Perhaps the most blatant instance of cheating in sports history involved that homicidal sociopath and noted fan of fair play, the emperor Nero.
Nero bribed Greek officials to postpone the AD 65 Olympics by two years so they would coincide with his tour of the country. He further convinced them to include musical performance and poetry reading to the roster of events – because that's what he considered himself good at.
He entered the four-horse chariot race, albeit with 10 horses. He fell out of the chariot midway through. He still won.
It raises the question: Is it still cheating if everyone recognizes the fix?
On that tip, it's getting harder and harder to understand the latest instance of the NFL versus Bill Belichick, leader of the Galactic Bostonian Empire.
The New England coach stands accused – again – of capitalizing on holes in the system. In business, this would earn him a year-end bonus and a book deal. In sports, it makes him a scoundrel (though a secretly admired one).
Here's the wrinkle Belichick allegedly mined: Every NFL team supplies 12 balls to be used during a game. Each club uses its own balls on offence.
The balls are measured and weighed by officials about two hours before the game. They must be inflated to the point of rock hardness (between 12.5 and 13.5 pounds per square inch). A minor deflation makes them spongy – easier to grip, easier to throw and easier to catch, especially in bad weather. Last Sunday's playoff game in Foxborough, Mass., between New England and Indianapolis was played in a cold rain.
Belichick now stands accused of working that slightly daffy loophole to his side's advantage. Daffy because it's hard to understand how the balls are not under the supervision of neutral officials throughout the pregame.
After inspection, the balls are handed over to sideline handlers (paid by the home team) to mind and distribute.
According to reports, the NFL has discovered that 11 of the 12 New England balls used last Sunday were underinflated. On Wednesday afternoon, ESPN reported that the Colts first sounded the (very soft) alarm two months ago, after a regular-season loss to the Patriots.
Suspicions were raised after balls intercepted by the Indianapolis defence were carried to their sideline as souvenirs, then inspected.
In both instances (and surely there will soon be others), dozens of people were the potential tamperers. The obvious suspects are the Patriots-aligned ball boys and ball handlers. But the balls are kept relatively unattended in bags on the sidelines. There are all sorts of people milling around down there.
And what about the Colts? Just about every member of the defence touches the ball at some point or another. A ball thrown off the sideline might pass through two or three pairs of hands before it makes it back onto the field. The umpire regularly handles them as he places the ball after each play. It's exceedingly unlikely any of these people are to blame, but still remotely possible.
This may have been going on for years, and no one noticed. It's beginning to seem like plenty of people did and didn't really care. The space in between gives New England and Belichick a formidable alibi: "Sure, we had motive. But we weren't the only ones with opportunity."
What's the league seriously supposed to do now? Kick its marquee franchise out of the Super Bowl? Absolutely no chance. Even the most onerous penalty won't be tacked on until next season. And since this is the NFL, it can always fall back on "lack of direct evidence" and skip the pseudo-judicial fuss altogether. That's sort of its trademark.
No matter what the league does, it wins.
The expanding scandal – sigh, "Inflategate" – is being played in parts of the American press like the End of Days. It is instead an absolute gift to the NFL. It couldn't have planned this better. It's so perfect, one half-seriously wonders if it planned it.
We're now about two weeks from the Super Bowl. That's a lot of column inches and airtime to fill. The game itself will occupy only a fraction of that space.
Instead, it's the perfect opportunity to begin a ruthless reconsideration of the season that has passed and the off-field issues that dominated it. Between Tuesday's opening media day and Sunday evening's main event, players are made available to a throng of journalists for countless hours.
On many occasions, it's just you and some anonymous punter or third-string linebacker, sitting at a table in a hotel ballroom, bored out of your minds, trying to come up with something to talk about. I once had a 20-minute conversation with a Pittsburgh Steeler about fishing. I have no idea who he was – and I don't fish. But it seemed to please him. Since you so seldom talk to an athlete who's genuinely engaged, I was happy to listen.
This is a ripe time for one disastrous sentence in the midst of ten thousand words of piffle. Just about every day, someone screws up. And then that's the story.
Does the NFL really want a hundred-odd guys being dozily grilled about domestic violence and brain injuries and their (often demented) political views? It does not.
Now what they'll be talking about is air pressure.
If the NFL is smart, it won't make any investigative decision until the eve of the Super Bowl. That will ensure this non-event gets front-page coverage for the entire lead-up.
The only thing that could ruin things is if every man jack on the Seattle Seahawks declares himself bored by the topic and refuses to engage. But I guarantee someone will say something incendiary. Then New England responds, raising the temperature. Then Seattle responds in turn and – by a sort of rhetorical magic – the NFL is dealing with a football-related scandal (entirely manageable) instead of a cultural hot point (completely chaotic).
One supposes those living in the Roman Empire had real issues to discuss back in AD 67: tyranny, poverty, war. But for those few weeks in Greece, they talked about the idiot in charge and his amusing fix at the Olympics. That's the real wisdom of the ancients.