Is Cheating a Means to a Successful End?
Tom Brady and The New England Patriots face sanctions for deflating footballs below NFL limit
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended New England Patriots superstar quarterback and former Michigan player, Tom Brady, for his apparent knowledge in “Deflategate,” a scheme in which equipment managers slightly deflated the team’s footballs before last year’s AFC Championship game which the Patriots won over the Indianapolis Colts. The team was also fined a million dollars.
“Deflategate” raises questions about ethics and morals, not only in athletics, but in our society. Do you have to cheat to win? And if you do, is society more forgiving now than it used to be?
Kirk O. Hanson, Executive Director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University discusses ethics in American professional sports with Stephen Henderson. They discuss if we are more accepting of rule breakers than we were in generations past and if the penalty for breaking the rules is equally distributed.
Callers to the program ask how cheating is defined, and comment on the degree to which cheaters should be punished.
