PHOENIX - Kurt Warner recalls playing a board game with his brother one day as kids. When his brother briefly left the room, Warner had one of those soul-searching moments you see in the movies, with an angel perched on one shoulder and a devil on the other.
"Should I read his card?" Warner remembers thinking. He listened to the little devil — and looked. But when his brother returned, Warner immediately confessed. His better angel had won the day.
"I just couldn't do it," Warner tells USA TODAY Sports. He just couldn't cheat.
Not everyone is as honorable as the boy board-gamer who'd grow up to be the MVP of Super Bowl XXXIV for the St. Louis Rams. Cheating is as old as competition itself. Think of spitballs and corked bats, of doping horses and shaving points, of Lance Armstrong and the Faustian bargain of steroids.
The air time for air pressure in the run-up to Sunday's Super Bowl can seem excessive. Only a few know the nuances of pounds per square inch, but the story is oversized precisely because everyone understands the temptation to cheat — whether in a board game with your brother or in a football game watched by 100 million.
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