By Steve Graf
Sports has been a huge part of my life, especially when it comes to baseball and football. I’ve always taken pride in the fact that I never used any form of performance-enhancing drugs to play at a high level. In my mind, this would be a form of cheating, and I made a conscious choice to never be a part of that culture of athletes.
I saw first-hand how some athletes abused and became victims of decisions and choices they made. It was a huge eye-opening experience my first spring training with the Montreal Expos organization as I saw how many players were using enhancers to perform at a high level.
I saw the organization basically turn a blind eye to what players were doing to become better. Oh, it was no secret, and most players did not try and hide what they were using as it was on full display in their lockers. It was just another form of cheating!
Cheating has now become rampant in the tournament bass fishing world. It seems that in every tournament, someone breaks a rule, fails a polygraph test and gets disqualified.
In the past three years, it has gotten worse — from professional anglers getting caught to amateur anglers trying to win specialty events like big bass tournaments. What happened to the days of anglers going out and fishing with honesty and following the rules?
Why has there been such a surge in anglers’ cheating? The first answer is probably the amount of money tournaments are putting up. Even the lower levels of MLF (Major League Fishing) and the B.A.S.S. organizations have anglers fishing for hundreds of thousands of dollars and opportunities to advance up the ladder of professional bass fishing.
Even big bass events have anglers fishing for over $100,000 for catching one fish! Like anything else, when there’s a lot of money on the line, it seems to bring out the worst in people. Just like in any form of criminal activity, just follow the money.
Some anglers will say that there are just too many rules. We all know that the more rules you have in any sport, the more that must be enforced. This makes a bass tournament director’s job even more difficult.
So how do we hit the reset button and get anglers to find their moral compass and follow the rules? I’m not sure we can put the genie back into the bottle, as our society in general has so many people with no morals who will do whatever they can in order to win or get ahead in life.
I think the first course of action must be making the punishment fit the crime. Organizations must come down harder on these individuals who think it’s OK to cheat! Guidelines need to be established for the severity of the rule or rules that have been violated.
We aren’t looking for anyone to go before the firing squad, but suspending anglers for the entire season would be a great start. The harder you come down on these anglers, the more they will think twice about cheating.
Maybe we need to go the legal route, as cheating in a bass tournament is considered fraud. By making a few examples with prosecution, it will probably make others think twice about bending the rules.
These are sad times we live in and it’s a shame we have so many anglers that think it’s OK to cheat. This is one of many reasons why tournament participation is down nationwide. But with more severe punishment, maybe we can reset the course of tournament bass fishing.
Contact Steve at sgraf26@yahoo.com