Without Honor. Without Remorse.

from my Bleachers' Brew column in the August 6, 2007 issue of the Business Mirror.

by rick olivares

Tim Donaghy. Dog-fighting. Steroids. Barry Bonds. Floyd Landis. Suspensions. Protests. Game fixing. Misappropriated funds. Ill-timed technical fouls.

These are the four-letter words of the day. The sports section has begun to resemble the front page with all its gloom and doom to the point of even surpassing athletic achievements. We may have crashed out of the Olympic Qualifiers but hey -- we beat China (now don’t give me that it’s only their Team B because who the holy heck asked them to field their developmental team in the first place)! Thank God the bad news hasn’t gotten to the point where someone was intentionally hurt or even murdered.

Er, looks like I spoke too soon. According to the NBI report on the game-rigging incident by a College of Saint Benilde cager, point guard Paolo Orbeta, the accused in the case, along with some cohorts, threatened to physically hurt a person they enjoined to bet on a game after he refused to pay up. Now what’s this kid doing betting hundreds of thousands of pesos on basketball games and consorting with crooked cops and unsavory characters?

And this is collegiate sports we’re talking about.

Cheating in sports has been something almost as old as the time when athletic competition was first held. Although a myth, the story of Pelops eventually evolved into the founding matter for the Olympics. As the story goes, Pelops had to race against King Oenomaus in order to win the hand of his daughter, Hippodamia. If Pelops lost, Oenomaus would have his head in exchange. The challenger sought the help of Myrtilus, the King’s charioteer, in rigging the linchpins that held the royal chariot together. In return for his help, Pelops promised the chariot driver that he would be given the chance to bed the King’s daughter before himself. During the race, just when Oenomaus was about to catch up, the chariot broke apart and the King was dragged to his death by the horses. But as the saying goes, cheaters never win; Myrtilus who was killed by Pelops after he forced himself on Hippodamia after the match, cursed Pelops and his family was eventually torn asunder.

Should we be thankful that at least today we haven’t gotten that bloodthirsty?

That’s like saying that we should all be glad that the reports of the Philippines being the most corrupt country in Asia are false. It turns out that we’re not that corrupt – we just ranked somewhere below.

I’ve done my time marching in the streets, guarding the Batasan Pambansa against the smuggling in of ballot boxes, signing up for NAMFREL, delivering relief goods to disaster-stricken areas, and… writing letters to the editor. I used to be so nationalistic but that has been bled out of me just like these people in power who have made away – and continue to do so -- with the people’s money.

With all the unresolved cases in the Ombudsman’s office and wherever, people in the lower levels look to the slow grind of justice as a sign that says, “Hey, if they can get away with it, so can we.” Hence, this college sports’ current mess and this quote that defies the imagination.

“We want the truth to come out.”

That’s what a college coach said when asked to explain his take on Ateneo’s recent foreign player gaffe. Say it isn’t so, coach?

Not after the deafening silence that followed your school’s suspension. Whatever the hell happened to that? Did anything change? Were the real culprits caught? If that is so, why was a person named by your school as the one who perpetuated the papers-fixing scandal sitting behind your bench in their game against Ateneo? Are there too many external forces preventing a full-blown investigation? Why is it that your alumni are split into two over the “win at all costs” dictum? You should have shown the same fervor in trying to sift through the BS of the Pep Test Scandal as you all did in dissecting a foot and two foreign players inside the court. That’s a molehill compared to your mountain.

This is what college sports has come down to -- a morass of commercialism where the game is slightly delayed by television timeouts and ads infinitum. Where the officiating is terrible and even downright suspicious. Where recruitment has become an arms race (that when the players don’t win a championship, their scholarships are taken back and they’re sent home never to be heard from again). Where rules are bended or midnight laws passed to suit a few. Where professionals are masked as students and are enrolled in bogus courses.

Jack Nicholson, while playing that force of nature of a Marine in A Few Good Men’s Col. Nathan Jessep, blurted the immortal line: “You can’t handle the truth.”

You bet. Neither can sports officials nor school administrators. But we cannot single out say, the UAAP for that. You think PCU learned from La Salle’s suspension? No way, Jose. But the funny thing there is despite reports that there were also infractions in the school’s senior ranks, the Board chose to concentrate on investigating the high school teams. Why? Because the truth is so ugly that it goes a long long way and will implicate a lot more? Is it to prevent the expulsion of the school from the NCAA?

I remember one neighbor saying that it was all right for our mayor to steal money because he’s doing a lot of good things for our city anyway. With that kind of logic, we deserve all the crap that our country gets. It is infertile minds like these who vote thieves into public office and tolerate the sickness that infects and afflicts us.

And in a nutshell, college sports boils down to these basic rules:
1) It’s not cheating if you don’t get caught.
2) When caught, deny anything and everything.
3) Ask your alumni who are in media to spin their damage control. If the editor of the major broadsheet is an alumnus, that’s even better when it comes to public disinformation and insinuations.
4) Win at all costs, but when it comes to money, stiff them when you get the chance.

Whoopee.