A little Indignant Family vacation, and too much work has kept me away from the blog for awhile. I’m sorry, but I am back with a couple of stories today, and probably a couple more tomorrow.
Enjoy!

I’ve been away for awhile and haven’t had the opportunity to write about some of the important stories that have occurred while I’ve been gone, but it is long past time to deal with them now.
Major League Baseball threw the book at several players implicated in the Biogenesis/PED scandal, with the biggest suspension being levied on Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod was given a 211 game suspension, which would have covered the remainder of this season and the entirety of next season. Despite stories that Rodriguez’s people had negotiated the suspension with Baseball in return for no lifetime banishment, Rodriguez is appealing the ruling, hoping I think that an arbitrator overturns the decision like Ryan Braun’s suspension a couple of years ago.
Of course, Rodriguez reportedly tested positive for PEDs in the early 2000s, and when that came to light, he appeared on television to admit his guilt, “explain” his side of the story and saying that he hadn’t used PEDs in years. The Biogenesis scandal has occurred over the past few years, so Rodriguez obviously lied about being clean thereafter. Plus, A-Rod must have been the big prize to Baseball investigators: player with the richest contract in history admits taking drugs, but due to the time frame, he is not penalized except in the court of public opinion. Like Braun, A-Rod must have thought he was untouchable.
Even though I deplore PED use, I gave Rodriguez a small pass. In his explanation, it was my impression that he used PEDs as a response to having the pressure of living up to the ¼ billion dollar contract. It went along with the boyish smile and the impression that he was married to an older woman who took advantage of the young naïve man.
No longer! A-Rod is a serial manipulator. Stories since he hit New York show a narcissistic loser who is chasing any woman with a skirt. Now, he shows that he has long used performance enhancing drugs, probably his whole career. His every utterance has been a self-serving sham.
So, instead of being a superstar, which he might have been anyway, we will never know one way or the other. Every hit, every home run, is suspect. On top of that, numerous injuries (steroid related?) at age 38 means that any suspension could mean the end of his career. His employers, the New York Yankees would love to recoup some or all of the multi-millions still owed Rodriguez (and that may be a problem for them – see the next article).
One thing is certain – he will never be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and that’s how it should be.

One of the criticism people (including me) have for Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is the blind eye they turned on PED use, especially in the years after labor strife caused the cancellation of an entire season. Desperate to get fannies back in seats, the owners and the league were happy to see steroid laden mammoths like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds destroy Roger Maris’ single season home run record.
We always knew that people in baseball knew and didn’t care. So, in a weird twist, with the Yankees looking to recoup millions from Alex Rodriguez (see above), GM Brian Cashman is facing allegations that have very interesting implications.
A woman named Louise Neathway who says she is Cashman’s former mistress is suing the Yankee GM and as part of that suit, she says that Cashman told her that he intentionally misled federal investigators during the Roger Clemens case. She also says that Cashman knew players were using PEDs and turned a blind eye to the situation as long as they weren’t caught.
If true, this would be the first person accused of knowing that players were using steroids and doing nothing. And if he covered up for Clemens, criminal charges could follow. Furthermore, these allegations would make it look like Cashman covered up for the white superstar while coming after the Hispanic A-Rod.
However, Ms. Neathway is facing 52 criminal charges including stalking, harassment, lying to a grand jury, criminal impersonation and grand larceny, so all of this may be the delusional ravings of a sick or criminal woman.
This is definitely a strange story.

