Cheating for the Sport of It

Mark Bowden rises to the defense of all sports cheaters - at all levels of competition - in today's NY Times. Bowden asserts that sports cheating is merely standards operating procedure in this country and has infiltrated even little league sports, based on his own personal experience. While it's a cute story, I seriously doubt any pee-wee football coach did what Bowden avows he did.

When I played football as a teenager in a youth league, my coaches routinely tried to spy on our opponents by sending someone to watch them practice. And if we obtained intelligence about the other team’s play calling (like the time one of my teammates had a friend who could decode the other coach’s defensive audibles), it wasn’t reported to them, but put to good use.

Right. Pee-wee coaches "routinely" spied on other teams' practices. And this occurred 20-30 years ago? I'm calling bulls*#t.The NY Times need better fact checkers for its editorial page.