I look at the NBA and just cringe. It's like George Carlin said: They should give 50 extra points if you can get it in the hoop by bouncing it off a teammate's head. You don't think they'd do it? Or set a wall of fire at the halfcourt line. All it would do is burn some tattoos off. Who does these tattoos for these idiots, anyway? They look like what you'd get in prison if your bruiser dominatrix had a Sharpie.

It surprises me not one little bit that LA burns when the Lakers win. Look at the folks who are playing. These are the role models that make a wilding spree in Central Park look like a backyard BBQ on a Thursday. Yeah, I know, not all of them, but enough to make a crucial mud slide in the area of general moral discourse about what's right and what's wrong.

I'm not that tuned in to hockey, but it would seem to me that the missing teeth as a badge of honor is a bit revealing.

Football? How many coked-up hoodlums did it take to ruin Roger Staubach's Annapolis vision of football as the great sport of the Spartans defending their honor at Thermopylae?

Baseball fares a whit better, but there's a bunch of strawberries rotting on the vine, if you know what I mean.

No, I can only think of one sport in fashion today that exemplifies the true honor for which we should all strive in our daily little quests for whatever self-respect can be left in a world of Al Sharptons.

Golf.

If you play this game, you know what a reputation will mean to you. If you get caught cheating once at golf, you will be marked as badly as if you had an infrared stamp on your forehead and everyone you meet had a scanner. A golf pro would risk everything if he were to cheat his fellow players. They don't do it, ever. That's how they learn humility and grace and other life lessons that are just going over these other athletes' heads like a wild pitch from a sweaty fastballer.

We will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate among us those who do.

-AFROTC Cadet Honor Code

Honor codes, as an institution, have been an essential part of military training, especially for young officer candidate programs. Recently, they have been imposed more rigorously onto civilian educational institutions; although several key features of the honor code have not carried over.

The honor code is not a contract between "adults" and "children". Probably the biggest failure of the institutional use of the honor code is simply this. One cannot say, "You must tell me every time you take a test that you did not cheat." This very clearly sets up a duress situation. If a group is expected to uphold an honor code, then they are adults.

The honor code is not a weapon. You discover that someone has stolen $20 from the group fund. In an effort to determine who it is, you ask each member of the group, "Did you steal the money? Don't lie, you're under the honor code!" The correct answer to you is, "Fuck off. That's an improper question."

Your honor is your own.

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