NESO'S TAKE ON SPORTS

Many professional athletes, specifically in baseball and football, have started to abuse performance enhancing drugs, aka steroids. Here are four ways that these sports’ reputations can be saved:

1. Increase Punishment. For example, a four game suspension in the NFL is not going to cut it. Start suspending players for full seasons. Roger Goodell has done a great job recently by really upping the punishment for breaking rules and laws, using Adam “Pacman” Jones as a poster boy for illegal actions. Pacman was suspended for the entire ’07-’08 season for a shooting at a night club.
2. Find a good executive. Each league needs to make sure that their primary executive, or commissioner, is adept at laying down the law. The NFL has already taken a step in the right direction by hiring Roger Goodell a few years ago, and Goodell has been dishing out strict punishments. However with each passing day that Bud Selig remains the commissioner of the MLB, the league will continue to deteriorate exponentially. Selig is not only incompetent when it comes to punishing players for steroid use, but he was also the one who let the steroids become a problem. He watched and almost supported players who cheated,  and got away with it because the home runs gave his league popularity and money.
3. Frequent drug tests. This seems like an obvious idea, but neither the NFL nor the MLB have very frequent drug tests, at most one test every season-and-a-half. This is not enough. It can simply be fixed by inserting an extra drug test in the middle of the season, which will make the players more fearful of getting caught
4. Teach younger athletes about the dangers of steroids. Going to high schools and colleges where professional sports players are “born” and teaching them about the dangers of steroids can be very effective. It gives young athletes the necessary knowledge to make wise decisions about using performance enhancing drugs. This will prevent the next generation of athletes from cheating.

It is the steroid era in baseball, and in the NFL Roger Goodell is making a concerted and so far successful effort to cut steroids out of football. Goodell, unlike the unwise Bud Selig has chosen to nip the problem in the bud, and because of this his league will never fall into the deep abyss of having an era named after cheaters.