Give the people what they want!

Here we go again, yet another sports figure being investigated for using a banned substance. It makes me shake my head in absolute wonder. When will the sports governing bodies realize that the average Joe sitting on the sidelines simply doesn’t care if the athlete is a roid-enhanced machine? They simply want to see the athlete perform in such a manner that is amazing.

DENVER (AP) -- The NFL says it is conducting a comprehensive review of allegations that Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning had human growth hormone delivered to his house.

When football players collide, those of us watching want to hear our guy smash the bones of the other guy, Dick Butkus style. Of course, after the Sports Medicine people finally get the guy on his feet, we want to cheer their bravery with giddy abandon. Geeze, we don’t want the guy to die, you know what I mean? We just want him out of the game and if he’s on the other team and really a threat to us winning, we want him out for the season… unless he’s one of our fantasy footballers!

“I'm not so mean. I wouldn't ever go out to hurt anybody deliberately - unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something.” Dick Butkus

To me the real issue with Peyton Manning isn’t his (supposed) human growth hormone use; it’s the threat of him losing his lucrative advertisement deals. Talk about a hit below the belt! Geeze, that could be catastrophic! What? You didn’t know all these organized sporting events are about money for investors?

All of it is money driven, so why not give the audience what they want? Bigger, faster athletes who hit harder, jump further, throw longer, and can do feats worthy of our dollars, because that is what we want to see. We crave icons to worship and discuss our heroes ad nauseum at work and in the sports bars. As a sidebar, I used to listen to the guys at work spew out their intimate knowledge of players, games, and strategies and wonder why they were wasting their time only making a hundred thousand dollars a year at a chemical plant.

I say level the playing field and reinstall the 300 plus world class athletes who have been banned for “performance-enhancing drugs” that many of us take every day. Yea, that nose-inhaler you must have every day would bump you onto this list. That over the counter drug you bought last week to help open up your lungs so you can breath? Blam! You’re out and… disgraced!

Here it is and it has disqualified a number of athletes: Pseudoephedrine is a sympathomimetic drug of the phenethylamine and amphetamine chemical classes. It may be used as a nasal/sinus decongestant, as a stimulant, or as a wakefulness-promoting agent. 

When Lance Armstrong was dethroned, I asked my cousin in law, who is a Nordic cycler from Denmark about it and he told me straight-up that “they all do it in one form or another, or they can’t remain competitive at that level.” I say open it up.  Let them all do it. Of course, that would put many people out of business, as sports is a big business – but –it would open up new avenues to make money and just think about the toy industry action figures that would come out of this new phenomenon!

Mixed martial arts and Wrestle Mania type venues have proved that people want to see monsters in sports. They don’t care if they are good people; nope, not one bit. They want to see violence and in excessive amounts. That’s why the program America’s Funniest Home Videos is so popular. People doing stupid things in such an excessive manner that they get hurt. The more violent they fall, the higher the pleasure meter goes it seems.

Take the recent K/O of Rhonda Rousey as an example. There she was, queen of the Mixed Martial Arts Octagon until she got her hiney handed to her by Holly Holm in about 15 seconds. All the Rousey worshipers dropped her faster than Holm’s did. People don’t care about these athletes when they fail; they just want to see dramatic action. If steroids will bump up this action, bring it on!

The day when JJ Watt can no longer perform, he will be just another failed athlete and folks will be looking at the next super hero. Would it make a dimes worth of difference if all these athletes were using performance-enhancing drugs for the last 3 years? I say no. Not a dimes worth. As long as they can amaze people with their athletic skill, people wouldn’t care.

All these disqualifying substances are so last century anyway and doomed when neural implants begin to be introduced into athletes and the general population. Remember when The Matrix’s Neo learned karate, kung-fu, jujitsu, boxing, etc in about ten seconds? All he really needed was the conditioning to pull it off. When a baseball batter knows every pitch that is coming at him and can calculate his reaction, the idea of a performance-enhancing drug giving him an advantage sounds pretty silly and antiquated.

The truth is we are drug obsessed in this country. This latest news of Peyton Manning is just one more example of how out of touch with reality we are. Probably 75% of us would be banned from organized sports for something we are taking, either from the doctor, or over the counter. I say let em have em. The time has come.

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Me and J.J. – two of a kind!

Recently my bride laughed at me when I told her I was every bit the macho awesome athlete J.J. Watt is and I half meant it.  You see, it’s not all hyperbole on my part, as the older I get, the better I used to be, both for real and in my memory.

I can prove it too, starting right now.  Like J.J. Watt, when I was a younger man, say, to the age of about 50; I was devilishly handsome.  Now, not so much, but still a contender according to my friends on Facebook and Wikipedia – both plethora’s of hard factoids. 

Like Mr. Watt, I can and/or could lift heavy things.  He weighs 292 pounds and I can still push that much with my feet at the gym with the name sounding like a clock.  He has a 55 inch vertical leap and I also have an impressive leap, especially when goosed. Truth is, I haven’t been goosed lately, but I assure you, its way up there, trust me.

J. J. worked as a pizza delivery boy and once again, I can top that, as I worked INSIDE making pizzas.  I was a pizza making dude and he was the doo-dah pizza delivery boy.  Sometimes I even impress myself with my accomplishments.

The stellar Texan played tight-end at Central Michigan with only eight catches for the year.  Well in 1963, while living in Dundee, Michigan, as a 6^th grader,  I won the coveted Fords Punt, Pass, & Kick contest beating every classmate above me and took home the varsity jacket, much to their dismay.  We moved to California and I never played football, but All-Star baseball as a shortstop.

J.J. gave up his scholarship to CMU and I never bothered to get one, so we are pretty much even there also.  The giant defensive player has a younger brother named T.J. and so do I.  His younger brother plays football and mine lives it vicariously.  Even Steven again!  Wait, there’s more.  The similarities are frankly – amazing.

Mr. Watt is extremely charitable and so am I.  I repaired and gave away over 40 computers to the homeless (most of them are divorced men whose wives have taken them to the cleaners).  He likes HEB and so do I.  He likes to crush things with his hands – I like to break bricks with mine.  He salutes like crazy and I did that too in the Air Force! 

His favorite sport is hockey and I love to yell that word out when listening to the Democratic party promises or people defending their policies!  Again!  It just keeps getting real here.

Last week the monster Texan set a record for 20 sacks per season for two consecutive seasons.  I yawned when I heard that to tell you the truth.  My first year as a bagger in a grocery store in Georgia, I sacked close to 5000 customers in one season alone.  I was working for $5 a day and pennies for tips. I didn’t bother to count the second year how many I sacked.

The humongous defensive lineman loves to rush out of a hole with smoke coming out all around him.  Who doesn’t?  I went through the smokehouse and fought fires at Texas A&M fire field more times than I can remember in my glorious years at the work-20 and often with a great amount of fanfare from my fellow firefighters.  Been there, done that.

And the real kicker to all this is, that he only has something like 9% body fat.  9%!  Geeze Louise, I got that one beat by a long margin.  I’m like 14% or so.  So, my beautiful bride is now set straight, as she should be.  She got herself a ringer in me about 37 years ago and maybe now, when she reads this, she’ll finally see I am everything the big man is and more.