Can you hear me God? It's S.Vincent......

I am relatively young. No gray hairs, no wrinkles, no unsightly ear hair, my joints feel great, I remember the things I want to, I sleep for around 6 hours a night with no ill-effects, and the only pills I have to take are my multi-vitamin. That said, I could be wrong about sports being in its lowest ever state of morality, ethics, and trust-worthy-ness this week, but it is certainly the worst that I have ever witnessed.
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This week: Barry Bonds is on the precipice of the all-time home-run record amid an un-breathable cloud of smoke surrounding his countless steroid allegations. Everyone he's ever come in contact with says either he's guilty, they can't reveal what they know under penalty of law, or "no comment". If anything helps Bonds, its the fact that hes been under this cloud for the past 3 years and as a society we've become blind to the fact the cloud is still there. Like Alaskans who walk outside in short sleeves in minus 10 degree weather.
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An active NBA referee has been caught fixing games in order to get out of gambling debt he acquired while placing bets with his old high school friends who happen to be a part of a large organized crime syndicate aka "The Mob". No one knows how long he has been doing it, but the investigation has uncovered at least 1 year of activity. The referee has also been in a number of civil suits with his neighbor over violent activity displayed by said referee.
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Micheal Vick has been suspended by the NFL till they can figure out if he violated the leagues code of ethics by being indicted by the government for aiding and abiding dog fighting on his property, and possibly having a direct hand in the practice himself. There are mountains of evidence against him, but the courts have to hash out which is true, un-true, and speculative. There is an excellent chance that he will be convicted barring some kind of Duke rape case evidence mistreatment that the feds are much more ethical about than the local/state prosecutors. In the past 12 months, that would be close to 40 players arrested for crimes. This is on the heels of Pacman Jones also being charged with involvement in an incident in which he started a fight at a strip club that involved gun play and left one employee paralyzed. With close to 2000 NFL players, this arrest rate is not anymore than the rate of the general population, but is astronomically high for their income bracket (more than 250,000 a year)
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The Tour De France has been rocked by doping yet again. 4 riders have been thrown out for testing positive or suspicious activity involving performance enhancing drugs. Alexander Vinokourov, Micheal Rasmussen, Christian Moreni, and Patrick Sinkewitz. If they were major league baseball players, this would be the same as finding out Vlad Guerrero (Vinokourov), Roy Oswalt (Rasmussen), Hunter Pence (Moreni), and Alex Gordon (Sinkewitz) all got 2 year bans from baseball. Some of the riders cried under the weight of the pressure their sport is facing from all this cheating and bad publicity.
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This tortured sport can't seem to get out of this rut that it has been stuck in since the late 70's. Cycling invented medical cheating to win races. Lance is very very lucky that he is not riding this tour. He may have been the "Teflon Don" of cycling a few years ago, but Rasmussen has had eerily the same exact circumstances happen to him, and now he is out of the Tour, and fired from his team despite being tested after every stage with no positive tests. My favorite play by play guy Paul Sherwin made what I thought was a really good point of saying that this could be cycling's finest hour instead of its darkest if they can finally get rid of this problem. Exposing cheaters, cleaning up the sport, setting firm, harsh, and logical rules.
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Although it seems particularly awful to have all this controversy and moral crimes in one year of the race, it has been around for 100 years and has seen its fair share of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. But, "seemingly insurmountable" is the spirit of the Tour. Cycling is a sport that is rich with riders putting obstacles in front of them and climbing, sprinting, bridging, and attacking the peloton over them. The riders could lose all their sponsorships, the organisers could disband the race, the TV cameras can be shut off, and all the reporters can attend a different event but I know that there will be a handful of men who will agree to see who can get around the borders of France the fastest. These athletes don't need the tour, the tour needs these athletes. I may feel awful about it now, but as long as the banner "Vive le Tour" still flies on the roadside alongside athletes willing to believe the meaning of the banner is their responsibility, I think we can still feel good about sports, even......football.
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Yes God, it's S.Vincent. Just wanted to let you know, I think we can, I think we can, I think we can.
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This post was written while listening to: Spoon "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga"