Adler wasn't much of a football player. In fact, it didn't take long after making the high school sophomore team for him to determine that, for him, American football was much more fun to watch than it was to actually play.

Truth be told, he really didn't like getting hit.

But he stuck it out for a season, the high point of which was actually recovering a fumble during an honest-to-goodness, real-life league game.

It was while clawing for that loose ball underneath a massive human pile, that Adler learned something else about sports.

Sometimes participants don't play fair.

He remembers it this way. He saw the ball pop loose, he dove for it. He thinks he had it in his hands. And the whistle blew, ending the play.

But, despite the whistle, underneath that mass of meaty football players, the tug-of-war for the ball was still in full swing. To be honest, he wasn't sure if he had full control of the ball, but he knew he had at least a piece of it. So he, too, after the whistle had blown, struggled to solidify his possession.

A generation later, Adler, certainly older and probably wiser, can't remember who was credited with the fumble recovery. He can't remember if the recovery played a pivotal role the game's outcome. In fact, there's very little he can remember about the game.

But he can remember this:

"After the game I started thinking — and I wondered why I had continued to pull that ball from my opponent after the whistle had blown. Surely, I was caught up in the battle of the moment. But hindsight well illustrates how futile that was. Suppose I did get credit for the fumble recovery. And even suppose that turnover led directly to the winning touchdown. What would I have really gained?

"The answer, of course, is 'nothing.' "

Nothing, that is, if one understands the correct goal.

If the goal is only to win the game, a little — or, for that matter, a lot of — cheating is just fine.

But if the goal is to fairly and accurately test one's athletic ability, cheating defeats the purpose.

Such a discussion, then, begs the question: What is the accurate measure of success?

A suitable answer, it seems, lies in understanding the "why" of what we're doing.

In a global arena far beyond any high school football field, corporate financial scandals suggest that, like Adler, some corporate officers and directors also don't understand success.

While the relentless greed and unmitigated selfishness that fuels the raging stampede for money and profits is, in and of itself, damning, perpetrators also face another, far more subtle, pitfall. They are deceiving and defeating themselves. They may be able to lie, steal and cheat their way to monstrous profits, but those profits over the long haul are literally worthless — just like a stolen victory in a high school football game.

On a mortal scale, millions of dollars in corporate profits are far more attractive than winning a high school football game. But, if ill-gotten, the actual benefit of either is the same: zero. And at some point in our existence — somewhere, somehow, sometime — the real goal, the true measure of success, will come sharply into focus and stand alone in its eminence.

Nothing can compensate for the absence of honesty and integrity.

Katharine Lee Bates apparently understood that dedication to a higher principle is the only authentic goal when she asserted that success should be measured by nobleness and that any gain should be divine. (See "America the Beautiful," Hymn No. 338.)

There is, in every contest, a goal more noble than winning or measure of success far beyond making money. May that ever — and always — be our aim.