Cheating, the “good foul” and sports rules

Cheating and the ‘good foul’ are important issues in sport ethics. Over the past several years, the issue on cheating in sport has received scant philosophical attention. While many authors are against the practice of cheating, some still argue that cheating is inseparable from sporting activities. The moral intuition in relation to ‘rule formalism’ is often that cheating is wrong because to cheat is to break the rules and to cheat is no longer to play the game. In a previous work I argued that this intuition is right on one account and wrong on the other. Although cheating is morally wrong, it cannot be defined merely as ‘breaking the written rules’. In other words, breaking rules is often related to cheating but not necessarily. In addition, cheating often is associated with the ‘good foul’. If cheating is morally unacceptable, then what about the ‘good foul’?
In order to have a better understanding on the relationship between cheating, the good foul and sports rules, a few questions still need to be clarified: Is the ‘good foul’ related to the rules? Is the good foul the same as cheating? Is the good foul morally acceptable? This paper aims to answer those questions.