It appears that the wings of change are blowing through big time college football. Some of these winds may be a typhoon. Big conferences are discussing paying stipends to athletes, and that and other issues have the big conferences like the Big 12 and Big Ten threatening to break from the NCAA, or at least call for a division within the NCAA;s smaller schools and the major colleges. The break appears to be between the moneyed conferences and those whose football and basketball programs are not as profitable. But the one-school/one-vote has supposedly hamstrung the major conferences.
The changes are sorely needed in my opinion, but there has been one subject that doesn’t seem to be changing – what is the proper relationship of players to coaches and the role and responsibility of coaches when players engage in questionable, even criminal behavior?
The latest controversy centers on Ohio State Head Coach Urban Meyer. Meyer, who came to Columbus after six hugely successful seasons at the University of Florida which included a national championship in 2008, was forced to address the issue at the Big Ten Media event in Chicago yesterday. As has been widely discussed in recent weeks, 41 players on the national championship team have been arrested, either while in college or afterward. The most notable of them is former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who awaits a murder trial. Meyer is under some fire for having no control over his players at Florida, with some wondering if anything could have been done to diffuse Hernandez’s reportedly murderous tendencies while in college.
If that wasn’t enough, last weekend a pair of Buckeyes starters were arrested in separate incidents at bars, as well as news this week that two incoming freshmen players were disciplined for non-football indiscretions. “In the last 12 months we’ve had three legal issues, and it all happened in three days,” Meyer said, and he used words such as “sick,” “furious” and “insane” to describe his feelings of late.
I wrote here that the culture of winning at all costs and who cares about NCAA rules that was obviously under former Ohio State Head Coach Jim Tressell would not be changed by the slick Meyer, and that appears to be the case. Big time, multi-million dollar college football coaches are about wins and losses, and honestly, NCAA violations are things to be navigated, like gates in skiing’s giant slalom. Lots of talk is given to educating athletes, but with schedules expanding to 13 games including big money, but really meaningless conference championship games – not counting bowls and soon, a championship playoff, when do these guys get to study? When do they get to visit their relatives? Be normal college students?
Add to it the frustration of seeing your jersey being sold for $100 with your name on it, and you get nothing; the possibility that your likeness in your college uniform doesn’t belong to you forever; it makes you want to make some money. And there are plenty of boosters who would be happy to make the school’s studs happy. It should be noted that the NCAA is making progress in stipends mentioned at the beginning of this piece; and the organization is trying to come up with a deal for former players’ likenesses (but trying to exclude current players). Some relief on the athletes’ situation may be coming.
However, the current culture of big time college sports is more than troubling. Athletes get chewed up and spit out every season of football and basketball. While they are playing, they are BMOCs, kings of their domains. If they have a professional career, the cheers will continue. If not, “oh well kid, you’re out of luck” say the universities. Even with pro careers, if it is true that 78 percent of NFL players are bankrupt or in serious financial difficulty within two years of walking away from the game and 60 percent of NBA players are broke within 5 years of retiring, even this leaves little to be said of being an athlete.
For the millionth time, I ask – don’t college coaches have a responsibility of making men of their charges? Not just keeping them out of trouble, but making sure they go to class – learn something so they can either keep some of the millions they earn, or, more likely, have a future in some field aside from athletics?
Some readers say that I pick on Ohio State, but the Buckeyes are just one of the big sports programs – neither more nor less dirty than any of the others. Is Urban Meyer a bad man? I don’t know the man personally, but once again, he’s just another of the men who pimp young men for huge money.
The more things change….

Chicago Bears training camp opens this week, and, like all things related to the Bears around here, a pronouncement from General Manager Phil Emery is getting lots of attention in the media. Emery stated that the club was at the NFL salary cap for this season, and he would not negotiate contract extensions for any players during the 2013 season.
This is significant because there are 43 current Bear players whose contracts expire at the end of this season, the highest profile player of course being quarterback Jay Cutler. Cutler has the big arm and the tools to be one of the best in the league, but a thin receiving core, poor offensive line, and questionable decisions/throws that have turned into turnovers have plagued his Bear career. If Cutler leads the team to the Super Bowl, a Joe Flacco-type $100 million payday awaits. If not, he could be gone.
There are a number of Pro Bowlers among the 43: Henry Melton, Tim Jennings, Devin Hester and kicker Robbie Gould head the list. Unresolved contract issues usually do one of two things to athletes: either they pout and underperform, or they work extra hard to try and get the big contract next year.
Of course, the Bears risk losing any or all of these players if they have big years in 2013, but to many fans who know that if they don’t perform well at work, they will be fired, this strikes a chord. Play and get the big payday – don’t and you get what you get.
All too often, professional sports teams pay players for potential, and of course, not everyone can be a superstar, but if new Head Coach Marc Trestman can get these guys to play, all of Chicago will be cheering.

