Sport, Ethics and Philosophy

ISSN: 1751-1321 (Print) 1751-133X (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rsep20

Why the rules do not prohibit cheating in sports
Sinclair A. MacRae
To cite this article: Sinclair A. MacRae (2024) Why the rules do not prohibit cheating in sports,
Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 18:5, 497-510, DOI: 10.1080/17511321.2023.2254941
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2023.2254941

Published online: 07 Sep 2023.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 407

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rsep20

SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY
2024, VOL. 18, NO. 5, 497–510
https://doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2023.2254941

Why the rules do not prohibit cheating in sports
Sinclair A. MacRae
Department of Humanities, Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada
ABSTRACT

ARTICLE HISTORY

The idea that cheaters cannot (really) win in sports persists among
philosophers, mainly due to the lingering influence of Bernard Suits’
logical incompatibility thesis. In this article I explain why the thesis
does not apply to sports. I argue that the question whether cheat­
ing can be prohibited in sports is empirical rather than analytic, as is
the case for games subject to the thesis. Thus, sports rules do not
make cheating impossible and since game officials cannot always
detect cheating and punish cheaters, cheating is a part of sports
and cheaters sometimes win. Even if advances in technology made
it impossible for cheaters to evade detection, since in-game officials
will never know whether their attempts to provide restorative
justice to those victimized by acts of cheating are successful, and
since cheaters exploit this fact, it follows that not only is cheating
a part of sports, but it always will be.

Received 30 May 2023
Accepted 30 August 2023
KEYWORDS

Logical incompatibility
thesis; perfect control
condition; imperfect
detection condition; the
epistemological problem;
rectificatory justice

Introduction
‘Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby—who had a much worse reputation than Cobb for being
an SOB—once wrote a magazine article called “You’ve Got to Cheat to Win” in which he
contended that cheating occurred in each of the 2,259 major league games in which he
participated, starting in 1915. . . . How these men got away with rule breaking and umpire
abuse—fines seldom exceeded $50 and suspensions rarely lasted longer than three days
—is easy to explain: cheating and fighting were believed to be central to the game’. –
Leerhsen (2015, 54–55)
The idea that cheating could be central to baseball, or any other oppositional sport,
might follow from two conflicting analyses. Following Oliver Leaman one might
contend that the presence of cheating is due to its being a good thing, at least if it
is suitably regulated, because it makes sports ‘more interesting’ (2007, originally
published in 1981, 195).1 Thus even if it can be eliminated, it should not be.
Alternatively, one might argue that its presence is central despite being regrettable.
Cheating is always functionally and ethically bad, but since it is ineliminable, sport
administrators must instead pursue the second-best strategy of trying to minimize its
negative effects. Of course, the idea that the rules do not prohibit cheating in sports is
obviously false in one sense. The goal of eliminating cheating is a preoccupation of
sports officials, including, most obviously, via the rigorous enforcement of the rules.
CONTACT Sinclair A. MacRae
Canada

smacrae@mtroyal.ca

© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Department of Humanities, Mount Royal University, Calgary,

498

S. A. MACRAE

However, my title refers to a second sense of ‘prohibit’ which means ‘make impossible’
as when someone remarks that his advanced age prohibited him from reading small
print without the aid of reading glasses.
Many philosophers have thought that rules prohibit cheating in both senses. In
addition to the obvious sense, sports are subject to what Bernard Suits dubbed ‘the
logical incompatibility thesis’ according to which one cannot (really) win a game unless
one plays it, and one cannot really play the game unless one obeys the rules (Suits 1967,
150).2 Since cheating consists in wrongful rule violating, for example, deceptively moving
one’s knight in chess invalidly to gain a decisive winning position, the rules of the game
prohibit, or make impossible, cheating in the game. In response Leaman, Fred D’Agostino,
and Craig Lehman, all writing in 1981, challenged the applicability of the logical incom­
patibility thesis to sports. However, all three critiques are flawed for the reason Scott
Kretchmar identified at the time. Kretchmar argued that until philosophers developed
a better understanding of sport’s nature, their analyses of sports ethics would be lacking.
As he admonished, ‘Metaphysical understanding must precede ethical prescription’.
(1983, 22)
In reflecting on some of the deficiencies in the literature, Kretchmar posed several
interesting questions, some of which are still awaiting answers 40 years later:
How does the game penalty system operate? For what purposes are penalties instituted? What
does it mean when a given action is proscribed by the rules, and does this meaning change, as
Suits suggests, where there is a standard penalty for a violation, and where there is none? Where
originally prohibited actions are at some later time used in routine fashion, and where their use
makes for a better game, how can they be made a part of the game? Do game penalties always
‘fit’ their respective crimes? If not, is there some danger of forfeiting a game’s fairness,
particularly when one party persistently exploits weaknesses in the penalty system? Simply
stated, more needs to be understood before it can be agreed that intentional rule breaking in
games is morally sound behavior. (1983, 24)

Even today most philosophers reading this would likely cite Kretchmar’s drawing atten­
tion to the ethical status of strategic fouling as the most pressing question he poses. But
this would be a mistake, one that, ironically, illustrates his admonition. Instead, my goal
here is to answer three of Kretchmar’s other questions, along with another three that are
generated by them. Not only should answering these questions settle the logical incom­
patibility thesis controversy, but these answers should also deepen and extend our
understanding of sports ethics, including some aspects that extend beyond cheating.
This will better position us to analyze the ethics of strategic fouling, rule gaming, and
various other issues. Here, then, are Kretchmar’s three questions followed by three others:
(1) What does it mean when a given action is proscribed by the rules?
(2) For what purposes are penalties instituted?
(3) Do game penalties always ‘fit’ their crimes?
(4) Why don’t the rules prohibit cheating in sports?
(5) Why can’t restitution be made to those victimized by functionally wrongful rule
violating?
(6) Why are attempts to provide compensation (in the form of a penalty or penalties)
necessarily imperfect for achieving rectificatory justice in sports?

SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

499

Before proceeding I should note that my analysis mainly focuses on professional team
sports characterized by varying degrees of direct and oppositional physical interaction,
such sports as basketball, hockey, football, soccer, rugby, lacrosse, and baseball; what
I call ‘oppositional sports’ (see MacRae 2021, 75), and hereafter simply ‘sports’. The
extent to which the present analysis applies to other sports is a topic for another
occasion.

Exorcizing the Ghost of the Logical Incompatibility Thesis
If we think of cheating in central cases of consisting ‘in both the functional and ethical
violation of the first-order norms of sport in the service of obtaining false or unearned
victory, or at least materially advancing the obtaining of such victory’ (Macrae 2023, 130),
we can see that in calling some act ‘cheating’ we are making two kinds of judgments
involving two species of value. We are making a logically more basic perfectionist
assessment and a subsequent, dependent, but conceptually distinct ethical one. One
reason why we must remind ourselves about this is because Suits collapses this distinction
in his influential analysis of cheating in games. Furthermore, it has been tempting to
assume that since the logical incompatibility thesis applies to games, and since sports are
also games, it must apply to sports as well. I have previously argued that this is false (see
Macrae 2020) but that argument is incomplete and confusion about this matter persists.
This confusion extends beyond those who incorrectly believe that the logical incom­
patibility thesis applies to sports to include those who correctly reject this view, but who
do so for poor reasons. For example, both Leaman and Lehman deny that the logical
incompatibility thesis applies to sports, but they are both nevertheless haunted by the
ghost of the thesis.3 Here is Leaman:
In a very basic sense it is obvious that if all or some of the players in a game disobey the rules
as a matter of course in their entirety, then they are not playing the game in an ethically
dubious manner – they are not playing it at all. Yet this general breakdown of the rules, and
consequently of the game, is not what is meant by cheating. The cheater’s behavior is on the
whole conforming, since otherwise he would not be allowed to play the game. Someone who
does not conform in any way to the rules of the game will presumably be forbidden, at some
stage or other, to continue in it. The cheater seeks to gain an advantage over the opposition
in a game and through the game, and so he wants to stay in the game, and not destroy it.
(2007, 195)

Leaman thinks that players can cheat without destroying a game provided they do not
break too many rules. But Suits could argue that this is irrelevant. Claiming that the
cheater’s behavior is on the whole rule conforming is like arguing that the bank robber’s
conduct was on the whole law abiding because most of the actions he performed while
he was in the bank were legal. But just as it only takes a single invalid move for the cheater
to no longer be playing chess, the bank robber need only threaten a teller to break the
law. The relevant question is not: how many rules can a cheater break while still playing
their sport? The relevant question is: how can someone who breaks any rule of a sport
while cheating still be playing that sport? Furthermore, if a cheater plays the game, then
they can win it. But how can a cheater (really) win?
Lehman makes a similar error. He claims that it would be absurd to say that one cannot
cheat while playing a sport:

500

S. A. MACRAE

For instance, many baseball fans believe that Atlanta Braves’ pitcher Gaylord Perry throws
a spitball. Throwing a spitball is a violation of the rules of baseball. Suppose these fans are
right about Perry. Does anyone seriously want to say that no baseball game is ever played
when Perry pitches? Should Perry be ineligible for the Hall of Fame on the grounds that he
has never won a game, let alone competed, in baseball? Yet this seems to follow if we accept
the unqualified thesis that cheating and competing are incompatible. (1981, 42)

Although he is right about this, he, like Leaman, claims that one reason why a cheater can
cheat while playing his sport is because he does not violate too many rules: ‘Of course, as
I conceded at the outset, a game cannot be played if too many of its rules are violated’.
(1981, 43) Later, he adds,
So, although I concede that at some (probably hard-to-define) point, excessive rule violations
become incompatible with playing a given game, and that there also may be certain ideal
cases in which exacting conformity to rules is essential, I maintain that (due to social custom
and convenience) it is not in general necessary to the playing or winning of games that every
rule of those games be obeyed. (1981, 43–44)

