictly enforced.
If there’s one thing these modern examples of sports spying show it is that fines and other penalties will probably never get big enough to stop the practice entirely. Most teams that spy are willing to take the chance of getting caught because the rewards can be so great. And when those rewards can be millions of dollars, childhood notions of fair play and good sportsmanship seem small and insignificant indeed.
Rick Moran blogs at Right Wing Nut House.
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