As a professional cycling fan, I have been dealing with doping issues for many years now. It has caused the sports tremendous damage throughout the world as television, sponsors, and race executive have made the "bold" statement that they don't want people that cheat to be a part of the sport. Most professional sports in the United States haven't done this. Baseball has been rocked by its "stars" being involved with steroids, but clearly they let those that cheat continue playing. The NBA is horrible on this front as they can't even deal with the huge problem with pot and their athletes. The NFL track record is better, but the use of pain killers is still wide spread. Aren't pain killers performance enhancements. Should our media in the United States be out front on this topic? How would you address the issues of cheating in professional sports? The story below is the original story from Sports Illustrated about Alex Rodriguez that broke this weekend. Rodriguez is a highest paid player in baseball, and he plays for the Yankees.
it is astounding to see that 104 baseball players tested positive for steriods. I can understand the view point that taking steriods is not good.Children look up to them and the image baseball players put out should be positive and drugfree. I guess taking steriods is a form of cheating as it induces strength and stamina,which is an advantage over other players.All countries tend to exploit stars and athletes so I guess it's fair that the US media can exploit them too.
ReplyDeleteI understand why players that tested positive for steriods were'nt fired, because the team wouldn't want to let a good player go, but that doesn't make it right. If you cheat, you shouldn't be allowed to play anymore. But how is pain killers unfair? They shouldn't have to suffer on the playing feild. Steriods aren't taken to relieve a problem, but to enhance the body's performance. Pain killers are taken to keep a person from feeling like crap.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with steroid uses in professional sports is that it was not stopped when the problem was manageable. Because the first discovered users were allowed to continue playing and not kicked off teams they make is increasingly more difficult for unaided athletes to compete at competitive levels with those athletes that have unnatural help. How is a young athlete supposed to stand up to the guy who has been taking steroids for years? The point is that steroids have the ability to increase performance BEYOND what is possible without them. Therefore, those athletes that do not use steroids will never, no matter how much work they put in, be better than those athletes who do take steroids. In which case it is becoming almost impossible for athletes to play a competitive game of ball without being on the same physical level and as a result more and more athletes are being forced into using steroids.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, while pain killers are a drug and do change the effects of painful activities on athletes it depends upon the manner in which they are used. Athletes with minor workable injuries can still be allowed to play if they are properly treated with pain killers. However, players who lack injuries but are using the pain killers as preventative measures IS cheating because it gives the athlete the courage to execute maneuvers that a unmediated person would not even try for fear of pain. This is unfortunately, a difficult field in which to gauge who is and who isn't cheating seeing as how each and every person has a different pain tolerance. Just a thought.
Good points, Cortney!! I agree that the problem is so common now that it would be nearly impossible to get it under control without getting rid of some of the best players in the league. That's not to say that people or the media should turn their heads to athletes' use of performance enhancers, but it would dramatically change the world of sports if all of the steroid users were chastised or fired for having an unfair advantage or for being bad role models to kids. And I definitely think the media should publish these stories as they are uncovered, but I cannot understand why people still seem shocked about it. While the media may make a huge deal about it when the story breaks, the players seem to quickly rebound back to being on the media's good side. So I definitely do not condone the use of any type of drug, but I do think that it seems like an inevitable issue in sports and I can understand why these stories come and go so quickly and why there was formerly little to no penalty for positive drug tests. By this point, steroid use among athletes of that caliber almost seems acceptable and typical.
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