Lehman clearly asserts here that since Perry only violated a single rule, he could cheat
while playing the game.4 But, Suits might ask, how is this possible and how can a cheater
(really) win?
This leads us to the first of Kretchmar’s questions: (1) what does it mean when a given
action is proscribed by the rules? If we turn to the law for some guidance, we see that
there are at least two ways in which an act can be legally prohibited: because it is legally
invalid or void, or because it is not in accordance with the law and therefore subject to
a legal sanction. According to the Oxford English dictionary in one sense the word ‘invalid’
means ‘of no force, efficacy, or cogency; especially without legal force, void’. For example,
if someone makes an inheritance claim based on an invalid will, then the claim is simply
denied because the will, being invalid, is void or has no legal standing. Alternatively, a will
might be legally prohibited because it is illegitimate and subject to a legal sanction, for
instance because of an act of fraud, as when the sole beneficiary forges the signature of an
impersonated testator.
Consider this distinction as it applies to games and sports. The logical incompatibility
thesis only applies to games to which the Perfect Control Condition applies, that is, to
games in which all permissible moves are precisely specified by the rules (see Macrae
2020, 54). Since the main point of such games is to test players’ strategic acumen, they
must be following the rules to do this. For example, we learn nothing about a player’s
acumen in chess if they try to win by moving their pieces in ways that do not conform to
the rules. Therefore, in games subject to the logical incompatibility thesis all moves that
are prohibited are invalid.
In contrast, in sports some rules violations are illegitimate and subject to penalty. To
understand why consider Kretchmar’s next question: (2) for what purposes are penalties
instituted? Unlike games such as chess, sports (as Suits observed) are games of physical
skill that present various oppositional tests. Usually the physical contesting of opposi­
tional skills, abilities, and tactics occurs within the rules, and so is functionally legitimate.
For example, in hockey teams that leverage superior speed may not cause the losing side
to employ functionally illegitimate play. Being slower may be functionally bad—it may
explain why a team lost—but it is not functionally illegitimate. However, sometimes those

SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

501

with deficient skills, abilities, and tactics can only prevent an opponent from achieving
success by committing a foul. Whereas being slower is not against the rules, impeding an
opponent by holding them to try to negate their speed advantage is. However, since this
is precisely the sort of difference that the sport is designed to test for, its emergence,
though functionally illegitimate, is an important part of the game.
This is a crucial point. Whereas invalid play is illegitimate play that is not part of a game,
illegitimate play subject to penalty is part of a game. One reason why philosophers have
struggled with this is because it may appear to be contradictory because it may seem that
accepting this idea commits one to believing that illegitimate play is a legitimate part of
sports, meaning by this that such play is recommended or desirable despite being
illegitimate.5 But this is incorrect. Given the nature of the central test of each sport, the
emergence of illegitimate play subject to penalty is important for what it reveals about
the pursuit of success in the game, but this is not to say that such play is functionally
good. Its emergence is entirely consistent with the desire of gamewrights, sports admin­
istrators, and officials to try to neutralize it. This leads us to an answer to
Kretchmar’s second question: penalties are instituted to try to neutralize illegitimate
play by providing rectificatory justice to those who would otherwise wrongly suffer
because of such play by their opponents. Imposing a penalty for illegitimate play is
necessary for maintaining the functional and ethical integrity of a sport’s games.
Penalties are applied to restore legitimately earned advantages in play that would
otherwise be wrongfully negated by a rule violation. In addition to having this retro­
spective justification, they also have a prospective one because they are also designed to
deter wrongdoing. Players who know that they will be penalized for committing a careless
foul will take more care to avoid this outcome than they would in the absence of the rule.6
Penalties also serve two purposes because they are designed to remedy and deter both
merely functionally wrongful play, as in the case of the careless foul, and functionally and
ethically wrongful play, or cheating.7 Unintentionally walking a batter in baseball is an
error but not a moral one. In contrast cheating is functionally and ethically wrongful norm
violating.
One way in which a player can turn merely functionally illegitimate play, such as
a careless foul, into cheating is by intentionally escaping detection and punishment.8
This distinction between merely functionally illegitimate and functionally and ethically
illegitimate play leads us to a deeper question. A critic might argue that even if my
analysis explains how functionally illegitimate play can be a part of sport, since cheating
involves escaping detection and punishment, how can it be a part of the game?9 Since the
actions of cheaters are not neutralized by the penalty system, how can their play be part
of the game and how can they (really) win a game by cheating?

The Imperfect Detection Condition
‘Winners never cheat, and cheaters never win’. – common saying
‘Life is not fair. Get used to it’. – Bill Gates
As the foregoing analysis shows, the claim that cheating is prohibited, or impossible, in
games subject to the logical incompatibility thesis is analytic. Since cheating in such
games consists in invalid play, it is therefore void. In contrast, since (some types of)

