On Friday, quotes emerged from Hall of Fame receiver Jerry Rice regarding the application of stickum to his gloves. In comments to ESPN that predated his strong criticism of the Patriots for #DeflateGate, Rice called the practice “a little illegal.”
Early Saturday (as in overnight early), Rice took to Twitter to address the comments. Instead of claiming that his words were taken out of context or that he was joking, Rice admitted that he had cheated. He took refuge in the “everyone did it” excuse.
It seems like a big deal, especially since Rice had a bad habit early in his career of not being able to catch passes. ESPN, which started the fire by extracting the quotes from Rice and publishing them in an ESPN feature, has no mention of the admission anywhere on ESPN.com. There’s no hint of the confession on the website the NFL owns and operates.
While it’s entirely possible that many if not most if not all receivers applied stickum to their gloves in the ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s, and now, cheating is cheating. If ESPN plans to body slam the Patriots for #DeflateGate, shouldn’t ESPN at least acknowledge that Rice -- a former ESPN employee -- has admitted to using an illegal substance with the goal of making it easier to perform the most important aspect of his job?
As to the NFL, the approach when it comes to the rabbit hole of cheating isn’t to explore it but to plug it with cement and nail whoever they happen to catch in the act. When it comes to cheating by players and coaches no longer in the league, there’s nothing to be gained and plenty to be lost by broadcasting corruption that went undetected and unpunished.
That’s why the NFL tends to punish harshly the unlucky few who are caught in the act. The only hope of stopping cheating is to make folks worry about the consequences, in the event that they become one of the unlucky few whose violations of the rules are detected.
UPDATE 12:00 p.m. ET: ESPN has pointed out to PFT that the issue has not been completely ignored by ESPN.com. However, there’s no link to the Rice confession of cheating among the stack of top stories on the ESPN.com or the ESPN.com NFL page. Instead, the link to the ESPNBoston.com treatment of the Rice situation appears in a much lower spot of the ESPN.com home page.
