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We've all witnessed or heard of cheating scandals at some point in our lives. Throughout my project I would like to take you on a journey through multiple forms of cheating examples in all levels of sports.

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Cheating in sports goes back centuries. J Weston. Phippen said in a 2016 Atlantic Article that "cheating, like competition, is human nature" it can be traced back to ancient Greece and the Olympics.

Cheating has only become easier on the conscious and more frequent since these times. After reviewing the Houston Astro's sign stealing scandal it was clear that cheating is bigger than players, teams, coaches, leagues, and the industry.

In ancient Greece they used to build statues of cheaters and place them in front of the olympic stadium to humiliate them, or they would permanently ban them from competing ever again. Compared to today, the Astro's punishment was a slap on the wrist with a five million dollar fine and a few docked draft picks even though it was suspected they were sign stealing for years.

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Whether you cheat as an individual or as a team, it is an issue that will never be solved throughout sports. This issue has much significance because it affects the entire world. Sports are something that we as a society are able to come together to bond over. When athletes/teams ruin their name it is something that has an impact on more than just them. Other teams, other sports, fans, and children all over have to face the consequences of teams and athletes who cheat.

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Is cheating inevitable?

Is cheating something that can be permanently avoided in sports?

Do you feel that cheating should come with a fixed punishment within the sport?

Should individuals and teams who cheat be stripped of their titles?

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The reasons behind why athletes use performance enhancing drugs and why it will never end

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Doping in sport: why it can't be stopped

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Adam Hartung's theory on why cheating is inevitable and can never be stopped

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Cheating in sports is now officially prevalent. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) January 14 issued its report, and confirmed that across the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) athletes were cheating. And very frequently doing so under the supervision of those who lead major sports operations at a national, and international, level.

Quite simply, those responsible for the future of various sports have been responsible for organizing and enabling the illegal doping of athletes. This behavior is now so commonplace that corruption is embedded in the IAAF, making cheating by far the norm rather than the exception.

Wow, we all thought that after Lance Armstrong was found guilty of doping this had passed. Sounds like, to the contrary, Lance was just the poor guy who got caught. Perhaps he was pilloried because he was an early doping innovator, at a time when few others lacked access. As a result of his very visible take-down for doping, today's competitors, their coaches and sponsors have clearly become a lot more sophisticated about implementation and cover-ups.

Accusations of steroid use for superior performance have been around a long time. Major league baseball held hearings, and accused several players of doping. The long list of MLB players accused of cheating includes several thought destined for the Hall of Fame including Barry Bonds, Jose Conseco, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez and Sammy Sosa. Even golf has had its doping accusations, with at least one top player, Vijay Sing, locked in a multi-year legal battle because he admitted using deer antler spray to improve his performance.
The pay-off is so incredibly, magnificently, tremendously high.
The reason is, of course, obvious. If you are a top athlete rewards are in the hundreds of millions of dollars (or euros). Due to not only enormously high salaries, but also the incredible sums paid by manufacturers for product endorsements. Being at the top of any sport is worth 10 to 100 times as much as being second.

For example, name any other modern golfer besides Tiger Woods. Bet you even know his primary sponsor - Nike. Yet, he didn't even play much in 2015 and couldn't make the late-season cut. Name any other Tour de France rider other than Lance Armstrong. And he made the U.S. Postal Service recognizable as a brand. I travel the world and people ask me, often in their native language or broken English, where I live. When I say "Chicago" the no. 1 response - by a HUGE margin - is "Michael Jordan." And everyone knows Air Nike.

We know today that some competitors are blessed with enormous genetic gifts. Regardless of what you may have heard about practicing, in reality it is chromosomes that separate the natural athletes from those who are merely extremely good. Practicing does not hurt, but as the good doctor described to Lance Armstrong, if he wanted to be great he had to overcome mother nature. And that's where drugs come in. Regardless of the sport in which an athlete competes, greatness simply requires very good genes.

If the payoff is so huge why wouldn't you cheat? If mother nature didn't give you the perfect genes, why not alter them? It is not hard to imagine anyone realizing that they are very, very, very good - after years of competing from childhood through their early 20s - but not quite as good as the other guy. The lifetime payoff between the other guy and you could be $1 billion. A billion dollars! If someone told you that they could help, and it might take a few years off your life sometime in the distant future, would you really hesitate? Would the daily pain of drugs be worse than the pain of constant training?
The real question is, should we call it cheating?
If lots and lots of people are doing it, as the WADA report and multiple investigations tell us, is it really cheating?

After all, isn't this a personal decision? Why should some regulator draw the line? Where should they draw the line?

We allow athletes to drink sports drinks. Once there was only Gatorade, and it was only available to Florida athletes. Because they didn't dehydrate as quickly as other teams these athletes performed better. But obviously sports drinks were considered OK.

How many cups of coffee should be allowed? How about taking vitamins?

Exactly who should make these decisions? And why? Why "outlaw" some products, and not others?

After watching The Program about Lance Armstrong's doping routine it was clear to me I would never do it, and I would hope those I love would never do it. But I also hope they don't smoke cigarettes, drink too much liquor or make a porno movie. Yet, those are all personal decisions we allow. And the first two can certainly lead to an early grave. As painful as doping was to biker Armstrong and his team, it was their decision to do it. As bad as it was, why isn't it their decision? Why is someone given the role of calling it cheating?
We love winners. No matter how they become winners.
When Lance was winning the Tour de France he was very, very popular. Even as allegations swirled around him fans, and sponsors, pretty much ignored them. Even the reporter who chased the story was shunned by his colleagues, and degraded by his publisher, as he systematically built the undeniable case that Armstrong was cheating. Nobody wanted to hear that Lance was cheating - even if he was.

Fans and sponsors really don't care how athletes win, just that they win. If athletes do something wrong fans pretty much just hope they don't get caught. Just look at how fans overwhelmingly supported Armstrong for years. Or how football fans have overwhelming supported Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, and ridiculed the NFL's commissioner Roger Goodall, over the Deflategate cheating charges and investigation. Fans support a winner, regardless how they win.

So, now we know performance enhancing drugs are endemic in professional sports. Why do we still make them against the rules?
Should we be trying to change behavior, or change the rules?
Go back 150 years in sports and frequently the best were those born to upper middle class families. They had the luck to receive good, healthy food. They had time to actually practice. So when these athletes were paid for their play, we called them professionals. As professionals we would not allow them to compete with the local amateurs. Nor could they compete in international competitions, such as the Olympics.

Jim Thorpe won two Olympic gold medals in 1912, received a ticker-tape Broadway parade for his performance and was considered "the greatest athlete of all time." He was also stripped years later of his medals because it was determined he had been paid to play in a couple of professional baseball games. He was considered a cheater because he had the luxury of practicing, as a professional, while other Olympic athletes did not. Today we consider this preposterous, because professional athletes compete regularly in the Olympics. But what really changed? Primarily the rules.

It is impossible to think that we will ever roll back the great rewards given to modern athletes. Too many people love their top athletes, and relish in seeing them earn superstar incomes. Too many people love buying products these athletes endorse, and too many companies obtain brand advantage with those highly paid endorsements. In other words, the huge prize will never go away.

What is next? Genetic engineering, of course. The good geneticists will continue to figure out how to build stronger bodies, and their results will be out there for athletes to use. Splice a gorilla gene into a wrestler, or a gazelle gene into a long-distance runner? It's not pure fantasy. This will likely be illegal. But, over time, won't those gene-altering programs become as common to professional athletes as steroids and human growth hormone are today? Exactly when does anyone think performance enhancement will stop?

And if the drugs keep becoming better, and athletes have such a huge incentive to use them, how are we ever to think a line can be drawn -- or ever enforced?
The effort to stop doping would appear, at best, Quixotic
Instead, why not simply say that at the professional level, anything goes? No more testing. If you are a pro, you can do whatever you want to win. "It's your life brother and sister," the decision is up to you.

If you are an amateur then you will be subjected to intense testing, and you will be caught. Testing will go up dramatically, and you will be caught if you cross any line we draw. And banned from competition for life. If you want to go that extra mile, just go pro.

Of course, one could imagine that there could be two pro circuits. One that allows all performance enhancing drugs, and one that does not. But we all know that will fail. Like minor league competition, nobody really cares about the second stringers. Fans want to see real amateurs, often competing locally and reinforcing pride. And they like to see pros -- the very best of the very best. And in this latter category, the fans consistently tell us via their support and dollars, they don't really care how those folks made it to the top.

So a difficult ethical dilemma now confronts sports fans - and those who monitor athletics:

1 - Do we pretend doping doesn't exist and keep lying about it, but realize what we're doing is a sham and waste of time?

2 - Do we spend millions of dollars in an upgraded "war on drugs" that is surely going to fail (and who will pay for this increased vigilance, by the way?)

3 - Do we realize that with the incentives that exist today, we need to change the rules on doping? Allow it, educate about its use, but give up trying to stop it. Just like pros now compete in the Olympics, enhancement drugs would no longer be banned.

This one's above my pay grade. What do you readers think?
Learn more about my public speaking, board involvement and growth consulting at www.AdamHartung.com, or connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Links to more info: Why Tom Brady's Deflategate win is bad for leadership Culture, leadership and why Tom Brady should have sat out 4 games Top 5 leadership lessons from 2015 headlines Listen to employees when evaluating leadership

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Why Cheating In Sports Is Prevalent -- And We Can't Stop It

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Cheating in sports is now officially prevalent. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) January 14 issued its report, and confirmed that across the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) athletes were cheating. And very frequently doing so under the supervision of those who lead major sports operations at a national, and international, level.

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From research and a personal perspective, I don't believe cheating is an issue that can ever be solved. People, especially athletes are addicted to winning and the fame that comes with it, so they will do what they need to in order to continue chasing that high.

Personally, my main recommendation to begin to solve this issue is to have a fixed punishment, if you are caught cheating it is not something that should be taken lightly. If it is a team approach you should be suspended the next season. If it is a singular player cheating, they should receive a significant suspension or not be allowed back at all depending on severity.

I also believe any title or reward received during the time of suspected or proved cheating should be immediately revoked.

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Aurora University's article on the psychological reasons behind why athletes cheat.

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There's a long history of athletes who have cheated. The examples are so rampant that it's difficult to even summarize the presence of cheating in sports.

Three of the major American professional sports have been impacted. Major League Baseball saw the Black Sox Scandal in the early part of the 20th century, and in the later part of the century, doping literally altered record books. National Basketball Association referee Tim Donaghy was investigated by the FBI for betting on games that he officiated. Perhaps most recognizable to sports fans may be the National Football League's controversy "Deflategate," in which quarterback Tom Brady allegedly ordered deflated footballs used in the 2014-15 playoffs.

Cheating also extends to other sports, of course. In an infamous example, Soviet athlete Boris Onishchenko was banned for life from sports after he was caught electrically wiring his fencing weapon to go off at will in the 1976 Summer Olympics. Even more infamous was Lance Armstrong's doping scandal, which stripped the cyclist of multiple achievements, including seven Tour de France titles.

Few people question whether cheating has impacted sports. But why have there been so many examples? What exactly causes athletes to cheat? This article takes a brief look at the psychology of cheating in sports.

Key Factors in the Psychology of Cheating in Sports

Who do people cheat in sports? Psychological research has provided insight into the sheer competitive nature of sports and the ethical complications of cheating. Those two factors offer perspective into why athletes are willing to cheat.

Emphasis on Winning

It might be an understatement to say that sports can be "competitive." In fact, sports can be an important part of culture, according to Howard Giles in "The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication." For instance, in the words of a cultural historian Jacques Barzun, which are inscribed in the Baseball Hall of Fame, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball."

Giles described how people "live in a globalized, sports-saturated world" that can put cultures and their values on display. Sports can also change the way that more specific groups interact and find their identity, including athletes, coaches, teams, and fans. Fans can be so involved that they have pregame anxiety and emotional experiences during games. They may even, without reason, blame losses on biased officiating (which can actually explain home field advantage) or cheating.

The stakes are high, and that's especially the case at professional levels of sport. Winning is a necessary ingredient in the pursuit of excellence, and, as a result, athletes can take that further than others might. It's reminiscent of the cliché that "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

"Competitive sport often places individuals in conflicting situations that emphasize winning over sportsperson-ship and fair play," according to the "Handbook of Sports Psychology." "It would be wrong, however, to attribute this to the competitive nature of sport." There are other factors at play. The next topic works hand-in-hand with the emphasis on winning to explain how athletes may turn to cheating.

The Ego and Moral Functioning

The concept of achievement goals is linked to potential cheating in sports. In task- and ego-oriented goals, there's a fundamental difference in how athletes think of themselves and why they compete. Task-oriented athletes focus on hard work and self-development, while ego-oriented athletes are focused on being better than everyone else and believe skill to be a matter of innate ability.

According to the "Handbook of Sports Psychology," studies have demonstrated relationships between task and ego orientations with sportsmanship and moral functioning. Compared to high task-oriented athletes, research points to how high ego-oriented athletes have lower sportsmanship, more self-reported cheating, and endorsement of cheating. Ego orientation can predict lower moral functioning.

Moral functioning can even take an unexpected turn with some sports cheaters. From research in Attitudes and Social Cognition, the notion that cheaters feel guilty after engaging in unethical behavior simply isn't true. Over six experiments, unethical behaviors not only failed to trigger negative affect, but they triggered positive affect. Those types of behaviors can lead to a "cheater's high."

"These findings challenge existing models of ethical decision-making and offer cause for concern," the study's authors said. "Many ethical decisions are made privately and are difficult to monitor. Individuals who recognize, perhaps from experience, that they can derive both material and psychological rewards from engaging in unethical behavior may be powerfully motivated to behave unethically."

Why Do People Cheat in Sports?

The psychology of cheating in sports is a complicated topic, and researchers are learning more about what drives people to violate the rules, use performance-enhancing drugs, or take part in some other method of cheating. However, the fundamental reason why people cheat in sports isn't complex at all.

Athletes want to win. At the highest levels of sports, the difference between first and second place is often millions of dollars and a significant amount of fame. As a result, some athletes may believe winning really is the only thing. To them, the risk of getting caught and being labeled a cheater is worth the money and glory that being the best brings.

Ask Lance Armstrong. He lost everything, it may appear, after being stripped of his achievements and experiencing costly legal battles. Armstrong told USA Today that he had paid more than $100 million in legal costs, and that came before he settled a $100 million lawsuit with the federal government for just $5 million. However, even those numbers may be significantly lower than what cheating allowed him to win. According to Bloomberg in 2013, Armstrong's riches totaled more than $218 million. At the peak of his career, he earned $28 million a year, Forbes estimated.

Was it worth it? In a BBC interview, Lance Armstrong said that if it was still 1995, he would "probably do it again."

If you're interested in the psychology of cheating in sports, you can learn more about sports psychology by earning your online MS in Exercise Science. You'll receive a strong foundation in topics like exercise physiology and sports nutrition as well. Aurora University Online's program offers two specializations in sports performance and clinical exercise. And through additional coursework and an internship or capstone experience, you'll be prepared for either of the following industry-leading certification exams:

The American College of Sports Medicine's (ACSM) Clinical Exercise Physiologist (CEP) exam.

The National Strength and Conditioning Association's (NSCA) Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) exam.

All courses in the degree feature expert instructors with extensive experience in their fields.

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The Psychology of Cheating in Sports | Aurora University Online

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There's a long history of athletes who have cheated. The examples are so rampant that it's difficult to even summarize the presence of cheating in sports. Three of the major American professional sports have been impacted.