502

S. A. MACRAE

cheating in sports consist in illegitimate play subject to penalty, the question whether
cheating can be prohibited, or made impossible, is an empirical question. It depends upon
whether sports officials can eradicate it.
To see why this will never happen consider cheating as occurring in the context of
a complex institutional practice.10 First, we should distinguish between cheating and
intending to cheat because whether cheating occurs crucially depends upon whether it
goes undetected by one or more officials.11 Both Leaman and Lehman, among others,
understate or overlook the role of in-game officials in understanding the story of
cheating.12 They think that game playing depends on the players obeying the rules but
they overlook the essential role of officials in enforcing the rules.13 If a soccer player
throws a ball into his opponent’s goal, then that would lead to the breakdown of the
game only if the referee permitted this. The question is not, as they claim, whether too
many rules are violated; the question is whether such violations are enforced. This is what
it means to say that the officials are charged with maintaining the functional integrity of
sport. Therefore, Leaman is wrong to claim that a cheater can ‘destroy’ a game by
breaking too many rules, just as Lehman is wrong to claim that ‘excessive rule violations
is incompatible with playing a game’.
One way functionally illegitimate play can become ethically bad is if game officials fail
to penalize it but note that the culpability for this will fall along a spectrum. At one end
the blame will fall upon the cheater but at the other end officials will be culpable, and
there will also be grey-area cases in which reasonable people may struggle with fairly
apportioning the blame. Thus, in addition to the wrongs of cheating, a second source of
unfairness in sport is due to the failure of officials to competently enforce the penalty
system.14 Obviously, since sports are officiated by fallible humans, just as errors in play are
part of the game, so are errors by officials. Officials are also not omniscient. As much as
sports administrators would prefer that no unfairness arises through the actions or
limitations of officials, it is presently practically impossible to make this so.
This fact helps us dispel a lingering confusion regarding the notion that cheaters
cannot (really) win a game. The idea that ‘winners never cheat’ is correctly interpreted
evaluatively, and more specifically, honorifically, not literally. Understood honorifically, it
means that those displaying good sportspersonship (‘winners’) never cheat, which is
analytic. Similarly, the claim that ‘cheaters never win’ is also correctly interpreted evalua­
tively, not literally. Understood evaluatively it means that although cheaters may officially
win, their winning, since it is the product of cheating, is therefore debased, and as such is
not true ‘winning’, in the honorific sense of that term, just as saying ‘you call that coward
a man?’ employs the honorific sense of ‘man’ but does not imply that the coward referred
to is not literally a man. Since officials are not omniscient, the claim that cheaters never
really or literally win is simply false. Unlike in the case of games subject to the logical
incompatibility thesis, cheating in sports does not invalidate or void the games in which it
occurs.
Although the claim that winning by cheating means that the winning did not occur in
accordance with the rules (or at least their spirit), the stronger claim that this entails that
such results render the game in question invalid or void, that is, not a game of that sport,
just as an invalid will is not a true or legal will, is unwarranted. Thinking this would also
commit one to the view that any game in which an official makes an error that impacts the
result is similarly void, or not a game of that sport. However, embracing these claims is

SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

503

inconsistent with the prosaic truth that sports are played and officiated by fallible,
imperfect humans. Indeed, officials’ fallibility, including their lack of omniscience, is
a key to understanding why cheating is part of sports. For not being subject to the
Perfect Control Condition is only a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for making
this claim true. There are several athletic pursuits, for example, high jump and shot put,
that do not perfectly control athletes’ actions—it is up to them to decide which techni­
ques, within a permissible range, they wish to employ—but in which there are no penaltyinvoking rules. Why is this?
In various sprints racers who false start twice are disqualified. Is a sprinter who has false
started once penalized because they must then race knowing that another false start will
disqualify them? Is this a penalty because this impedes them from anticipating the start
within the allowable limit, effectively limiting their chances of having the fastest start? No
and no. Technology enables race officials to determine whether a sprinter violates the rule
against false starting, effectively rendering it impossible to violate the rule undetected.15
In contrast, in cases where participants have latitude to act in ways that are not perfectly
controlled by the rules, and where game officials cannot perfectly determine whether the
rules have been violated, players can game the rules to gain unearned competitive
advantages. For example, diving in soccer is functionally wrongful because it is not
a desirable lusory skill. It exploits the limited ability of referees to detect it and it is
ethically wrongful because if it is successful it imposes an unearned foul on an opponent,
thereby wrongly disadvantaging that player’s team, potentially with serious effects on the
outcome of the match. Partly to deter such rule gaming various leagues have instituted
fouls for such unsportspersonlike conduct, typically in the form of a yellow card.16
Cheating is part of a sport where not only the Perfect Control Condition does not
obtain but the means for detecting such rule-violating is imperfect. Let’s refer to
this second condition as the Imperfect Detection Condition.17 In sports subject to it,
gamewrights, administrators, and officials institute penalty-invoking rules to try to deter
potential rule breakers and, ideally, perfectly penalize them for violations. The state of
perfect detection and the state of being undetectable are endpoints on a continuum with
chess being situated somewhere near the former because the means for detecting rule
violations are typically excellent but not perfect. For example, it is possible that a player
might distract her (inexperienced) opponent and then move one of her pieces out of turn,
or invalidly in turn, in order to gain an unearned strategic benefit without being caught.
Such trickery is even more tempting in sports where the conditions for detecting norm
violations are more difficult due to such factors as the physical nature of play, the speed of
play, and the present impracticality of constantly engaging video review.
This analysis further advances our answer to our fourth question (why don’t the rules
prohibit cheating in sports?). Where the Imperfect Detection Condition obtains, then it
will be impossible to always detect cheating and, as we have noted, since such conduct
occurs in the course of play, such cheating is part of sports. Furthermore, cheaters
sometimes win.

