They thought it highly ironic that a player actually caught cheating and suspended (ie. did the time for his crime), was still thought highly enough by the powers that be to award him with a trip to Hawaii, even though he is currently leading the league with 16 sacks in only 11 games. They thought that another player should question this wisdom and the message it sends, specifically calling out Jason Taylor, the outstanding defensive end of the Miami Dolphins.
Well I open up the news today and there is Taylor spewing on this very subject. (Makes me wonder if the boys at WFAN knew this was coming and it had not been reported yet.) Coincidently, Taylor is be competing with Merriman for the NFL Defensive Player of the Year,so he has reason to discredit Merriman. According to Yahoo, he said:
"You really shouldn't be able to fail a test like that and play in this league, to begin with," Taylor said Wednesday. "To make the Pro Bowl and all the other awards, I think you're walking a fine line of sending the wrong message."
Personally, I agree with Taylor. The NFL is essentially saying it alright to cheat. to come back after serving your sentence then still be rewarded that season for breaking the rules. This is not the criminal system, so yes a different standard should apply. Guilty players should at least not be able to reap post season awards, otherwise the entire league begins to smell and look tainted.
The double standard is that a player in the NFL, can not only test positive for steroids miss 25% of his teams games for his first offense, not be paid his salary for those games missed and still make be considered an All-Pro, but then to be welcomed back with no stigma attached to his name or reputation. There is no long term ramification for their actions, and that sends the wrong message to the fans, the ones who ultimately support the league and have it the juggernaut that we know today.If a baseball player is either accused (Bonds, Sosa, McGwire) or proven (Palmeiro, Mota, Grimsley, etc.) to be a cheat, the are essentially left wearing a Scarlett A on their jerseys that they must wear for the rest of their career. A player that test positive will be suspended 50 games or 31% of the season, and will have to deal with issue for the rest of their career, with pundits always questioning the integrity of the player, and wonders if the player will ever be (or was ever) clean, or have the always been juiced.
Why does the NFL get a free pass? Let me know what you think.
3 comments:
The answer may be simple: football has not been put through the ringer like baseball has. Baseball has become the sport most associated with steroids despite perhaps a mound of evidence that would show that it is football that is truly the juiced sport. It's unfortunate that football has been given a pass like this.
Quite a bit there. First, I agree that baseball has received a higher level of scrutiny. I believe it's because the stats in baseball tend to be individual stats (e.g., home runs). Merriman is part of a defensive unit that is judged as a group rather than individually. The exception being individual honors such as Pro Bowl participation or defensive player of the year. Still, those honors pale compared to holding baseball's all-time homerun record. A more interesting scenario for football would be if Peyton Manning had been found to be juiced while breaking Dan Marino's QB records. I think you'd see a great deal of uproar over that.
It is quite alarming on a personal front, since the steroid use in all sports seems to begin with the team I followed as a kid in late 1970's, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
If you have read any of the stuff on Mike Webster, it shows how hard the NFL has worked at sweeping this issue under the rug, as opposed to baseball who keeps being dragged in front of congress.
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