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Friday, March 2, 2007
Steroids raid casts wide net
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Just like that, you have a syringe threatening to burst the bubble of the feel-good story that was Gary Matthews Jr. during last baseball season.
Then you have Richard A. Rydze, a respected team doctor for the Pittsburgh Steelers, telling SI.com that his purchases of drugs from a shady Internet pharmacy were for elderly patients, not for overly ambitious football players.
You also have SI.com saying Evander Holyfield (or shall we say Evan Fields?) joined Matthews in this new craze of getting steroids online.
Jose Canseco’s name surfaced again this week. So did that of Jason Grimsley, noted more for juicing than pitching.
Plus, to hear the Times Union of Albany, N.Y., tell it, the feds have discovered that performance-enhancing drugs may have been fraudulently prescribed by Internet pharmacies to everybody from current and past NFL and baseball players to folks in colleges and high schools.
Even a former Mr. Olympia champion has been cited in the probe.
Thus the question: Are many of these folks guilty regarding the use, purchase or sale of performance-enhancing drugs, or are most of them innocent? As for the answer, it doesn’t matter. Whether it’s Matthews, Rydze, Canseco, Grimsley, Holyfield or Fields, the names will keep coming, because this isn’t a temporary thing.
This is a forever thing.
When I say “this,” I’m referring to the fact that athletes and their handlers have sought to find an edge forever. Either that, or they’ve been accused of doing as much forever. All you need to know is that more than a few Greeks consumed sheep’s testicles in the shadows with hopes of increasing their testosterone levels before the ancient Olympic Games.
During the modern Olympic Games, U.S. marathoner Thomas Hicks nearly died in 1904 after he sprinted to a gold medal. Down the stretch, he consumed large quantities of strychnine (later banned from the Games) and brandy (not exactly the same as guzzling Gatorade).
Plus, there were those eras when amphetamines became the primary elixir in sports. Baseball players called them “greenies,” and they were as prevalent in the middle of clubhouses as bubblegum and chewing tobacco.
How about Mark McGwire and his fraudulent muscles? Courtesy of his non-responsive testimony before Congress, he suggested that his Popeye arms came from something stronger than the combination of andro and spinach.
Later, cyclist Floyd Landis tested positive for an elevated testosterone level, which means the primary reason he was zipping around so quickly wasn’t because of a good tailwind.
That’s why, when it comes to the use of anabolic steroids, designer steroids, human growth hormone (HGH) or whatever else is rattling around the minds of scientists during this millennium, you have the following truth for the ages: Anybody who does anything in sports at any level and on any part of the earth is a suspect.
Is that fair?
No.
Is that just the way it is?
Uh-huh. So every day, you’ll have somebody new sharing the light of suspicion with Barry Bonds. That somebody for the moment is Holyfield, Fields or whoever we’re talking about here.
According to a report this week on SI.com, law enforcement documents show that the former boxing four-time heavyweight champion of the world used “Evan Fields” as an alias. That report says Fields has the same birth date as Holyfield (Oct. 19, 1962), and that Fields has nearly the same address in Fayette County and exactly the same telephone number as Holyfield.
In fact, when those with SI.com dialed the number listed for Fields, they said Holyfield answered.
Why is this important? Well, according to that report, Fields was involved with one of those Internet pharmacies that have the feds ready to put folks in the slammer.
Holyfield said he never has taken steroids and that this controversy has nothing to do with him. Yes, it does. He’s an athlete, and if you’re an athlete in today’s climate of performance-enhancing drugs, you are guilty until proven innocent.
Permalink | | Categories: Braves / MLB, Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Mark Bradley’s Friday Fallout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Every Friday through the regular season, Mark looks at who’s up, who’s down and what you should be watching as the countdown continues to the Final Four in Atlanta.
