So why do I start this blog now?
Well, because of the fact you just can't go day to day anymore without complete gems that expose sports as something beyond that which has any reasoned control under law, common sense, or, really, anything else.
Want a good example?? Here's the latest pro-steroid garbage!! From none other than Brent "You Are Looking Live" Musburger.
(All quotes are taken from an October 6 SI.com article -- report from October the 6th. Parties like Righthaven should refer to the Copyright Act of 1976, the references being made for the purposes of criticism and commentary.)
I used to respect Brent Musburger. I used to respect him a lot.
But in his old age and in the current state of sports, he appears to either have gone senile or he's finally licking the boots of those who have made his life comfortable. (Namely, the National Football League and NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision.)
Brent was speaking with a class of journalism students and came up with these gems, for which I would like to leave comment:
"Here's the truth about steroids: They work," he said in a story reported by The Missoulian.
Well, someone the general sports fan will not choose to ignore finally admits the "No Shit, Sherlock!" statement. The sports leagues, in attempting to backpedal themselves out of admitting that the greatest number of sporting achievements of at least the last 25 years have been due to the rampant use of steroids, have denied this very fact for a long time.
Brent Musburger has been watching sports and covering it for television and radio at least my whole life. He has seen steroid-ladened athletes from Lyle Alzado to today's sorry crop. If people could be able to tell the difference between the performance of a "clean" athlete (how few of them actually exist anymore) and the performance of an athlete on steroids, I would think it would be a man who has watched as many sporting events as Musburger.
He's almost the first person (outside the steroid trade) to actually admit the obvious. Steroids increase performance. Pick up "Game of Shadows", where the book has many testimonies as to the blatant increase of BALCO athletes' performances -- on the track, at the plate, etc.
Asked by The Associated Press to expand on his comments Wednesday, Musburger said through a publicist at ESPN that he stood by the comments he made to the students and that his main point was that "the issue of steroids belongs in the hands of doctors and not in the hands of a journalist."
No, the issue of steroids belongs in the hands of those who actually run the sporting leagues.
We have actually gotten to the point where, if a high-schooler wishes to make any real inroads on "the next level" of whatever chosen sport he or she is playing, he or she would be out of their minds not to consider the use of steroids.
Why?? Consider this experience from about 4 or 5 years ago. I was sitting in a hotel room at a convention in Southern California when I turned on the local cable sports network and they were showing a high school football game between two prominent Southern Californian high schools.
So I basically watched about three minutes of the third quarter of the game, and turned the game off when I noticed something. They had cut to the sideline and showed one of the offensive linemen for one of the two teams.
Then they gave his height and weight: 6' 7", 315 pounds.
No joke. *click!*
If anyone wants to honestly tell me that elite football programs on all levels high school and above are not using steroids, I'd love to hear it, because I think most of them would be lying.
If you want a good idea of the problems that can present, I submit to you something which happened about a week ago: A Rhode Island football team has forfeited a game because of the injury risk being too great in facing a team with 5 FBS recruits, many of them outweighing the forfeiting team by 75 pounds or more.
(Source: Rivals.yahoo.com)
"No athlete should ever be made to feel compelled to use drugs, nor should such behavior become normalized, particularly when our youth are so influenced by the example set by their sports heroes," said Erin Hannan, spokesperson for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
And you know this is the case. It is quite normal behavior, and expected for success at certain levels.
I mean (as just one example), is it any surprise that Alberto Contador has now been put under the microscope for an apparent positive drug test? They really need to shut down the Tour de France once and for all.
What Musburger is saying is that athletes who juice up should be allowed to do so with a doctor's supervision.
What Musburger is, in my honest opinion, endorsing, is the widespread sanctioned use of steroids under the supervision of a doctor -- simply to increase performance.
Brent: It's time to take yourself out to retirement. Shame on you.
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