Sports Scandals

by Laura Finley; Jeffrey J. Fountain Peter Finley

After Harris Prager broke the story, baseball historians explored the statistics from the 1951 season to determine how much the sign-stealing scheme helped the Giants. The results were surprising. The Giants actually batted worse at home after they began cheating. The real change in the team that led to the late-season surge was that the team hit better on the road and the pitching was much more effective.11 Of course, this does not mean that the cheating didn't matter. It is possible the team would have slumped even worse without being able to anticipate pitches. Further, if the scheme helped the team win even one more game, it was enough to get it into a three-game playoff with the Dodgers.

  The New York Giants certainly are not the only team in Major League Baseball to steal signs. In 1900 the Philadelphia Phillies stole signs to help post a home record of 45-23, as compared to a dismal 30-40 on the road. The 1940 Detroit Tigers placed sign-stealers in the outfield bleachers, armed with binoculars and a signaling system to tip the batters.12 The Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians by one game to claim the American League pennant.

  There have likely been many other sign-stealing conspiracies through the years. It is doubtful, however, that any other ever led to a moment as important to baseball lore as the shot heard 'round the world.

  ROSIE RUIZ NEARLY STEALS 1980 BOSTON MARATHON

  Sometimes long shots do win races. Perhaps even a major marathon, from time to time. But when twenty-seven-year-old office worker Rosie Ruiz broke the tape at the 1980 Boston Marathon, it appeared to be a result for the ages.

  She was a complete unknown in marathon running, and her victory would be among the most stunning in sports history. But within days it was revealed to be one of sport's greatest hoaxes. Ruiz had apparently covered the 26.2 mile course in the third fastest time ever by a woman in any marathon, 2 hours, 31 minutes, and 56 seconds. She had broken the Boston Marathon record and beaten 448 other female entrants. And apparently she had hardly broken a sweat. She calmly mounted the victors' platform, alongside men's winner Bill Rodgers, and accepted the medal and laurel wreath. Then, the questioning began.

  Immediately there were spectators, competitors, and journalists who were suspicious. She wasn't sweaty or salty enough. She wasn't lean enough. Her running stride was not efficient enough. Her name and race number did not appear on the lists of leaders that were meticulously written down through the first twenty-four miles. And, perhaps most importantly in the moments after the race, she didn't speak the language of the sport. Post-race interviews revealed that she didn't understand common terms used by runners to define simple training principles. She didn't know what intervals or split times were, which shocked the journalist asking about her training program.

  Canadian Jacqueline Gareau was the second woman across the line that day, over ten minutes behind Ruiz. She believed she was the winner when she arrived at the finish. She was followed by her rival, American Patti Lyons. It was Lyons who first voiced doubts: ''I never saw [Ruiz]. Do I doubt that she was the winner? I doubt it very much.''13 Further, Lyons added, ''Her name wasn't familiar. I never heard of her. I heard I was second all the way. I never saw her at the starting line and we all started together.''14 Bill Rodgers, who won his fourth Boston marathon that day, sadly lost some of his well-deserved attention as the scandal dominated headlines in the following days. His position was immediate and emphatic: ''The second I saw her I was skeptical. I know a top runner when I see one.''15

  By the following day, there was blood in the water and the sharks were circling. The race officials could not find any sign that Ruiz had run the race.

  She didn't appear on the tapes made of the leaders (none of whom remembered seeing her on the course), and eyewitnesses claimed they saw her jump into the race no more than two miles from the finish. Race director Will Cloney was convinced she had cheated. At one point he asked Ruiz, ''Should we decide to change the order of finish, would you give the medal back?'' She responded, ''Would you ask one of your daughters that?'' His curt retort was, ''No, I wouldn't have to ask one of my daughters that.''16 After eight long days of investigating, the Boston Athletic Association declared Ruiz was a cheat and stripped her of the title. Cloney extended Ruiz an invitation to run in the 1981 Boston Marathon, believing that the result would clear up any questions about her ability as a marathoner. Not surprisingly, she declined.

  The controversy surrounding Ruiz's finish raised questions about how she had qualifled for the Boston Marathon and her overall pedigree as a runner.

