Sports -- maybe the worst week ever > Rexroad.com

I realize that many of you don't follow sports. It happens to be one of my favorite things.

This week was one of the worst, if not the worst, in professional sports history. We saw an star NFL Quarterback accused of being involved in dog fighting, the Tour De France get rocked by another doping scandal, the NBA see a referee leave the sport under allegations of betting on games, and the world cringe at the thought of Barry Lamar Bonds getting close to breaking one of the most respected records in sports with a cloud of controversy surrounding him. This is not good.

Les Carpenter of The Washington Post had an excellent piece today on why some people risk it all.

Frank DeFord writes for Sports Illustrated and does radio on NPR. I have never been able to figure out if I like him or not. Today sealed his fate with me. He argued on Face the Nation that the answer was to legalize sports betting across the nation so the temptation would not be there. That is stupid.

The answer to stopping speeding on El Dorado Avenue in Woodland-- change the speed limit to 120 MPH then no one will be speeding.

I realize that these athletes work hard for decades to reach a certain level in their profession. They have gotten to place that thousands of others have dreamed of reaching. Good for them. I wanted to be a Force Reonnaissance Marine really badly at one point in my life. If presented with the choice of getting there with steroids or not getting there at all I am honestly not sure what I would have chosen.

It is my belief that technology has given some people the opportunity to use it to improve performance but it has also given us the opportunity to detect some cheating that we probably did not know about before.

This entire week has been a disaster for professional sports. Everyone would probably agree.

In sharp contrast to that we are watching the induction of Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripkin, Jr. into the Baseball Hall of Fame. It is in sharp contract because Gwynn was the anti-steroid athlete. The press ripped him for his poor conditioning and lack of physique. Yet there he will be standing later today in Cooperstown without Jose Conseco and some of the other power hitters of that dominated his era.

It is a shame that we may be watching Bonds break the career home run record the same week two of baseball's classiest players will take their place in history.

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