OT: Shawne Merriman Rant

I'm so fed up with the people out there putting these guys on a pedestal for our youth.  You've clearly failed as a parent if your child can get more inspiration from an athlete or entertainer than from the very people who have brought them up.

I remember when I played frosh football in highschool - way back in '84 - yikes!.  We had a pretty good team.  We beat other teams up and we had some decent players for a small school.  Anyway, we had played almost half a season before I realized that many of the players on the team were taking speed before games.  

Specifically, we were playing a road game in a town about 20 miles down the highway.  I saw some of the other players taking pills before that game and wondered aloud to friend about what it was that they were taking.  I vaguely remember my friend being surprised that I was so clueless.  He told me what the pills were and explained that a lot of guys were taking them before games.

Even though I started at RG, I was never offered any pills and if I had been offered, would have absolutely declined.  I wasn't the typical jock and was able to survive on that team because I learned how to cut block the hell out of people to make up for my athletic shortcomings.  

It wasn't a surprise that it wasn't offered to me, but I know that players were taking speed for the same reason I resorted to cut blocking - which if You know, isn't a nice way to play the line.  They did it because they wanted to play.  They did it because they wanted to have an edge and they wanted to win.  

I firmly believe that is the same today as it was then.  These athletes in high school are driven by competition to be the best and to be popular, to be liked.  They see drugs as an opportunity to reach these goals faster and to a higher level.  It's exactly the same reason academic competitors take everything from ritalin to no-doze.  In the mind of the young, the benefit is seen and the negative is ignored.

So I am also sick of hearing the "role model" BS.  No one on the team back in 84 was taking speed because their role model was doing the same.  They did because if the played well, chicks dug them, coach played them and the crowd cheered for them.

But enough on that, that Nike commercial kicks butt, and not because of Merrman or Stephen Davis; the "Last of the Mohicans" theme music is my all-time favorite motion picture score.  (Better than "Star Wars", "LOTR" and "Batman")

And fairness?  Football isn't fair.  Never was.  The guys who work the hardest and are most vital to a team's success are the linemen, and hardly anyone gives them credit or fame.

I'm trying not to rant here, but it's hard not to be bitter about the blatant double standard.

Baseball has a longer history and is the more cerebral game to watch.  Additionally, many of us in the stands see a sport that we think we're not all that far from being able to do.  We like to see a "fairness" when players from different eras are compared.  Even though there are many differences between eras (segragation, mound height, etc), the stats are often pretty comparable.  PEDs upsets a lot of what people like about the game.  I think they want to identify with players that are "realistic".

Football, on the other hand, is played by cartoon-like gladiators.  It's a game without the history and one that looked very different just 30 years ago. It's much more difficult to imagine myself breaking through 265 pound linebackers than it is to imagine myself diving for a soft liner in CF.  Just as the Romans didn't seem to be bothered with prospects of gladiators risking their health to entertain, neither do we as a society.