WRONG!
If the penalties are called and consequences imposed, then those are the rules, fairly applied.
“Cheating” would be doing the crime, but not the time (or in this case, yardage.)
If 22 of you in your neighborhood conspired to max out your cheating re: tax submissions, knowing the odds that only a few of you would be audited, having 2-5 of you accept the "consequences imposed" while the other 17-20 reaped the benefits of that...and shared it with the 2-5 thus audited, then, yup...cheating.
We both realize that not every infraction draws a flag.
The purpose of imposing penalties is to discourage violating the rules. If the burden of the penalties does not, in fact, discourage violating the rules, then eventually every team will modify its behavior and we will be looking at a totally different sport.
If that's an undesirable outcome, then some changes will need to be made so that penalties do discourage CHEATING.