Tom Brady is a four-time Super Bowl champion. He is a three-time Super Bowl MVP. He is a two-time NFL MVP. He is one of the greatest quarterbacks to play the game. He also is a liar and a cheat.

That’s what will be written about him and said about him until the end of time. Similar references permanently have attached themselves to Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, Alex Rodriguez and others. They all have denied wrongdoing. They all have agents, supporters and fans who back them. None of it will matter.

In our age of the internet, blogs, YouTube, Twitter and more, the liar and cheater tags already are synonymous with their names. The stigma never will be removed.

When I hear about the large number of recent sports scandals, I often think about poor Shoeless Joe Jackson. He stands pretty much alone among athletes involved in any of the older scandals, remaining infamously connected with and the prominent face of baseball’s 1919 Black Sox Scandal. Though the evidence against Jackson is slim at best, his association with the tainted World Series has, for almost 100 years, outweighed his record as an excellent ballplayer.

During his playing days, Jackson only had to deal with the articles about the scandal that appeared in newspapers, and he still found it difficult to restore his reputation during his lifetime. Athletes involved with the dark side of today’s games face daily viral bombardment. They never will clear their names. Their legacies are beyond recovery.

When we were kids, many of us played fantasy games in the backyard. We created our own rules and we changed them at will so we could dream about hitting that World Series home run or scoring the winning goal. That was okay. What isn’t acceptable is “Deflategate,” the use of performance enhancement drugs and the skirting of the rules that has infiltrated some of our youth leagues across the country.

For the rest of us, we easily can find ways to lie and cheat in our jobs and in the companies we manage. If we choose that path, our integrities and our legacies certainly will suffer at some unforeseen time. Whether we are involved with sports or business, we all have choices to make, and I’ll leave you with one piece of advice to ponder—think seriously before you decide upon any course of action and make sure the result will not inflict damage to your reputation and legacy. It is not worth embarrassing yourself, your colleagues and, most important, your family until the end of time.

- Jim

High school senior Evan Moretti saw his diving career come full circle this year. Two days before last February’s Section 1 championships, he won a dive meet and set a new record to break Donnie Callera’s mark that had stood for 11 years. It took Moretti just two more days to break his own record.

Besides the record, we found a deeper connection between Moretti and Callera. Both divers set their personal records while attending and competing for Scarsdale High School. Digging deeper, we found that if it wasn’t for Callera, Moretti may not have become such an accomplished diver.

Callera was Moretti’s first diving coach. At the age of 10, Moretti attended a clinic coached by Callera. The coach invited the student to join the local municipal pool team and Moretti continued to dive “for the fun of it.”

As he entered high school, Moretti was curious to see where better competition and a greater focus on training would lead him. With the encouragement of Coach Callera, Moretti began a fantastic voyage.

Moretti competed with the varsity team during each year of high school, leading the team to four undefeated seasons. This past season, the team won the Conference 2 League 1 championship and a first-ever Section 1 title.

Moretti’s personal bests included the record and second-place finishes at both the state and federation championships. He also was named the Westchester/Putnam boys swimming/diving athlete of the season.

Much more still is to be recorded in the diving career of Evan Moretti. That will continue this September when he competes at Duke University.

Jim