Performance-enhancing drugs. PEDs. It’s got the sports world
partially livid, partially curious, and partially confused. Throughout the
world, athletes train, compete, get injured, and it becomes an ongoing cycle of
will power. How long can their body compete at its highest level? When athletes
ask themselves this question, they put themselves in the biggest pressure
cooker known to man. Here’s where PEDs come in.
Let’s face it, in a nation that rakes in roughly $20 billion
annually through professional sports, not including amateur sports aka the NCAA
because, they don’t pay their athletes, there’s a lot of pressure to perform at
a very high level. Gone are the days where one team dominated sports, now you
have everybody fighting to get to the top. Enter: PEDs. Now, am I a fan of
PEDs? No. Should cheaters be punished for using PEDs? No. Why not? Because look
at the list of cheaters…and how excited we, as fans, were, at least I was, when
they performed at high levels….
Marion Jones
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Alex Rodriguez
Ben Johnson
Shawne Merriman
Rafael Palmeiro
Sammy Sosa
Mark McGwire
Lance Armstrong
The list goes on…but, for those, while they accomplished
amazing feats in their respective sports, we were all glued to our seats…wanting
more….begging for more…only to look up and see that, oh, they were using banned
substances. It’s a cycle that will never go away, until major professional
sports realize that legalizing PEDs are the only way to go. For years, these
people lied….denied allegations…held press conferences to clear their name. The
worst of the bunch by far is Lance Armstrong. He took people to court and
single handedly ruined any reputation or honor they had by standing up to him.
We all believed him…we were all fooled into believing his lie until it
unraveled and everybody who was once Armstrong’s friend became his enemy. Look
at the mediastorm it’s all created. Now, all those lawsuits Armstrong got paid
millions for because “he wasn’t on PEDs” are null in void. Now, all the people
who accused Armstrong of doping are looking for their apologies, their check in
the mail. Now, there’s an even bigger mess than when we first started.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the long term effects of PEDs are
dangerous, but so is drinking alcohol and people of legal age drink quite
frequently. These athletes are adults. If they want to take PEDs and mess up
their bodies, let them. If they want to have a performance edge, let them,
because eventually their bodies will break down in unexplainable ways and to
our conscience, whether the athlete denies it or not, they used and abused PEDs
because they can’t play anymore. There’s the silver lining. Eventually,
athletes will realize these drugs used to pump them up eventually plateau and
will ultimately break them back down. We saw it with McGwire…Bonds…Sosa…Giambi…they
showed us there are consequences for the use of PEDs. It’s like player safety
in football. Many of those players who are doing that high impact tackling will
eventually face brain trauma and could quite possibly have memory problems
after their careers are over, but they still go out there and perform at their
highest ability.
Everything in life comes with a price. The sports world has
put a price on PEDs that many athletes view as a small price to pay. These
athletes are fueling an industry that gets bigger and better every year. We, as
fans, have to realize that players who cheat aren’t cheating to beat the system
but they’re cheating to survive…sports is about survival of the fittest. Would
we know the names of those who followed Lance Armstrong and Marion Jones had it
not been for PEDs? I think not.
The problem is we live in a world that acts solely on the
current emotion. We see an athlete lied or got in trouble with the law on the
news and instantly, we pull out our invisible gavels and begin our own court
proceedings of judgment. It happens time and time again…even when it doesn’t have
to do with PEDs. Hey Manti.
