Four Sports Scandals That Gave Bush Cover

By Robert Lipsyte, Tomdispatch.com. Posted October 13, 2007.

1. The Longest Season

"I think the Patriots actually live by the saying, 'If you're not cheatin, you're not trying.'" -- LaDainian Tomlinson of the San Diego Chargers

The sports scandals of the last months already feel old.

O.J. Simpson returned to retrieve some of his collectibles at gunpoint in a caper that seemed like a YouTube PR stunt. It's time to ask the really tough question: Was he a greater running back than Jim Brown?

New England Patriots' coach Bill Belichick, winner of three Super Bowls, went from resident genius to resident evil when his spycam was spotted at a Jets game stealing defensive signals. The Jets' coach Eric Mangini, a former Belichick assistant, may even have been the snitch. The NFL punished Belichick and the Pats swiftly and harshly, but did nothing a week later when Jets defensive players were accused of shouting out signals at the line of scrimmage to confuse the Baltimore Ravens, also against NFL rules.

A few weeks before the Belichick revelations, one of the Patriots' stars was suspended for using Human Growth Hormone (the current big-boy drug of choice), while a number of major league baseball players are now being investigated for receiving HGH shipments. Meanwhile, the New York Knicks have just found themselves on the losing end of a high-level sex-harassment suit involving Isiah Thomas, their coach and president. (Their star player merely had his way in his truck with an intern.) And don't forget Marion Jones, long the sweetheart of track and field, finally admitted that she had used drugs to help her win five medals at the 2000 Olympics.

And those are just a few of the top scores from the scandal season.

Maybe your inclination is to blame the seeming erosion of sports ethics on the Bush role model, but increasing numbers of studies reveal that jocks cheat more often than non-jocks. It's part of their conditioning. You can't blame it all on Karl Rove.

So let's take a look back at the summer's scandal season with an appropriate attitude of Belichikian paranoia. After all, the powers-that-be love to promote sports scandals which encourage a hopelessness about the world as well as our ability to change or control it. Sports scandals liberate us from having to stand up, vote, demonstrate, move on. What's the use when everything -- including our games and pastimes -- is so obviously fixed, or at least a little bit crooked?

Even so, the onslaught of scandals that roiled SportsWorld this past summer were classics we should never forget, because they did more than encourage that cynical shrug that precedes the next channel change; they also distracted many of us just long enough to avoid seriously confronting withdrawal, impeachment, or the other great issues of the day.

What chance did troop numbers in Iraq have against Barry's home-run numbers?

Forget about death and dismemberment abroad, we have some dead dogs in Michael Vicks' Bad Newz kennel!

Who needs support from a European community that promotes something as corrupted as the Tour de France?

Alberto Gonzalez might be crooked, but so is pro basketball -- as the summer's crooked ref scandal made so clear!

There is, however, one "sports" scandal that refuses to die, one thoroughly entwined with the battlefield, one that, it seems, could yet give us hope.

So let's kick off a new season of Jock Culture notes with a mild aperitif of distraction -- and then work our way up to the dogz.

2. We'll Always Have the Pyrenees

"The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart." -- Iris Murdoch

Suddenly, it looks like a good thing that the cheese-eaters and their Euro-trash allies didn't ride with us on the Tour d'Iraq. How can you trust surrender monkeys who can't even pedal up a hill without pumping themselves with steroids, spare blood, and Dieu knows what else? Wouldn't those junkies have been a big help going house to house in Falluja, stopping every so often for an injection?

Truth is, Americans hardly care about bike racing in years when Lance Armstrong wins, so the disintegration of the Tour de France last summer wasn't exactly giant news here. For the past two years, the Tour's early favorites were mostly disqualified for failing drug tests and the winner's yellow jersey was passed to the back of the pack, most notably to Floyd Landis, who won in 2006 with an engaging smile, a bad hip, and -- according to the drug-testers -- some help from synthetic testosterone.

Earlier this month, an arbitration panel convened by the United States Anti-Doping Agency upheld the charges against Landis and the subsequent stripping of his championship. While he may appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the damage is done. Teams, including one sponsored by the Discovery Channel and partly owned by Armstrong, are disbanding.

My first reaction was to wonder whether Karl Rove had pumped up this scandal -- since the bicycle is such a subversive instrument: inexpensive, healthful to the rider and the environment, sort of a MoveOn.org with wheels. If more people rode, we would be in better physical and mental shape to fight the greedheads. We wouldn't be so dependent on oil. If we were riding as a nation, maybe we wouldn't be in Iraq.

See more stories tagged with: bush administration, pat tillman, sports scandals

Robert Lipsyte, the Jock Culture correspondent for Tomdispatch, is author of the new Young Adult novel about a stock car racing family, Yellow Flag.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »