WWaJD (What Would A Jew Do?)

A Guest Post By E. Fink

Sports-talk radio is abuzz over an incident that occurred a few weeks ago at a High-School football game in Connecticut.

Southington vs Manchester was tied at 14 at halftime. Some time during the first half, a Manchester player dropped his armband with the entire Manchester playbook and the codewords for each of those plays. A Southington player picked it up. The player gave the armband to his coach.

The coach used the information on the armband to stymie the Manchester offense and eventually won the game 28-14.

It seems to me that High-School sports are competitive as well as educational. This was a failed opportunity to educate on fairness, sportsmanship and winning the "right way". But what of the competition aspect? Is this ethical? Is this cheating? Is there a space between cheating and unethical behavior? All good questions.

The biggest question for me is, how do we treat sports? Meaning, sports have their own rules, do the rules of the real world apply during the game? Or are the real world rules suspended during the game and as long as you follow the rules of the game you are doing the right thing?

So, what would do you think? What would you do?

(The coach was suspended for one game)

(And his brother plays for the Patriots, home of the cheating coaches)

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