Marshall Faulk Would Have Taken Money in College, Has Dubious Notions On Ethics

Buried in a piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on the Seahawks, Marshall Faulk drops a not-so-revealing revelation: if offered, he would have taken money in college.

⇥“Were you ever offered anything in college?” I asked.⇥⇥“Nah, I went to San Diego State,” Faulk said. “Other than good weather, they didn’t have much to offer me, unfortunately. I wish I’d gone to a bigger program and had them slide me some cash to take care of my family, but that wasn’t the case.”⇥

⇥⇥“Would you have taken it? I asked.⇥

⇥⇥“Heck yeah, I would have taken it,” Faulk said. “I’m not gonna lie to you, there’s no doubt about it.”⇥

That’s not entirely surprising, given Faulk’s attitude about bending the rules in sports in general. “Here’s my thing -- it’s well-documented that if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying in sports,” he says in the same article. “Some of the best things that are done in sports are illegal. You work around the rules and try to get things done.” Those comments are in the context of defending Seahawks coach Pete Carroll as a driven leader who got things done. But it’s a sentiment that would seem to have broad applications. Given that, is it reasonable to wonder whether Faulk bent the rules himself, by, say, taking banned substances as an Aztec or an NFL player?

It’s a dangerous, slippery slope that this “If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying” logic enables. It’s what produces floppers in soccer and basketball, a culture of PED use in baseball, and, in cycling, a competition based on who can cheat best. It might not be entirely wrong—or reliably correctable—but it certainly makes fairness a little tougher to achieve. That’s probably no big deal to Marshall Faulk.

(HT: Pro Football Talk.)↵