Steroids and Sport (rehashed) - By Moses

It was 1978 and Ken Norton was the Heavyweight Champion of the World. In his first defence of the belt, Norton was set to fight Larry Holmes. After Holmes and Norton pummeled eachother for 14 Rounds, the commentators of the fight gave their between round analysis. 'There has been some speculation that Larry Holmes is taking a new wonder drug called steroids.' 'Surely the drug isn't infallible.' the commentator said. At the start of the fifteenth, Norton knocked out Holmes mouth-guard. The gas had run out on Holmes and he was dominated in the Fifteenth with the ropes saving him in the final seconds, preserving a split-decision for Holmes and he became the new Champion of the World.
Three years later, Lyle Alzado (a defensive tackle with the Oakland Raiders) came clean to the American media and confessed that at least half of the N.F.L'ers were steroid users. The National Football League refused to act.
It was 1988, and during the Seoul Summer Olympics, Ben Johnson took home Gold for Canada in the 100 Metre Dash (also the 4x100m) with an unprecedented time of 9.78. But wait just a minute. Johnson's' urine sample tested positive for anabolic steroids and the Worldwide Audience watched in disbelief as he was stripped of his title. In the period 1978-1988 no Professional sports League banned their athletes from using anabolic steroids. It is also a very naive assumption that only Ben Johnson used steroids at Seoul. He was however, one of the few that were caught.
This brings us to the argument, at what cost will a Country, Sport, Team, or Athlete go to in hiding rampant steroid use in the name of winning Gold Medals, Championships, and pleasing to the eye statistics.
The Western World was condemning Eastern European training and conditioning methods; ie - impregnating their Women Athletes and aborting the fetus to raise estrogen levels, just prior to the meet. At the same time there were severe denials in the West, of rampant steroid use (and it was widespread). This leads us to the quagmire that we face today. It wasn't until the early nineties that the N.F.L instituted a ban on steroids. Hockey (N.H.L) and Basketball (N.B.A) followed suit, only after embarrassments of Olympic Athlete's Jackie Joyner Kersee and Florence Griffith amongst others during the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics.
Major League Baseball however, buried their heads further into the sand. In the early part of the 21st Century it was noticeable that Ballplayers had bulked up, yet M.L.B Commissioner Bud Selig still didn't put together a full-scale ban on steroids. In fact, after Mark McGuire's' monster 1998 - 70 Home-run campaign, he admitted to using legal performance enhancing drugs. The owners seemingly only cared about Gate Revenue and mind boggling statistics, not the integrity of the game. Then came along Barry Bonds superlative 73 Home-run Campaign of 2001, and the press were never a Bonds advocate. This began the smear campaign on athletes in Baseball. Finally, after the 2004 Campaign, Selig and the MLBPA signed an agreement to test athlete's for steroids as a BANNED substance, and it finally became a banned substance in MLB.
In one fell swoop Superstars Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens amongst others were named in a farce of a Congressional hearing, and, continuing the denial that was put in place by MLBPA, Selig, and the Owners, one should at least context the time-frame of steroids becoming illegal in Baseball, as a person can't be held accountable for using a 'legal' product on a whim of trying to look good to the American Public at a later date.
So here we are in mid-2011. Alex Rodriguez has admitted to failing a Steroids test in 2003. Does anyone really care at this point. There are not going to be any astericks next to his name, or to his numbers, as steroids weren't even a banned substance when he tested positive in 2003. This is really just a statement of the decline of Modern Western Civilization at its' finest. Suck the air out of the best of the best to deflect attention from the simple fact that this cheating was documented 30 years ago. It's really a fantastic idea. Scapegoat those people that set the records for you, filled the Stadiums, and won you Championships and Titles, let them lose their jobs and be blacklisted from their collective Sports. Americanism at its' finest, passing the buck, a bureaucratic wet dream.