Based on the long-held belief that "if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin','' this message is for the Sacramento State Hornets:

"If you get caught on film, it ain't cheatin', it's just bein' stupid.''

	A number of Sacramento State players are accused of greasing their jerseys with a non-stick cooking spray during Saturday's game at Montana.

Apparently several Hornets were caught on film spraying each other with PAM, the stuff you spray on your skillet before whipping up that seven-egg Denver omelet.

Now this would be different if it were a hazing ritual, or a prelude to a campus social -- we are nothing, after all, if not open-minded.

But the felony spray jockeys in question -- Brad Osterhout, Bilal Watkins, Ben Fox and Eric Broden, according to Sac State school officials -- chose to do it while they were trying to beat the University of Montana, in a game the Grizzlies ultimately won, 31-24, to extend their Division I-AA winning streak to 24 games.

They chose to do it, in fact, on the sidelines during the game, being played at Montana, where there were thousands of people watching them, including U of M photographer Todd Goodrich.

Now we're not above watching a well-skilled cheater at his or her best. Goes on all the time, good for the hypercompetitive soul and all that. The NCAA rulebook is thicker than a whale casserole because of ingenuity of the game's great cheaters throughout history.

And yes, there is a rule against spraying cooking aids on a uniform because someone else thought of it first. You'd like to think the guy went on to start working for a benign organization somewhere, because this is a man whose brain is working overtime for the good of the company.

But if you need to cheat, there are lots of ways better than this.

Why, for example, just a squirt of PAM when you can liquefy the old sludge they used for Burger King fries and go two coats, helmet-to-cleats? Or there's WD40. Soft cheese. The stuff that floats at the top of French onion soup. There's even Raid in the eyes of the opponent, as recently demonstrated by The Sopranos (and there's nothing in the NCAA rulebook about dismembering the opponent afterward).

But most importantly -- in fact, Rule No. 1 for you budding scofflaws out there -- you do it when nobody's looking.. Not on a sideline in an open stadium with paying customers rooting for you to fail.

That's the amazing thing here, that players thought this was such a good idea that they could do it where anyone could see. Sac State head coach John Volek might have put a stop to it, or at least put a blanket over the violators, but he was sitting out the Montana game after being suspended for complaining about the officials the week before against Montana State.

In other words, he has deniability here, but we'll wager he's very cranky right now.

Anyway, the Montana coaching staff got involved. Big Sky commissioner Doug Fullerton got involved. The line of concerned adults worried about wanton abuse of skillet lubricants goes out the door and around the corner.

And now, wise-asses like us are involved. That's never a good thing.

But life is about learning lessons, sometimes the hard way, and the Sacramento State players have learned a valuable one. Namely, that anything worth doing is worth doing correctly.

And as a useful codicil, anything worth doing illegally is worth doing secretly.

If that's too high a bar to clear, well, they may as well run a sideline dunking booth into a vat of lard and change the school mascot into a greased pig.

Or start spraying the other team with library paste. After all, the visiting team has to wear white, doesn't it?

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com