Anyone watching ESPN’s Sportscenter or listening to sports radio has consistently been hearing one word lately: “congressional.” I don’t mean congressional as a compliment to any of our major sports, but congressional as in congressional hearings. Over the course of history, the American government has kept its nose out of sports, and sports has been all the better for it. But over the past couple years, I know, from being a big sports fan, that things have obviously changed over the playing fields.
We begin with Roger Clemens and the Mitchell Report, which was created by former United States Senator George J. Mitchell and listed the names of many professional baseball players who had used human growth hormones (HGH), steroids, and many other performance enhancing drugs. One of the biggest names to be listed was future Hall of Famer Roger Clemens. Clemens, of course, has denied using any performance enhancing drugs and believes that the public will believe him.
Enter Brian McNamee, who was Clemens’s former trainer. He claimed that Clemens had not only used performance enhancing drugs, but McNamee himself had injected Clemens.
Enter the United States Government. After probing Barry Bonds, the government has held hearings to investigate whether or not Clemens lied. At first, many people, including myself, believed this entire thing to be a witch hunt. But one would have to wonder why McNamee, someone who has nothing to gain, would lie?
Probably even more embarrassing for sports is the Spygate incident of the squeaky clean New England Patriots. The Patriots were caught using video equipment to film their opponents to achieve an unfair advantage. The Patriots were caught cheating against the New York Jets in the first game of the 2007 season and were stripped of their first round pick for 2008 and fined by the league.
On February 1, 2008, U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, commented to the New York Times on the incident and the NFL’s decision to destroy the video tape evidence. Specter was quoted in a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell as saying, “I am very concerned about the underlying facts on the taping, the reasons for the judgment on the limited penalties and, most of all, on the inexplicable destruction of the tapes.”
Specter also said he could call Goodell to attend a congressional hearing on the league’s antitrust exemption, at which time Goodell would also be asked to comment on the destruction of the tapes received from the Patriots. As of right now, no hearings have been announced, but the government, along with Senator Specter, are pushing forward hearings to further investigate the incident.
There you have it folks. Everything I just wrote is pretty much every 60 minute airing of Sportscenter for about the past two weeks. If you’re as tired as I am of hearing about congressional hearings and what Clemens said today, then our misery will obviously increase over the next few weeks. To the casual observer, someone is obviously lying or cheating. But as the old saying goes, “If you ain’t cheatin’, then you ain’t tryin’.