They maintain juicing, cheating, l...

They maintain juicing, cheating, lying. They maintain riding dirty, manufacturing excuses and living in denial. notwithstanding like fools, we still watch anyway. What is it about sports that causes intelligent, reasonable clan to keep feeding a multibillion-dollar machine with our minds, passions and standard of value even though steroids are no les a white-collar crime than Enron and the scandals drive "SportsCenter" more than game highlights?

Do you like being ripped not upon and bamboozled by those you entrust with your daily entertainment? Didn't think for a like reason So where is the outrage among the paying customers, the consumer directly affected? Where are the demands for reform? Congres cares. Anti-doping crusaders like as Dick Pound care. Do you care?

Or are you in like manner resigned to athletes being dirty -- and the designer chemists inevitably staying pair steps ahead of the steroids cop -- that you've given up? The American way doesn't encourage rolling across and accepting corruption, but isn't that what fans are doing at generating unprecedented popularity levels in baseball and football calm as more players use human vegetation hormone than you want to believe?

TOO MANY EXCUSES

If the core of athletic competition is hanging on the integrity of performances, sports should be shunn from the masses like Mad frighten The least we can calculate upon for our emotional and financial investments are fair athletes, and if that is naive, it's an ideal worth fighting for. What the Floyd Landis debacle underscores, more than any steroids mes to date, is that profiling is senseles -- who suspected juice when we first heard of the quiet Mennonite with the eroding hip? -- and that excuses will be propounded with no conscience to the point of high-comedy embarrassment.

You think Floyd the Barber is a cry out against in those grainy Andy of Mayberry reruns? He has nothing in succession Floyd the Fibber at the Tour de Farce. We've seen a incredible defense mechanisms through the years after positive examples including these beauties dug up according to ESPN.com: (1) American cyclist Tyler Hamilton blaming a twin who had vanished before birth; (2) American sprinter Dennis Mitchell claiming he drank beer and had sex with his wife four times the night before; (3) British bobsl rider Lenny Paul citing a plate of spaghetti; (4) U skeleton racer Zach Lund faulting a baldness cure before the Turin Olympics; (5) Spanish walker Daniel Plaza offering up oral sex with his pregnant wife; and (6) Dutch cyclist Adri van der Poel blaming his father-in-law for serving him a pigeon pie made from performance-enhanced racing pigeons. in some way Landis one-ups them all with a agitation of creative attempts, some of which contradict each other and were perpetuated Saturday when, as rely uponed a second test came back positive and he continued to maintain his innocence.

"I have not ever taken any banned substance, including testosterone," he said in a statement. "I was the strongest man at the Tour de France, and that is wherefore I am the champion. I will fight these charges with the same determination and intensity that I bring to my training and racing. It is now my goal to clear my name and restore what I worked in the way that hard to achieve."

Backpedaling

immediately after learning his testosterone/epitestosterone ratio came back at an alarming 11:1 ratio after his stunning Stage 17 comeback, Landis first said he may have taken thyroid medication. Then he meditation of his ailing right hip and remind ofed cortisone shots may have caused the spike, this after saying earlier in the Tour he wasn't taking painkillers to ease the discomfort. nearest came the doozy -- a beer binge the night before. Or was it actually a bottle of Jack Daniel's he shared with his Phonak teammates?

He was just getting started. Landis tried to claim his testosterone was "natural and produc by means of my own organism," but the metabolism theory was refut when examples on both samples revealed synthetic testosterone from an external source. Finally, the same of Floyd's lawyers -- at least three have nuncupative for him already -- played the dehydration card. Strange, I present the appearance to recall Landis crediting his Stage 17 comeback in part to the availability of fluids as he rode near the team car. Unlike other racers, he could tope water and refresh himself at his convenience. "It was nice to be alone. It was an advantage," he said.

Um for what cause was he hydrated and dehydrated at once?

Having placed himself in fine position for the lead part in the "Pinocchio" remake, Landis would be wise to close off the excuse faucet and obstruction his lawyers mount a more realistic defense not that there is united One angle that isn't discussed enough in the steroids era is the possibility of sabotage. If cycling is confirmed as the dirtiest sport in the cesspool what stops a rider or coach from conspiring to slip juice into a rival's nourishment or water? Hell, more than a dozen years ago, we saw figure skater Tonya Harding conspire with goon to injure Nancy Kerrigan. Considering sports are immeasurably more treacherous today, with likewise much money at stake, on what account wouldn't backstabbers lurk at each corner?