Rectificatory Justice and the Epistemological Problem
A critic might argue that since it is an empirical matter, it is a contingent question whether
we may some day develop the technical ability to make it impossible to cheat. But alas,

504

S. A. MACRAE

a separate challenge, which I will call the Epistemological Problem, is generated from the
impossibility of knowing when officials’ attempts to provide restorative justice are suc­
cessful and when they fall short.
To understand this difficulty consider again Kretchmar’s third question: (3) do game
penalties always ‘fit’ their crimes? Not only must a good theory of cheating contend with
the complications arising from the Imperfect Detection Condition obtaining, but it must
also contend with the limitations of providing restorative justice for functionally wrongful
penalty-invoking rule violations. Ideally such infractions would result in the restoration of
conditions prior to the foul or, failing this, the provision of perfect compensation for the
wronged party. Unfortunately, the former option is impossible and the prospects for the
latter are limited.
This leads us to an answer to our fifth question: (5) why can’t restitution be made
to those victimized by functionally wrongful rule violating? Onora O’Neill distin­
guishes between two forms of rectificatory justice (O’neill 1987). Restitution, she
explains, is a response to the ruptured moral relationship between offenders and
victims. This means that restitution cannot be vicarious: that which has been lost
must be restored to those who suffered the wrong by the wrongdoer. To make
restitution for stealing your car, I must return it and apologize. Restitution would not
be made if your insurance company bought you another vehicle or otherwise
compensated you for your loss. My apology is offered in recognition that I cannot
make complete restitution to you because although I can return your car, I cannot
return it in the state it was in when I stole it. Nor can I undo having made you
a victim of a crime.
In sports this means that rectificatory justice cannot consist in perfect restitution.
Unlike perhaps in games subject to the Perfect Control Condition, where
a functionally wrongful move can be reset to the moment just prior to when the
wrong move was made,18 this is not practicable given the kinetic nature and
complex dynamics of sport. Trying to do so would also create more problems than
would be solved, even if this was possible. For instance, in addition to the difficulty
of correctly determining the exact position of all the players just prior to the
wrongful act, even if resetting the action from there was possible, the rules resetting
the action would themselves be subject to being gamed because they could be used
to gain a different unearned advantage. For example, they could be gamed to gain
unearned rest for the wrongdoer and the wrongdoer’s team. No, in the case of
sports those responsible for fairly administering the rules must look to providing
compensation as a second-best attempt at achieving restorative justice. This leads us
to an answer to our final question: (6) why are attempts to provide compensation (in
the form of a penalty or penalties) necessarily imperfect for achieving rectificatory
justice in sports?
O’Neill argues that compensation is a second form of rectificatory justice and since it is
a response solely to victims, it can be vicarious in two respects. Victims are compensated if
someone other than the wrongdoer offers them something for their loss. This lines up
with the case of sports where the rules tend to take the administration of restorative
justice out of the hands of the wrongdoer and instead vest officials with this responsibility.
Furthermore, compensation must be vicarious in another respect: since it does not restore
that which is lost, it must substitute a vicarious good. If your stolen car is not returned to

SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

505

you, then your insurance company compensates you by giving you funds to purchase
another one.
O’Neill argues that whereas compensation cannot undo or even expunge a wrong, it
can counter it. However, in sports the prospects for this happening are limited. Sometimes
compensation will fairly counter the wrong, as when a fouled shooter in basketball who is
awarded two free throws, and who would have scored in the absence of the foul,
subsequently makes both shots. But sometimes the compensation will be an overpay­
ment (imagine the free throw shooter makes both shots but would have missed her
original shot in the absence of the foul) and other times it will underpay (imagine she
misses one or both free throws but would have made her original shot).19 To varying
degrees the same is true for the penalty system as it applies to other sports. Even worse,
how could we know which cases of compensation were fair, and which unfairly disad­
vantaged either the wrongdoer or the wronged? Although conscientious gamewrights
may try their best to make the compensation fit the wrong, perfection compensation, and,
significantly, the knowledge that it is perfect, will forever be out of their reach. This is the
Epistemological Problem.
To eradicate the wrongs of in-game cheating sports officials would need to detect all
functionally illegitimate play. Let us assume for the sake of argument that advances in
technology enable them to do this. Although this would end the problem with detection,
they would still need to fairly compensate the wronged. However, due to the
Epistemological Problem, this is impossible. Since officials will never know when the
compensation offered would do this, they will never be able to eradicate the wrongs
stemming from attempts to cheat. And since players are as aware of this as officials, they
will continue to try to exploit the Epistemological Problem to engineer wrongful advan­
tages. And even if it is true that they can never be sure that they succeed in this, we can
never be sure that they are unsuccessful. The simple truth is we will never know for
certain. Regardless, it is reasonable to assume that over some indeterminate range of
cases, they will by this process wrongly disadvantage their opponent. When this happens,
and where this secures an unearned victory, or contributes to the obtaining of such
a victory, and where it is also the product of the conscious intent of the wrongdoer, then
they are victims of cheating.
But can we not eliminate the vexations of the Epistemological Problem by removing
doubts about the general fairness of compensation by punishing more severely? Sigmund
Loland entertains this idea:
Tactical fouls build on a social logic in which penalties do not fit the crime. Hence, as has been
done in soccer with the introduction of a red card and expulsion from the game for bringing
down a player in a scoring position, penalties should be increased. In this way, the very
rationale for tactical fouls will disappear. (2005, 22–23)

If only this problem was so easily solved. For although there may be cases where
punishing more severely might limit the scope of the Epistemological Problem, the
deficiency in this solution is that it will oftentimes leave us with the problem of
overpaying for fouls. This threatens to undermine the desired lusory pursuit in
a sport via, once again, rule gaming. If a hockey player knows that her team will be
awarded a goal if she is fouled in various ways, then rather than focusing on devel­
oping her skill at scoring, would it not be easier, and hence more prudent, for her to

506

S. A. MACRAE

learn to be a better diver? By the same reasoning should basketball players not learn
how to be better floppers? But are these the sorts of skills that gamewrights want to
cultivate? It rather seems preferable for them to prefer the imperfect state in which we
resign ourselves to living with the Epistemological Problem instead of trying to
eliminate it by overpaying for fouls. Since fairly and reasonably eliminating the
Epistemological Problem seems an insurmountable challenge, I conclude that not
only was Mr. Hornsby correct that cheating is a part of the game, but, at least and
ironically for functionally good games, it always will be.

Conclusion
Some will deny my contention that those who successfully exploit the Epistemological
Problem to engineer wrongful advantages are cheating. The flaw in my reasoning, they
will claim, is that my argument rests on the false belief that some instances of strategic
fouling are instances of cheating. A strategic foul, or an ‘intentional tactical rules violation’,
is ‘an intentional act that violates the rules in a way in which the rule violator expects to be
detected and penalized but expects some benefit to his or her competitive effectiveness’
(Fraleigh 2003, 169). However, since strategic fouling, unlike cheating, does not require
deception or the intent to avoid detection, and since it involves the acceptance of
a penalty, and, furthermore, since cheating involves deception and the avoidance of
a penalty, it follows that strategic fouling is not cheating.20 Therefore, the question
whether we may some day eradicate cheating via technological advances remains open.
I have argued that cheating in central cases consists ‘in both the functional and ethical
violation of the first-order norms of sport in the service of obtaining false or unearned
victory, or at least materially advancing the obtaining of such victory’. Since strategic
fouling involves fouling, there is no question that it is functionally wrongful conduct. What
sometimes makes it ethically wrongful as well, and hence cheating, is not that it involves
deception and avoiding detection. There is more than one way in which an act can be
ethically wrongful (or cheating) and this is one reason why the concept ‘cheating’ is
a general category with a number of sub-categories. Unlike attempts to violate rules while
avoiding detection and penalty, strategic fouling is a form of rule gaming that is some­
times ethically wrongful when it exploits the Epistemological Problem. This occurs, as
I have noted, when the fouled player or team is underpaid by the compensatory mechan­
ism that was designed to provide corrective justice, and where, consequently, such
underpayment materially advances the obtaining of victory by the strategic fouler.
This is not to say that all cases of strategic fouling are instances of cheating. However,
a fuller defense of this claim, along with an account of a more complete typology of
cheating, are topics for another time.

Notes
1. With his support for ‘competitive shenanigans’, Russell (2014, 2017a, 2017b, 2018) is another
notable proponent of this view. For some criticism of his position see Macrae (2019, 348–350).
2. See, for example, Suits (1967, 150, 1978, 37–38); Kathleen Pearson (1973, 117); Edwin Delattre
(1975, 136); Wertz (1981); Warren Fraleigh (1984, chapter 5); William Morgan (1987); Randolph

SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

507

Feezell (1988, 59 and Feezell 2004, Chapter 7); Leslie Howe (2004, 213), Deborah Vossen
(2014), Alex Wolf-Root (2019), and Eric Moore (2019).
3. Likewise D’Agostino’s argument is also poor. He argues that in addition to the formal rules,
a sport is also governed by an ethos—‘the unofficial, implicit, empirically determinable
conventions which govern official interpretations’ of the rules (1981, 15). According to this
conventionalist view, the reason why rule breakings are a part of sports is because they are
recognized as such by the ethos of that sport. However, claiming that the logical incompat­
ibility thesis does not apply to sports because the conventions permit this, while true, is
hardly an explanation. Lehman makes a similar error and Feezell appeals to the very same fact
to reach an opposing conclusion. He claims that since what Lehman refers to as ‘cheating’ is
not really cheating because it is a customary part of baseball (1988, 65). This is also question
begging.
4. In referring to ‘convenience’ here Lehman is referring to an earlier point where he argues that
unpenalized rule violations are part of sport because ‘there is no practical way for the officials
to see everything that occurs’ in a game (1981, 43). I will argue in the next section that this is
a significant point but despite raising it, Lehman does not develop it and explain its
significance.
5. Russell’s endorsement of ‘competitive shenanigans’ (Russell 2017a, 103) is an exception to
this.
6. Here is how Kretchmar succinctly expresses this dual justification: ‘Equity must be reestab­
lished; dissuasion for future transgressions effected’ (Kretchmar 2001, 168).
7. For an example of the confusion of functional and ethical dimensions of penalty-incurring
play see Wertz (1981), 19.
8. Both Nicholas Dixon (1999, 12) and Fraleigh (1984, 72) identify cheating in this way.
9. Notice that this is a fatal question for D’Agostino’s conventionalist attempt to explain
why the logical incompatibility thesis does not apply to sports. Conventions govern
the official interpretations of the rules (1981, 15) so although they are relevant for
deciding whether some act is or is not a rule violation, since successful cheating
involves escaping detection, an appeal to conventions cannot explain why cheating is
a part of sports. Conventions are relevant for understanding the regulation of merely
functionally wrongful play but not the functionally and ethically wrongful play that is
cheating.
10. I am discussing cheating in central cases in sports. Russell (2014, 305) cites S.P. Green’s
example of someone butting into a line (Green 2006, 57), and Bernard Gert’s example of
a CEO openly cheating at the company’s golf tournament (Gert 1998, 102), as instances of
non-covert or non-deceptive acts of cheating. However, since these acts occur in the absence
of officials or referees, they are not central cases.
11. Russell overlooks this distinction. He argues that since a baseball batter might use a corked
bat but never impact the outcome of a game, it is false that cheating necessarily impacts the
outcome of a game (Russell 2014, 316 and; Russell 2017a, 101). In contrast, I believe it is more
perspicuous to say that the batter who never hits with the corked bat intends to cheat but is
never successful in this. This reveals a difference between my interpretation of ‘cheating’ and
how we commonly use the concept. Russell is correct that most people would say that hitting
with a corked bat is cheating, but I have revised our ordinary concept in the interests of utility
to mean ‘functionally and ethically wrongful norm violating’ (see Macrae 2019, 339–344).
Although my revised concept overlaps with our ordinary one, it is not identical. For example,
whether hitting with a corked bat is cheating on my analysis turns on whether it is true that
using a corked bat ever results in a benefit that can only be obtained illegally. However, this
appears to be false. Not only does hitting with a corked bat not produce what has been called
the ‘trampoline effect’ (see Nathan et al. 2011, 575–577) but the one benefit that it does
provide (it lightens a bat to make it easier to generate more bat speed), can be achieved
legally in a few different ways, for example, by shaving a bat. For some discussion of this see
Christopher Solomon (2011). For some discussion of the history of cheating in baseball,
including this topic, see Fran Zimniuch (2009, Chapter 4).

508

S. A. MACRAE

12. Russell also does this. He claims to be examining cheating in sports but some of the examples
of cheating that he cites, including the two I mentioned in note #10, are either not sports
examples or do not involve sporting contexts in which officials are charged with enforcing
the rules. See also Russell (2017a), 95.
13. Also consider Cesar Torres’ claim that ‘The violation of the constitutive rules effectively ends
the game’, (2000, 83) meaning by this, I assume, violations by the players. But this is only true
if the officials do not enforce the rules.
14. I discuss a third source of ethical wrongness—corruption—which also includes wrongdoing
by officials (see Macrae 2023). I also argue that in-game officials cannot cheat and so claiming
that unfairness in sports resulting from the incompetence of officials is cheating is
a confusion. Russell exhibits this confusion when he infers that since many people believe
that wrongful official errors are cheating, and since such errors need not be accompanied by
deception by participants, it follows that deception need not be a key element of cheating
(Russell 2014, 306).
15. There has recently been some controversy over false starts in sprinting. American
Devon Allen was disqualified from the final of the 110-metre hurdles race at the 2022
track and field world championship for violating the anticipated start of his race by
one-one thousandth of a second. However, notice that the controversy was not about
the ability to detect false starts; it was over the fair setting of the allowance for
sprinters to react to a starting gun. For more on this see: https://www.usatoday.com/
story/sports/2022/07/18/devon-allen-false-start-eagles-world-championships
/10084999002/
16. For some empirical evidence supporting the value of such deterrence, along with some
interesting data and analysis on the strategies pertaining to diving in soccer see David et al.
(2011).
17. I am making a claim here about in-game cheating. Athletes can also cheat outside of
play, for example, by violating eligibility norms, as in the case of collegiate athletics or
as in the case of Danny Almonte, who pitched in the 2001 Little League World Series
despite being overage. Also, I was led to the Imperfect Detection Condition by Joseph
Heath’s (2007) analysis of wrongful conduct in business, which was partly based upon
cheating in sports.
18. Sigmund Loland (2005, 13) notes this point.
19. For some interesting discussion concerning this fairness in compensation problem, espe­
cially as it relates to the requisite player skills in various sports, see Torres (2000,
section 3).
20. See, for example, José Luis Pérez Trivińo (2012, 70) and Loland (2005, 14). Russell (2014) also
claims that it is part of the general incoherence in the concept ‘cheating’ that it sometimes
involves deception and sometimes does not. I have criticized his position elsewhere (Macrae
2019, 2023). Also, Russell (2014, 305) claims that Dixon believes a necessary condition of
cheating is that it involves deception but Dixon rather claims that attempting to break the
rules while escaping detection and punishment is merely a sufficient condition for some act
to be cheating (Dixon 1999, 12).

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers, and the editor, Andrew Edgar, for their helpful
comments and criticism. The remaining errors and shortcomings are, of course, mine.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

509

ORCID
Sinclair A. MacRae

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9505-1139

References
D’AGOSTINO, F. 1981. The ethos of games. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 8 (1): 7–18. 10.1080/

00948705.1981.9714372
DAVID, G.K., C.H. CONDON, C.L. BYWATER, D. ORTIZ-BARRIENTOS, R.S. WILSON, and J. KORB. 2011. Receivers limit the

prevalence of deception in humans: Evidence from diving behaviour in soccer players. PloS One
6 (10): e26017. 10.1371/journal.pone.0026017
DELATTRE, E.J. 1975. Some reflections on success and failure in competitive athletics. Journal of the
Philosophy of Sport 2 (1): 133–39. 10.1080/00948705.1975.10654105
DIXON, N. 1999. On winning and athletic superiority. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 26 (1): 10–26. 10.
1080/00948705.1999.9714576
FEEZELL, R. 1988. On the wrongness of cheating and why cheaters can’t play the game. Journal of the
Philosophy of Sport 15 (1): 57–68. 10.1080/00948705.1988.9714461
FEEZELL, R. 2004. Sport, play, and ethical reflection, Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press
FRALEIGH, W.P. 1984. Right action in sport: Ethics for contestants, Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics
Publishers, Inc
FRALEIGH, W.P. 2003. Intentional rules violations—one more time. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport
30 (2): 166–76. 10.1080/00948705.2003.9714642
GERT, B. 1998. Morality: Its nature and justification, New York, NY: Oxford University Press
GREEN, S.P. 2006. Lying, cheating, and stealing: A moral theory of white collar crime, New York, NY:
Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199225804.003.0007
HEATH, J. 2007. An adversarial ethic for business: Or when Sun-Tzu met the stakeholder. Journal of
Business Ethics 72 (4): 359–74. 10.1007/s10551-006-9175-5
HOWE, L. 2004. Gamesmanship. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 31 (2): 212–25. 10.1080/00948705.
2004.9714661
KRETCHMAR, R.S. 2001. A functionalist analysis of game acts: Revisiting Searle. Journal of the Philosophy
of Sport 28 (2): 160–72. 10.1080/00948705.2001.9714611
LEERHSEN, C. 2015. Ty Cobb: A terrible beauty, New York: Simon & Schuster
LOLAND, S. 2005. The varieties of cheating: Comments on ethical analyses in sport. Sport in Society 8 (1):
11–26. 10.1080/1743043052000316597
MACRAE, S.A. 2019. Cheating as wrongful competitive norm violating. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport
46 (3): 339–54. 10.1080/00948705.2019.1601017
MACRAE, S.A. 2020. Rules in games and sports: Why a solution to the problem of penalties leads to the
rejection of formalism as a useful theory about the nature of sport. Journal of the Philosophy of
Sport 47 (1): 49–62. 10.1080/00948705.2019.1635491
MACRAE, S.A. 2021. The conflicting excellences of oppositional sports. Sport, Ethics & Philosophy 15 (1):
74–87.
MACRAE, S.A. 2023. A functional analysis of cheating and corruption in sports. Journal of the Philosophy
of Sport 50 (1): 116–32. 10.1080/00948705.2023.2174550
MOORE, E. 2019. Formalism conventionalized. Sport, Ethics & Philosophy 13 (3–4): 318–33. 10.1080/
17511321.2019.1566271
MORGAN, W. 1987. The logical incompatibility thesis and rules: A reconsideration of formalism as an
account of games. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 14 (1): 1–20. 10.1080/00948705.1987.
9714447
NATHAN, A.M., L.V. SMITH, W.L. FABER, and D.A. RUSSELL. 2011. Corked bats, juiced balls, and humidors: The
physics of cheating in baseball. American Journal of Physics 79 (6): 575–80. 10.1119/1.3554642
O’NEILL, O.N.O.R.A. 1987. Rights to compensation. Social Philosophy & Policy 5 (1): 72–87. 10.1017/
S0265052500001254

510

S. A. MACRAE

PEARSON, K. 1973. Deception, sportsmanship, and ethics. Quest 19 (1): 115–18. 10.1080/00336297.1973.

10519761
RUSSELL, J.S. 2014. Is there a normatively distinctive conception of cheating in sport (or anywhere else)?

Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 41 (3): 303–23. 10.1080/00948705.2013.832266
RUSSELL, J.S. 2017a. The problem of cheating. In Philosophy: Sports, MacMillan Interdisciplinary

Handbooks, edited by S. Kretchmar, New York: MacMillan Reference USApp. 93–110
RUSSELL, J.S. 2017b. Strategic fouling and sport as play. Sport, Ethics & Philosophy 11 (1): 26–39. 10.1080/

17511321.2016.1266507
RUSSELL, J.S. 2018. Play and the moral limits of sport. In Ethics in sport, edited by W.J. Morgan, 3rd,

Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers Incpp. 205–22. 10.5040/9781492595465.ch-013
SOLOMON, C. 2011. ‘The physics of cheating in baseball,’ Smithsonian Magazine, June 23, 2011,

accessed May 21st, 2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-physics-ofcheating-in-baseball-19613464/ .
SUITS, B. 1967. What is a game? Philosophy of Science 34 (2): 148–56. 10.1086/288138
SUITS, B. 1978. The grasshopper: Games, life and utopia, Toronto: University of Toronto Press
TORRES, C.R. 2000. What counts as part of a game? A look at skills. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport
27 (1): 81–92. 10.1080/00948705.2000.9714591
TRIVIŃO, J.L.P. 2012. Strategic intentional fouls, spoiling the game and gamesmanship. Sport, Ethics &
Philosophy 6 (1): 67–77. 10.1080/17511321.2011.652660
VOSSEN, D.P. 2014. A grasshopperian analysis of the strategic foul. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport
41 (3): 325–46. 10.1080/00948705.2013.832262
WERTZ, S.K. 1981. The varieties of cheating. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 8 (1): 19–40. 10.1080/
00948705.1981.9714373
WOLF-ROOT, A. 2019. Pre-game cheating and playing the game. Sport, Ethics & Philosophy 13 (3–4):
334–47. 10.1080/17511321.2018.1536676
ZIMNIUCH, F. 2009. Crooked: A history of cheating in sports, Lanham, Maryland: Taylor Trade Publishing