Okay…I’m a Miami Dolphins fan, as you probably noticed if you read my last article. So when I bring this up in conversation, the same question is always asked “What about Ricky Williams, how’s that pothead going to do?” Well I personally expect a great year from Ricky and the rest of the Dolphins, but that’s not the reason I bring this up. Drugs are very prominent in sports, and I don’t just mean steroids. Athletes get caught for drug trafficking, drug use, and sometimes admit it on a national stage, and what happens? Nothing happens, aside from a slap on the wrist.
Athletes are big babies, they need to be babied and told what to do and what not to do. They can’t just be given a two game suspension for using marijuana or cocaine or any drug for that matter. The ten game steroid suspension in Major League Baseball is ridiculous, it doesn’t teach the player anything, and in fact it proves to me that they are just given a slap on the wrist. Athletes have been using drugs for ages, must I remind you of Michael Irvin, Daryll Strawberry and Dwight Gooden? In my opinion, drug use is as heavy in sports as it is on the streets.
This will never change; the drug use will always be there unless the suspensions and fines increase dramatically. If people thought the Pete Rose gambling scandal was major, imagine what is going on behind the scenes of sports. There are worse things than gambling, worse things than parents would want their “white picket fenced” children to ever know. In my opinion the way these sports are handling the punishments relates to society. Like in California we have the Three Strike rule, you have three chances to screw up then you’re done for good. Our society is all about second chances, even third chances. This is a societal problem as well as sports problem.
You may recall in grade school, when you got in trouble you would have to write what you did about one hundred times and add at the end that you would not repeat this. But this never set into my mind, and sure as hell didn’t set into the minds of anyone I’ve ever met. Our society is all about outweighing the bad with the good, and this has affected all of our society, even sports. Athletes always get away with their wrongdoings, mainly because they’re pampered, but also because our society helps the good flourish and the bad die out. I say society is to blame, as well as the sports themselves, because sports are a part of our society.