Honor codes are the redheaded stepchild of college sports, the second cousin of undisclosed violations of team rules. They're talked about solemnly, but for the most part they're vestiges of another era, like when gentlemen settled fights with two fingers of scotch and pistols at 20 paces.

Their seeming irrelevance is captured in the new movie about the rise of Facebook, "The Social Network." In a key scene taken from the public record, two brothers, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, get a meeting with Harvard's president in 2004 to complain that Zuckerberg stole their idea for a social networking site, ConnectU, and renamed it "thefacebook.com." When they suggest that Zuckerberg should be brought up on charges of violating Harvard's honor code, however, they're tossed out of the office.

The brothers, who represented the U.S. in rowing at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, turned to the courts for their revenge. And newly discovered instant messages obtained from Zuckerberg's computer at the time seem to bear out their claim. As one of the messages reads:

In an interview with The New Yorker in September, Zuckerberg acknowledged the authenticity of the exchange. So why is he laughing? Because the brothers settled their federal suit two years ago, meaning the new information doesn't change a thing; they can't touch another penny of his fortune.

Now on to Cam Newton.

Last week, Fox Sports reported that Newton was accused of violating the honor code at Florida when he played there. According to Fox, he did it once as a freshman by cheating in class and twice as a sophomore by allegedly turning in two separate papers that he did not write.

What happened? Apparently, nothing. He transferred to tiny Blinn College in Texas before Florida's Student Conduct Committee could get its hands on him.

Asked about it the other day at Auburn, Newton brushed off the charge without directly refuting it. "I don't want to beat a dead horse talking about it," he said. "It's not going to affect me."

Dead horse? How about dead code? Because it seems like one more instance in which academic honor codes are laughed off. Check out these eye-opening stats about the percentage of sophomore-through-senior students who admit engaging in dishonorable conduct:

Given these stats, which come from The Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University and deal with students in the general population, how scared do you think star athletes are about getting caught cheating when they have coaches and athletic directors looking out for them?

"The untold story is that there is a lot of unspoken tension between university conduct officers, athletic directors and coaches," said Scott Lewis, a conduct code writer who heads the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management.

Lewis knows that athletic departments like to keep their dirty laundry to themselves. "Are there programs that keep stuff away from conduct code offices? Yes, of course," he said. "But by the same token, I know athletic directors who really struggle mightily with the relationship."

Lewis divides codes into two types. The first, he says, are the "purely aspirational," which is a nice way of saying they don't have any teeth. (He points to his alma mater, Texas A&M, whose honor code reads: An Aggie does not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do.) The other is the kind that embeds specific violations in the school's policy manual, and results in real trials and expulsions.

For Lewis, it's simply about teaching morality. "If a student isn't held accountable for a violation, then the question is what's going to happen two years later, when he's faced with another ethical choice?"

Then again, Zuckerberg's message may be the most powerful one of all: violate an honor code now, laugh all the way to the bank later.