That is the common refrain of the career criminal and most kids – I’ve got the game figured out; I can do what I want and get away with it. Of course, most of these people do eventually get caught (or killed in the case of criminals).
However, most people grow up and out of this attitude. Even the Indignant Children are coming to understand that either Mommy or Daddy or both are going to catch them when they do something they shouldn’t. The big question here is: if they can come to understand, why can’t a professional athlete who is 3 times their age?
Of course, we ask this question of Milwaukee Brewer outfielder Ryan Braun. Braun, who was able to escape punishment for performance enhancing drug use a couple of years ago on a technicality, has been implicated for months in the Biogenesis case, and yesterday, Major League Baseball brought down the hammer – suspension without pay for the rest of the season, a 65 game penalty. Under the collective bargaining agreement with the Players’ Union, a first offense is grounds for a 50 game suspension; a second offense is a 100 game suspension. Since Braun was penalized once before but had the punishment vacated by an independent arbitrator, this is like a 1½ time, so he is getting a longer penalty than a first time offender, but not as long as a second offense.
Braun wisely is not contesting the suspension this time (the length of the suspension was negotiated with baseball), but one has to ask – if you were able to get away with it the first time, maybe I’d clean up my act because I would think that the authorities are going to try even harder to catch me.
But I guess that wouldn’t register to Braun, and probably to the next player on baseball’s “hit list” – the Yankee’s Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez admitted to baseball and to the public and media on television that he used PEDs in the past and that it was a mistake. But now, here he is again in a scandal, and it is possible that baseball may throw all they can behind a suspension, which, for a 38-year-old, may be career-ending. (And the Yankees are smiling at the unpaid part of the Braun suspension, because an A-Rod suspension would save them many millions of dollars and perhaps allow them to void all or part of the rest of his multi-million contract.
Baseball is doing the right thing – suspending former MVPs who get caught cheating; showing that even the biggest stars will be punished – no one is above the game. Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun are supremely talented athletes and A-Rod especially probably would have made the Hall of Fame if he had never taken one PED (like Barry Bonds would have). They didn’t need the help, but now they will pay for it.

On a related note: does anyone care about the Tour de France anymore? Britain’s Chris Froome won the 100th running of the race over the weekend, and he says that he did it cleanly. The sport is changing he said, even though the disgraced stripped 7-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong said earlier this year that no one can win the Tour without doping (which of course makes me wonder what people who won in the first 60-70 years of the event did?).
I hope he’s right; I hope he’s clean. It would make for a truly huge summer for England: Andy Murray breaks a 77 year drought in winning Wimbledon; Froome is the second consecutive Brit to win the Tour in the past couple of years; and of course, the royal baby. Unfortunately, however, the clouds of suspicion will not blow away that easily – if ever.

In the same week that MLB Commissioner Bud “Head In The Sand” Selig announced that baseball was “cleaner than it has ever been,” rumors abound around the next round of suspensions for use of performance enhancing drugs. Everyone has been waiting for the shoe to drop in the form of suspensions for the 20 or so players supposed to have been customers of the now-closed anti-aging Biogenesis clinic in Florida and its founder, Anthony Bosch. The two highest profile players are Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun.
Sidelined with a serious hip injury that required surgery, Rodriguez is scheduled to make his 2013 season debut next week, but all the press want to know is about his alleged PED use. The latest story was that Rodriguez’s lawyers/agents were in plea negotiations with Major League Baseball for alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. Rodriguez denied the story to CNN.
“Well, I don’t think there’s anything that’s going on right now, and that’s as far as I’m going to take it,” Rodriguez said. “I think it’s important that we have a process. I think we have a good system with Major League Baseball. And let’s let the process play out.”
Rodriguez’s representatives have reportedly been negotiating a deal with the league to reduce a possible 100-game suspension for alleged performance-enhancing drug use. Rodriguez declined to address whether he would fight a long suspension or other adverse decision if one is so issued by the Yankees or the league. “You know, I’d just rather not get into any of that right now. It’s premature, and we’ll let the process play out. That’s my responsibility right now,” Rodriguez said.
Such a controversy would be hard on any athlete’s concentration, and if the speculation of a possible career-ending suspension is making life more difficult for Rodriguez; he does acknowledge is that he needs to connect better with his fans in what could be the final chapters of his playing career.
He said that he needs his fans more than ever as he turns 38 this month. Which is funny because he has been at best aloof to the fans for most of his career after he signed the biggest contract in baseball history leaving Seattle for Texas. It’s ironic that players who were generally bastards to media and the fans when they are in their primes suddenly think about their legacies and try to make nicer to the baseball writers who will vote on their Hall of Fame candidacy once they retire.
But let me say now – Alex Rodriguez should never be in Baseball’s Hall of Fame unless they take up my suggestion that PED-tainted players should have a permanent asterisk on their plaques. He failed a drug test(s) and admitted to it a few years ago, and now it appears that he hasn’t learned his lesson. Yes, he signed the huge deal (which most say he never lived up to, including his current employers, the New York Yankees, who would love to save millions if Rodriguez were suspended without pay), and some of his drug use, he says, was to try and live up to his ¼ billion dollar contract. Makes some sense, but if you are as supremely talented as the untainted Alex Rodriguez was, let the chips fall where they may. And if the contract put too much pressure on you, give millions to charity where it will do some good.