March Madness:

A brief thought on College hoops and sports:

For the first time in a long time, I entered a pool for the NCAA tournament with some friends and acquaintances. I don't like putting money on sports, as I generally feel that athletics are, or at least ought to be, free of monetary concerns - that is once the ticktes are paid for. But I must say, even a little bit of buy-in makes for a great deal more interest in the outcomes, and I am as enetrtained by my pool as I have been by any of the recent movies I have seen (and the pool is substantially cheaper!)

But college hoops are not the only madness in March this year. That's right, the juice has finally come into the lime-light, and it looks as though things could get nasty.

When Marc McGwire sits in front of Congress and dodges questions about steroid use, some act surpirsed. For example, on a recent episode of Pardon the Interruption Michael Wilbon called the hearing a joke because the committee did not ask the home run slugger point-blank "did you use steroids?"

This, to me, is ridiculous. While I believe firmly in the need to level the playing field and rid professional sports of performance enhancing drugs, holding a public congressional hearing and inviting former and current stars to testify on the issue of performance enhancing drug usage in Major League Baseball, hardly seems to be the most prudent way to deal with the issue.

It strikes me that perhaps the largest stumbling block in dealing with this issue is the Player's Union, and with good reason. The players need baseball for obvious reasons, and if baseball were to be struck with such a devastating scandal at this point in time, I doubt it would ever recover. So why not make a deal?

One can understand the desire of the players to keep their 'good name' intact in this. The repercussions would be significant: records tainted, seasons thrown into question, performance of any significant level tainted by suspicion and cynicism. Yet, the players themselves recognize the need for resolution and closure on this issue. So why not make a deal whereby everyone wins?

Consider the following:
Baseball owners and record keepers agree to place the last decade or so of Baseball into the unquestionable category, meaning that none of the achievments of the past decade or so will be called into question. At the same time, rules are put in place to adopt a drug testing policy on par with the Olympic standards (NOTE: I am not sure if this is an accurate representative of the official policy, but it purports to be. If you know of a more reliable source, please share) and everyone agrees to phase in the new requirements over the course of a single season, which while not the ideal of a clean now policy is more realistic and perhaps more comfortable for all involved. The goal here is to erradicate the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball without throwing egg over anyone's face. This could also prevent the sort of scandal that would prove an existential crisis for the sport. The key is a combination of recognition that the problem must be dealt with and of rendering a solution that does not call into doubt anything of the period under scrutiny, thus avoiding potential embarrasment for everyone. The record keepers would move on without applying an asterisk to a decade of baseball, and we could all put this nastiness to rest, quickly, quietly, and effecively.

Any thoughts?

Note: Spelling of Wilbon's name has been corrected. Apologies for the typo.