Judgment Day for Sports

Wednesday, February 13 was a particularly tough week for the big 4 sports in this country. And no sport had a rougher time than baseball.

As well all know, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing into the Roger Clemens v. Brian McNamee debate about which one is telling the truth over Clemens' alleged use of Human Growth Hormone. This hearing was a bad day for the sport of baseball. It's best pitcher of the last 30 years (with apologies to Greg Maddux), has been accused of using HGH to the point where the United States Congress decided that it had to step in. It appears from all of the rumored evidence and testimony that Clemens did it. His only saving grace is that McNamee is such a nefarious character that he makes Clemens seem likable.

Well, I stand corrected. Clemens has one other thing going for him about these hearings, and that is the fact that Congress itself looks so bad that any attention that originally might have been directed toward Clemens and McNamee should be directed at Congress itself. The committee Chair, Representative Henry Waxman, has basically called the hearing a mistake, the first thing he got right on this whole issue. The hearing was a complete MISTAKE, as Congress was only looking into something as petty as who is telling the truth, Clemens or McNamee. That is what this hearing turned into.

Admittedly, I did not watch or listen to the entire hearing live, but I did see a couple of non-consecutive hours as well as having seen, heard and read other parts from the hearing. With that caveat, I can safely say that this was a bad day for baseball, but even worse for Congress.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has jurisdiction to investigate any federal program and any matter with federal policy implications. I am not quite sure what federal policy regulation Roger Clemens could implicate, but apparently embarrasing baseball, Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee is now some type of federal policy. Now, I understand that baseball has an anti-trust exemption granted to it by Congress, and that at any time Congress could rescind that exemption, but that doesn't seem to be what is at play here. I believe that it was Congressman Brian Bilbray (if that is incorrect, my apologies and if someone can supply the correct person, I would appreciate it) who basically said that the committee had jurisdiction over national drug policy, and that the hearings into the drug policy of baseball was under the jurisdiction of the committee, but by canceling the appearances of Pettite, Knoblauch and others, the hearing became simply an investigation into an individual's drug use that was dangerously close to being (if not already) something the committee should not be involved. That would be a law enforcement issue, not an issue for congress. Nevertheless, he continued questioning.

Another issue that made Congress look foolish is that the hearing did not actually investigate anything about drug use in baseball, who supplied the steroids and HGH, who did Radomski and McNamee received the steroid and HGH from, are other current or former team trainers involved, or any other questions. The hearing became simply a challenge to determine who was lying, Clemens or McNamee. The Republicans on the Committee seemed to challenge McNamee and the Democrats seemed to only want to challenge Clemens. Since when did drug use in baseball become a party-line issue.

But as bad as Congress looked, baseball looks worse. Its best pitcher of our generation, and its best hitter of our generation (if you need to ask who this is, you shouldn't be reading this), are both tainted. For a sport that reveres its history as much as baseball does, to have two all time record setting greats (with about a gazillion MVPs and Cy Youngs between them) to be tainted this bad with allegations of cheating, it is going to take a lot of time for the sport to come out of the steroid era and to earn the respect that such a heretofore gentlemanly sport used to have.

Keep in mind, this doesn't even touch on the fact that baseball's most storied and cherished franchise has basically been cheating since at least 2001. I don't mean to assert that the team knew of all of the drugs taken by its individual players, nor do I mean to suggest that other teams weren't affected. But to have as many players implicated from the Yankees taints all of their recent success.

Bottom line - Really bad day for baseball.

On the same afternoon, Senator Arlen Spector, as ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, met with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to question Goodell on the issues surrounding the NFL's destruction of all of the tapes and notes supplied by the New England Patriots in response to the "Spygate" scandal, in which the Patriots were videotaping signals of the New York Jets coaches. All reports are that Spector was not satisfied with the answers provided by Goodell and that Spector may open upon an inquiry, and possible hearings into the NFL's investigations into the reports of the Patriots spying.

Bottom line - Bad day for football, and could get worse.

With regard to basketball, Indiana University basketball coach, Kelvin Sampson has been accused of inappropriate and/or excessive contact with recruits, mostly involving telephone calls. These accusations come while Sampson is on probation restricting his contact with recruits for violations while he was the coach and Oklahoma University for inappropriate and excessive contact with recruits, get this, INVOLVING TELEPHONE CALLS!!! Now IU is going to have to deal with this fallout, and they have already launched a three panel investigation with a report due within one week. What seems the most likely outcome is that Sampson will at least be suspended, and quite possibly even fired. And the fact that this has occurred at Indiana is even more ironic, since Bobby Knight was let go for any number of reasons and problems, none of which involved recruiting violations.

Bottom line - Bad day for basketball.

Also on this day, nobody talked about hockey. It is no longer one of the big 4. Whether the fourth sport is NASCAR or golf I will leave for other commentators to decide. But what we do know - it isn't hockey.

Bottom line - well no real bottom line. Hockey hasn't been relevant in a long, long time.