Athletic Honor Code

I have been reading a lot about academic honor codes recently for a group presentation on Thursday night. For those of you who don't know, the idea of an honor code is that the student can be trusted to be honest and that based on their word, the professor will know that the student did not plagiarize or cheat in some other way. Although you may say that this would not work because some people have no problem with lying, it works surprisingly well on campuses that utilize this technique. However, I was wondering how you expand this idea of an honor code to the athletic world. Let's face it, the athlete is under constant scrutiny from everyone concerning steroid use or his or her personal life. Ben Roethlisberger has recently been threatened with a charge of sexual assault. Obviously, he said he did not do it. The charges were never filed because there was a lack of sufficient proof. Therefore, we have reached the same conclusion we would have reached if we could have taken Ben on his word. However, if we are operating under the assumption that Ben was honest, then the lady obviously violated this honor code because this scenario would have her being incorrect. Therefore, who do we trust? I would like to say that everyone can be trusted and tell the truth even if they're in the wrong because they should know it's the right thing to do. However, this does bother me somewhat because we are saying that we can trust a bunch of college students but not grown athletes. I realize that we do need to keep our eyes on people simply because people mess up all the time, but it is a shame people continue to put themselves in situations where these types of accusations (which are often well-founded) endanger their image and the image of the sport as well.
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