S e c o n d e d I t I o n 1 Reading for the Real World 1

encourage
players to cheat, or coaches simply look the other way when they 
know players commit illegal acts during games. And 
referees
rarely do 
anything to 
discourage
cheating, or they 
impose
minimal penalties.
A professor of sports and recreation, Dr. James Frey, introduced the term, 
“normative cheating” to refer to the methods of cheating commonly used in 
sports today. This refers to strategies used to create conditions of some advantage 
over an opponent. These strategies do not actually break the 
rules. Instead, coaches and players have learned how to use 
loopholes in the rules to gain a competitive advantage. 
There are many forms of normative cheating. In 
basketball, for example, it is common for a player to 
pretend to be fouled in order to receive an undeserved foul 
shot. In football, players are typically coached to use illegal 
techniques to hold or trip opponents without referees noticing. 
2
factors --- things or situations that cause a result
3
obsession --- extreme single-minded focus
8
penalize --- to punish
12
encourage --- to support; to inspire
13
referee --- a judge for a sport
14
discourage --- to prevent by causing others to lose will or desire
14 
impose --- to require; to demand
Track 33

---

103
And in baseball, home teams often “
doctor
” their fields to 
suit their strengths and minimize the strengths of their 
opponents. For example, if a home team knows they will 
face a fast team, they will spread water or sand between 
bases to slow down the runners of the other team. Other 
techniques used by home teams to cheat include increasing 
the heat in the visitor’s locker room to make the athletes 
sluggish. And some schools even use psychological tricks 
such as painting the visitor’s locker room pink, a color said to 
reduce strength and make people less aggressive.
Normative cheating extends to off-the-field areas of sports as 
well. Colleges compete to 
recruit
the best high school players in 
the country. Although there are rules about when and how often colleges can 
contact recruits, coaches are adept at bending these rules. For instance, it is 
against the rules to send newspaper clippings about a university sports team to 
players being recruited. However, if a newspaper clipping is attached to the back 
of a letter, it is technically OK, even if the letter has only one sentence. 
Normative cheating has even crept into American high school sports. If a 
good athlete wants to play for a school far away from where he lives, he may 
move to the home of a relative or friend that does live near that school. That 
way, he technically lives within the school district of his new school. He has 
obeyed the