This morning my local newspaper, the Rockford Register Star (www.rrstar.com), ran a column containing the opinions of several writers, players, and coaches that tried to determine the boundary between what is considered cheating and not cheating. Intrigued by this column, and in the aftermath of my blog "The Definition of 'Sport,'" (http://blogs.foxsports.com/JCScheffres/2006/05/05/The_Definition_of_Sport), here is my definition of "cheating" in sports. First, the paper differentiates between fooling the opposing team (a shortstop bluffing a baserunner to think he has the ball in his glove, when actually it has rolled safely into centerfield), and the referee (a forward celebrating a goal even though he saw the goaltender cover up the puck while it was still balancing on the crease). The paper hypothesizes maybe it's ok to trick a player, but not the ref. Personally, I have no problem with either. Part of the competitive nature of sports is tricking your opponent. You make him believe one move is coming, then surprise him with another. Many sports would not exist or would significantly lose excitement if intentionally fooling the other team was outlawed. Other examples include: a playaction pass or statue of liberty play in football and the old fake-to-first-throw-to-third pickoff move in baseball. Faking out a referee becomes a bit tricky, pun intended. In basketball, defenders often take a flop to fake an offensive charging foul and force a turnover. Register Star writer Matt Trowbridge says that the contact should at least be enough to make the player wobble. I agree. Hockey players do the same thing, faking a tripping or high sticking penalty. Weak or light contact should be ignored by players and officials alike. A hockey player who hits the deck when a stick whiffs across his face hitting nothing but air, should be penalized. If the stick nicks his chin, I'm in favor of falling to the ice so the official knows there was indeed contact. NBA officials need to be aware of this as well. Shaquille O'Neal should never be on his rump, as there isn't a player in the league strong enough to knock him down. Therefore, it is not cheating to fake a ref in this fashion, but my solution to this problem is for the refs to ignore such fakes, or better yet, call the penalty on the faker. Another category of faking out refs is not in drawing penalties but in making a call of a completed pass, an out, or a score. If an outfielder makes a sliding "catch" in which he thinks he may have trapped the ball-or even if he knows he trapped it but the play was very close and the umpire may not have seen the ball all the way-it is acceptable to pretend as if the ball landed in his glove. The same rule applies to a wide receiver going down to make a low catch in football. If a player knows with 100% certainty that a referee missed a call in his favor, he should never correct the umpire or argue against his own team. The umpire will occasionally blow a call against you as well, so the player should take it in stride. Sometimes circumstances are such that a player will attempt to fake the umpire even though the play was so obviously the opposite of what an athlete would attempt to have him believe. Although I do not consider this cheating, I would advise athletes against it because the other team knows what happened and they will act accordingly. Take the outfielder trapping a ball between the grass and his glove for example. The batter and umpire both know the ball hit the ground despite the fielder's best effort to make it look like a clean catch. Thus, all baserunners will be hustling to the next base while that fielder is wielding his glove in the air trying to sell a catch that didn't happen. Cheating comes down to one simple principle. Altering equipment, the ball, the field, or your own body with any unnatural or illegal substance is cheating. This would obviously include any performance enhancing drug (not counting caffeine). Football players who apply cooking spray to their jerseys (to make them slippery and hard to tackle) and who use any sticky material on their hands (to better catch a ball or grasp another player's uniform) are cheating. Corking a bat, putting tar in a glove, or spitting on the baseball is definitely cheating. Any time a football player wipes foreign substances in another player's face at the bottom of a pile, he is cheating. Altering the playing field is seldom seen, but one example is a baseball player erasing the back line of the batter's box so the umpire cannot see his rear foot is outside the line. Wearing pads bigger than the legal size is cheating in hockey. Cheating also includes paying money or offering other favors to an opposing player or official to favor one team over the other. Accepting this offer, of course, is cheating as well. Also, the home team should make reasonable attempts to ensure that each team has a fair and equal chance of winning. This includes equality on the sidelines, dugouts, and locker rooms such as: heaters on both sidelines for outdoor football games, phones in both dugouts and bullpens, and tidy, secured locker rooms. A later edit to this blog: I also consider any player who intentionally attempts to injure his opponent to be a cheater. I do not have a problem with targeting a specific player as long as the contact is legal and does not carry intentions of ending the opponent's career, season, or game. Purposely deceiving an umpire, referee, or opposing player is not cheating. Altering any piece of equipment that is used during the game is.