"Son," Bamburger said to Grimsley, as the story goes, "if you know how to cheat, now would be a good time to start."

The wake of the Texans' Practicegate brouhaha provides new fuel to the assumption that cheating is as much a part of sports as salary caps and zone blitzes, and that the only issue in question is how much cheating is acceptable and how vigilant players and management should be in knowing the limits of acceptable chicanery.

In this case, the Texans are accused of conducting improper drills during offseason practices, in violation of the NFL's collective bargaining agreement, in an effort to improve the historically woeful performance of their offensive line. Three linemen suffered season-ending injuries during the practices, and the Texans allowed 32 sacks this season, 10 more than the 2007 season.

The bottom line is not that the Texans apparently got caught cheating, but they didn't get better in the area where they were trying to cheat. And that may be the element that cheeses fans more than the cheating itself.

"Are these Football players or Mary Kay representatives?" groused one respondent on the Chronicle's Web site. "No wonder this Stevenson (Dan Stevenson, one of the injured players) couldn't hack it in the pros. If he can't even handle a little light workout, how could he handle a full 16-game season?"

"Even though he was wrong, I like the idea of what (Texans coach Gary Kubiak) did," another reader wrote. "That shows me that he wants to go out and win and make his players tougher."

Joining the club?

If the NFL finds that the Texans violated the rules by staging the workouts in question last spring, Kubiak will join a small group of coaches who have been caught red-handed in rules violations.

His counterparts will include Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots and former Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan, both with Super Bowl rings, such lesser lights as Jim Mora of the Atlanta Falcons and such historical giants as George Allen, who on occasion would trade draft picks he had yet to acquire, and Al Davis, who cut his teeth in the cutthroat days of the NFL-AFL signing wars before going on to such comparatively benign practices as turning the playing field at Oakland's Alameda County Stadium into an estuary of San Francisco Bay.

Cheating, it seems, is as American as Football itself.

"Whether it's through pharmacology or through spying, we have entered an era where small little fractions can expand to make a whale of a difference," said Don Beck, director of the National Values Center in Denton. "When there's big money on the line, that increases the pressure to do something that if it's not blatantly illegal, it's certainly in the gray area.

"Players are trying to make a team, so they push themselves during practices that are supposed to be voluntary but really aren't. And as the competitive edge gets sharper, it cuts more. And what gets cut are ethical codes, personal health and well-being and the quality and future of the game."

The active participation of management in improper practices, as is alleged on the part of Kubiak and his assistant coaches, seems to lift this case above and beyond the standard definition of cheating in sports, which generally hews to the old saw that ?if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying.'

"In baseball, there was a prevailing opinion that guys would doctor balls or cork bats and that this was gamesmanship," said Jim Deshaies, the former Astros pitcher and current radio announcer. "Then, when they would get caught, there would be an uproar and people would say we have to stop this cheating.

"A lot of it depends on your side. If your guys are cheating, it's part of the lore of the game. If the other guys are cheating and they're beating your guys, it's larceny."

Trouble in the making

In this case, the fact that the Texans staged full-contact drills without pads, regardless of whether they took place during a time frame sanctioned by the players' union, smacks of trouble waiting to happen, according to former NFL lineman Dave Lapham, who now broadcasts for the Cincinnati Bengals radio network and for Fox Sports Net.

"Back when I played, they called it ?no pads but live,'?" Lapham said. "They said to go half-speed. Well, some guys can go half-speed and some can't. It should be either a full walk through with no contact, or a full go. There can't be anything in between.

"When you try to do something in between, pretty soon one guy will go harder than anyone is expecting. And then someone will retaliate, and then you've got full-blown mayhem."

The best way to stop mayhem before it happens, of course, is to speak up at the time. And the fact that the Texans players didn't nip last spring's allegedly improper workouts before they started is what irks Spencer Tillman, the former Oilers and San Francisco 49ers player who now broadcasts for CBS.

"Every guy who signs a contact knows what the CBA states," Tillman said of the collective bargaining agreement. "Players know that you're not supposed to do these things. If they are asked to do them, they should have the moral conviction to say something at the time.

"That's what I have a problem with in this case. If you see something wrong, have the moral conviction to make a decision and leave if you have to."

NFL seldom fooled

Beck credits the NFL as being among the most diligent sports leagues in keeping an eye out for chicanery, even though the offense the Texans are accused of is more akin to a misdemeanor than a felony.

As for the fans, he thinks most, despite their jokes about cheating to keep up with the Joneses, want a clean game.

"Some feel that anything goes, and they follow that in their personal life," Beck said. "Most, though, want an honest game. They want talent and skill to determine the result, not some devious maneuver that gives an advantage to certain teams or players."

"Cheating is cheating," as one fan wrote to chron.com. "Lying is lying. There should be no room in any sport for it."

...

JUST WIN AT ALL COSTS, BABY

If allegations of illegal drills under Gary Kubiak's watch are validated by the NFL, the Texans' head coach won't be the first to have pulled out all the stops in pursuit of gaining a competitive advantage:

BILL BELICHICK

Who could forget Spygate? Certainly not New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who forked over a cool quarter-million and a first-round draft pick following his coach's indiscretions in illegally videotaping an opponent's signals. Belichick was docked another $500,000.

MIKE SHANAHAN

Shanahan's shenanigans as top dog in Denver are legendary. The Broncos racked up a $950,000 fine and coughed up a third-round draft pick in 2005 for circumventing the salary cap from 1996-98. And he was a master of manipulating injury-report rules to boot.

JIM MORA Jr.

A very expensive phone call. The then-Atlanta Falcons coach, now in Seattle, was dinged $25,000 in 2006 for using a cell phone during a game against the Bucs to find out how a tie would affect his team's playoff chances. It was, he later quipped, "an expensive phone call."