Just Win Baby!

I have a different take on the athletes who use performance enhancing drugs to win at all costs.  There is a reason for it and that reason is because Americans will accept nothing less than perfection & winning or you are thrown aside for the next up and comer who may just get you that Super Bowl Ring or Olympic gold medal.  At the Olympics it is considered a failure to get a silver or even the dreaded bronze.  Seriously?  2nd best in the World is a failure? 



Me back in the day 1978 - that feeling of winning is intoxicating



Very few of our beloved athletes are perfect specimens who can win without fail throughout their careers, and in this day and age if you aren't using PED you can't compete because most everyone else is.  I am not saying it is right - just that it is a fact of life.  We have Junior High School kids already taking these drugs to get to the next rung up the sports hero ladder.  Often with their parents OK because they want their kid to be the hero so they can lord it over all their friends.  So what if it can kill you?  We'll think about that in the future.

For now Just Win Baby and when we catch you we will tear you and your reputation to shreds and everybody will be saying how you let us down, how you defrauded us, you should pay and pay BIG for your sins.  Give back your wins, your trophies, your sponsorship money.  These are the same people who wanted those wins regardless of the consequences - but you are not suppose to get caught damn you!  How could you do this to us?

Young kids (mostly boys) are watched from the time they are in elementary school to see if they have some glimmer of athletic potential.  Not in academics because we don't care about that.  T-Ball, Little League, Select Clubs, High School, College, Pro.  Do you wonder why they act like they can get away with anything they please?  It is because we show them it is OK if they are star athletes.  They get passed through school even when they can't read, spell, or socialize well with others.  They are not held to the same rules as the rest of us.  How many times can one athlete get caught with drugs before they are suspended?  If past incidents are any indication they may never get suspended...we need them for that next game, that playoff, that season. 

I sat in my parent’s living room in 1978 listening to two kids from a rival town trying to recruit my parents to move the family to their town so my brother could play on their High School Basketball Team.  WTF!  I was amazed and just sat there with my jaw on the floor.  There were incentives for my Dad regarding job and moving expenses and of course said brother would be a starter on their team.  Thankfully my parents listened politely and said Thanks, but No Thanks.  Did I mention that my brother was only a Sophomore in High School at the time?

We make examples of a few athletes while allowing the rest of them to get off scott free - unless the drugs give them cancer or they kill someone in their roid rage. 

Why were we so hard on Roger Clemens and now Lance Armstrong, but not so much on other players/riders from their era?  Oh yeah because he lied.  Given the same set of circumstances most people would do the exact same thing.  You wouldn't give up your friends and be labeled a snitch.  You too would lie until you no longer could and then you would face that music, that ripping and shredding, that horrible embarrassing music. Nothing is off limits with every sports reporter, entertainment reporter, political reporter, pretty much laying your life bare and calling you every imaginable and even some not so imaginable things 24/7 for weeks or months.  If we take away their awards who do we pass them down to?  I would hazard a guess that those guys were using too.

I know all of the rationalizations and reasons to vilify our Athletes/Politicians/Entertainers who make the mistake of getting caught, and I don't agree with them.  They are just people who can do something really well and the rest of us get all wound up in the excitement of it all. 

We need to take a look at WHY we put them up on those pedestals and then why we yank them back down.