  Doubts were soon cast on her qualifying performance at the 1979 New York City Marathon, where she had recorded an outstanding finishing time of 2 hours, 56 minutes. As New York City Marathon officials launched an investigation, they quickly found a woman who rode the subway with Ruiz for what would have been the last seventeen miles of the race. Ruiz's result was immediately invalidated.

  Ruiz was still defiant almost twenty years later. In an interview for a West Palm Beach paper in 1998, she said she intended to qualify for and run in Boston again. Race director Guy Morse made it clear that she would do no such thing, saying, ''We have a policy that anyone who's been disqualifled is not invited back for life.''17 Ruiz also intimated in the interview that she still knew she had run the whole marathon and that she still had the winner's medal hidden away.

  In 2005 Jacqueline Gareau was granted a chance to enjoy the cheers at Boston that had been stolen from her twenty-five years before. She was asked to serve as the grand marshal for the event. She said, ''It was a special feeling out there. I really enjoyed being able to be out there in Hopkinton (the starting point) and soak up the crowd. The way they cheered for me gave me goose bumps.''18 After watching most of the race from a Mercedes, Gareau jumped out and ran the last one hundred meters of the race. She commented, ''It was kind of funny they let me run from there, because I was thinking that's what [Ruiz] did.''19

  The life of Rosie Ruiz was rather unfortunate, both before and after the Boston Marathon scandal. In 1973, at the age of twenty, she had a series of blackouts and underwent surgery to remove a tumor from her head. Five years later, a plastic plate was inserted into her head. There has been speculation that these surgeries could be linked to her odd behavior, both in cheating at the marathon and in her firm denial that she did so. Two years after the Boston incident, she was jailed for stealing $60,000 from her employer, a Manhattan real estate company. She returned to Florida, where she would do more jail time, after selling cocaine to undercover agents in a Miami hotel.20

  Steve Vaitones, the head referee for the 2007 Boston Marathon, commented that people cheat for a variety of reasons. He believed some are trying to meet or exceed personal goals that are out of reach due to insufficient training, or that ''they want to finish further up because they are the best runners in their neighborhood and have built a legend unto themselves.''21 Many have speculated that Ruiz never intended to cheat her way into a Boston victory.

  Her coworkers had celebrated her ''accomplishment'' in New York, and her boss offered to pay her way to compete in Boston. She may have just been trying to get a finishing time to justify his expenditure and accidentally jumped into the race too early, not even aware that she was ahead of the top women.

  Then, as the theory goes, she did not know how to react when she was ushered to the victor's podium, so she just played along.

  Some people felt bad for Ruiz at the time. They believed that she didn't mean to win and that she was too scared and embarrassed to tell the truth.

  These feelings waned as she maintained her innocence. Fred Lebow, the popular director of the New York Roadrunners Club, said in 1981, ''I did feel sorry for her when she initially cheated. But when she perpetuated it, I no longer felt sorry. I felt angry.''22 Similarly, a Manhattan lawyer ran in the 1980 New York City Marathon in a shirt that read, ''Rosie Ruiz Track Club,'' with a picture of a subway token on it. When asked if he felt it defamed Ruiz, he answered, ''If one doesn't want notoriety, one should not fake marathon races.''23

  Cheating in a major m
arathon today would be far more difficult than in 1980. Race directors have seen to that through the introduction of new technology that monitors the runners' progress along the course. Also, staggered start times that separate the known contenders from the throng of slower runners make it easier to watch the favorites. Through the use of video cameras stationed frequently along the course, and wire-to-wire media coverage, there is a better record of the events. Computer chip technology made its way into major marathons in the mid 1990s, with products such as ChampionChip offering the means to track each runner via a small disk tied into the shoelaces.24 At regular checkpoints the runners cross a small mat placed across the road that records their presence. Each chip sends a signal unique to each participant. The Boston Marathon catches about fifteen to twenty cheaters per year with this technology.

  For the participants, the chips offer the feature of recorded split times, so they can analyze a race to determine how well they paced themselves. Prior to the chip, accurate splits were only offered to top runners. Further, chips show how long it takes the runners to actually cover the course, from start to finishdiscounting the time it takes to actually get to the starting line, which can be several minutes in major-city marathons with tens of thousands of participants.

  When chips debuted in a U.S. marathon, at the 1996 Los Angeles race, William Burke, the L.A. Marathon president commented, ''It will be difficult for anyone to pull a Rosie Ruiz in Los Angeles.''25 Although surely Ruiz's scandal was not the only impetus for the creation of the chip, it definitely was a factor.

  SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL GIVEN DEATH PENALTY

  During the early 1980s Southern Methodist University (SMU) had one of the top football programs in the country. SMU compiled a record of 41-5-1 for 1981-84 that included three Southwest Conference championships. The now defunct Southwest Conference included Arkansas, Baylor, Houston, Rice, SMU, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Christian University, and Texas Tech during this time. In 1981 SMU went 10-1, but was unable to play in the Cotton Bowl because it had been placed on two years of probation prior to the 1981 season for committing twenty-nine recruiting violations. In 1982 head football coach Ron Meyer left SMU to become the head coach of the New England Patriots and was replaced by Bobby Collins (formerly of Southern Mississippi). SMU's football program continued its dominance as the ''Pony Express'' of Eric Dickerson and Craig James ran over their opposition. Eric Dickerson broke the Southwest Conference all-time rushing record in 1982 and led SMU to an 11-0-1 record and a final ranking of second in the nation after defeating Pittsburgh in the Cotton Bowl. SMU continued its strong play on the field during the 1983 and 1984 seasons, culminating with a loss to Alabama in the 1983 Sun Bowl and a victory over Notre Dame in the 1984 Aloha Bowl.

  On August 16, 1985, the NCAA again placed SMU's football program on probation due to major NCAA violations including cash payments to players.

  The probation included a ban on bowl games for both the 1985 and 1986 seasons, a ban from televised games in 1986 and 1987, and a reduction in scholarships.

  The following year, linebacker David Stanley revealed in a television interview that he was paid $25,000 to sign with SMU in 1983. Stanley also acknowledged that SMU's athletic department made monthly payments to his mother and himself totaling $750, and that the payments continued after SMU was placed on probation by the NCAA in 1985. Two days after the Stanley interview, tight end Albert Reese was suspended pending an investigation into allegations that he was living rent free in an apartment provided by a booster. As the NCAA investigated the new allegations, Southern Methodist University saw its president, athletic director, and the head football coach all resign between November 21 and December 4, 1986. The investigation found monthly payments totaling $61,000 went to thirteen players; the money was provided by a booster who was listed in the 1985 probation as one of several boosters who were not allowed to associate with SMU athletics because of previous payments to athletes that lead to the 1985 probation.26

  On February 25, 1987, the NCAA handed down the most severe penalty ever for a football program. Southern Methodist University received the so called ''death penalty'' for major violations by the coaching and athletic department staffs, which included cash payments to football players while the program was still on probation for previous infractions. The penalty included: the complete cancellation of the 1987 football season; limiting the 1988 season to seven conference road games; the team could not appear on television or in bowl games until 1989; the football team could only have five assistant coaches; and SMU could sign only fifteen scholarship players each year for three years.27 This is the harshest punishment any football program has ever received to date. Two years prior to the suspension of the SMU football program, the NCAA had passed Proposition 3 at a special convention in Dallas.

  Proposition 3 allows the NCAA to ''suspend a program for up to two seasons if they commit a second major rules violation in a five-year period.''28 The university presidents, who were eager to show that they had control over college sports, passed it by the wide margin of 427-6. SMU was one of the six schools that voted against Proposition 3.

  The NCAA allowed the fifty-two scholarship football players from SMU to transfer to other schools without having to sit out a year. This started a chain reaction that saw over 250 college coaches visit SMU over a two-day period in an effort to recruit the SMU players. SMU decided not to field a team in 1988. The loss of two years of football cost SMU around $20 million. The financial impact also immediately impacted contributions to the university totaling $1.5 million less than the prior year, and enrollment figures for incoming freshmen classes dropped.

  The fallout from the player-payment scandal did not stop with the players, coaches, and athletic administrators. An investigation revealed that the SMU Board of Governors approved the payments, including Bill Clement, who was then governor-elect of Texas and chairman of the SMU Board of Governors.

  On March 20, 1987, the SMU Board of Trustees abolished the board of governors, and on June 19 an investigative report by the United Methodist Church's College of Bishops contended that hush money was paid to the athletic director, head coach, and an assistant coach, including a payment of $556,272 to head coach Bobby Collins.29

  Since the NCAA handed down the death penalty, the football program at SMU has never recovered. Former University of Florida president John Lombardi said, ''SMU taught the committee that the death penalty is too much like the nuclear bomb, it's like what happened after we dropped the bomb in World War II. The results were so catastrophic that now we'll do anything to avoid dropping another one.''30 The NCAA has caught other institutions committing rules violations while already on probation, similar to the transgressions at SMU, but has handed down less severe punishments since the 1987 application of the death penalty.

  MICHIGAN BASKETBALL PLAYERS TAKE BOOSTER'S MONEY

  When Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson arrived on the campus of the University of Michigan in fall 1991, they were unlike anything college basketball had ever seen. They were young, talented, and brash. Immediately dubbed the Fab Five, the freshmen superstars took the basketball world by storm with their baggy shorts and high-flying style of play that kids loved and traditionalists despised. They were pioneers in the sense that they dared to bring playground style and antics into the biggest arenas, strutting their way to glory regardless of who disapproved.

  Over the course of two seasons, the Fab Five cemented their place in history with an unrelenting style that was part thuggery and part boyish charm, balancing pure athleticism with trash-talking tomfoolery. The Wolverines, with their all-freshmen lineup, won twenty-five games in 1991-92 before losing to an experienced Duke team in the NCAA Finals. They returned to the finals after improving to thirty-one wins the following year, but lost to North Carolina in a game famous for Chris Webber calling timeout when his team did not have any timeouts remaining. In spite of the losses in the NCAA Finals, sales of university merch
andise spiked as young fans emulated the newera stars.

  The glory of the Fab Five era would be short-lived. In 1999 it was discovered that Webber, the shiniest star and on-court leader of the team, had been receiving payments from a booster, in clear violation of NCAA rules. Three other players from the post-Fab Five era had also taken money from booster Ed Martin. The payments came to light after the FBI raided several homes in the Detroit area that were connected to a gambling ring that was operating in the Ford motor plants. In Martin's home the investigators found evidence that he had been supplying large amounts of cash to local basketball stars. Martin testifled that he had given $616,000 to Wolverines basketball players. Of the Fab Five, only Webber received money, totaling $280,000 and spanning his high school and college years, according to Martin. Martin also testifled that he paid $160,000 to Robert Traylor, $105,000 to Maurice Taylor, and $71,000 to Louis Bullock. Martin pleaded guilty to money laundering to conceal profits and avoid taxes and said he expected the payments to gain him favor with the team.31

  In October 1997 the University of Michigan fired Steve Fisher, who had coached the team through the years that Martin was paying the players. After a seven-month internal investigation, the university concluded that minor violations had occurred under his watch and that the program lacked institutional control. The violations included the coach being at the home of a recruit at the same time that Martin was there in the capacity of a booster. At the conclusion of the NCAA's investigation in 2003, it announced that there was not sufficient evidence against the coach to seek punishment. Fisher went on to coach at San Diego State University.

  On November 2, 2002, the University of Michigan announced its self-imposed sanctions. The university submitted a letter to the NCAA that said the men's basketball program would be ineligible for postseason play in 2003, would serve probation for two years, would forfeit all victories from the 1992-93 and 1995 to 1999 seasons, and remove banners from the two Final Four appearances, a National Invitation Tournament banner from 1997, and a Big Ten Conference Tournament Champions banner from 1998. Michigan also returned $450,000 to the NCAA for money earned for NCAA tournament appearances. The NCAA then applied further sanctions, including that the university could not associate with the players involved for ten years.