THE TOP SEEDS
If the season ended today, here’s what the top four seeds in each region should look like:
• SAN ANTONIO
1: Ohio State
2: Florida
3: Memphis
4: Virginia Tech
• SAN JOSE
1: UCLA
2: Texas A&M
3: Georgetown
4: Nevada
• EAST RUTHERFORD
1: North Carolina
2: Pittsburgh
3: Washington St.
4: UNLV
• ST. LOUIS
1: Kansas
2: Wisconsin
3: Southern Illinois
4: Maryland
RISING: Kansas
Kansas has won seven in a row, can win the Big 12 outright by beating Texas on Saturday and looks more like a Final Four team with every week. Still, having been upset by the Bucknell Bison and the Bradley Braves in the past two NCAAs, the Jayhawks want no part of any BB — the Butler Bulldogs, say — this time.
FALLING: Florida
Is it boredom? Is it the pressure that comes from defending a title? Whatever the explanation, Florida needs to correct something posthaste. The Gators have lost three of four, and to secure the No. 1 NCAA seed that once seemed its manifest destiny, Florida now needs to win the SEC tournament.
WHAT WE’RE WATCHING
• Colonial Athletic Association championship game, 7 p.m. Monday, ESPN
Some project the CAA getting three NCAA berths, which lessens the stakes a bit. Still, it’s worth recalling that George Mason, which reached the Final Four last season, needed to rally to beat Georgia State in the CAA quarterfinals.
MID-MAJOR OF THE WEEK: Gonzaga
Gonzaga is the most famous mid-major going, and now the Bulldogs offer a case study in the perils of being a mid-major. They played a tough nonconference schedule and won the West Coast regular-season title but still need to win the conference tournament. An RPI of 71 doesn’t buy NCAA at-large passage.
FUN WITH NUMBERS
Three, according to the Associated Press, is the number of live chickens allegedly thrown on the court by Kansas State students before the Feb. 19 home game against Kansas. (K-State equates a chicken with a Jayhawk.) PETA protested, and now K-State has banned the chicken ritual. FYI: Kansas won the game 71-62.
NAMES TO KNOW
• Hofstra’s Loren Stokes and Antoine Agudio
Guards Loren Stokes and Antoine Agudio of Hofstra are the only teammates in Division I averaging 20 points apiece. The Pride, 22-8, probably need to reach the Colonial tournament final to have an at-large NCAA chance, and what opponent likely looms in the quarterfinals? Why, it’s George Mason.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley
Instant validation arrives for Jackets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It was as close to an elimination game as can be played on March 1. Georgia Tech entered with a losing conference record and a middling RPI of 52, meaning it needed to do something big in a hurry. How nice of North Carolina to arrive when it did.
A lot of folks believe the Tar Heels will win the national championship one month hence, but there was only one championship-level performance authored at Alexander Memorial Coliseum, and it wasn’t by the men in baby blue. It was by the team that has mostly been a road horror, the team that threw back a seven-point lead in the final three minutes in Charlottesville five days earlier. It was by the team from which, at least through the last vestiges of February, not much had been heard.
Everything changed Thursday night. Tech played the game we’d all awaited, the sort of game that augurs handsomely not just for its chance to make the Big Dance but for its capacity to linger long once there. Any team that can make regal Carolina look overmatched — and for long stretches that’s what the Jackets did — is an outfit capable of winning three or four games in the only tournament that matters.
“We’re playing as well as anybody out there,” said Paul Hewitt, who’d said much the same thing before Tech’s run to the 2004 Final Four.
“We’re a good team right now,” said Javaris Crittenton, who had 13 points and 11 assists, “and we’re on the verge of being a great team.”
Everything that hadn’t happened for the season’s first 3 1/2 months arrived with a flourish of trumpets this night. Thaddeus Young was the best player on a court overrun with big-time players. Crittenton flitted through the amateurish defense of the Carolina backcourt. Anthony Morrow was the 3-point complement to Ra’Sean Dickey underneath. And yes, since you asked, Hewitt outcoached Roy Williams all ends up.
Maybe in the long run it wouldn’t have mattered, but Ol’ Roy extended the ol’ hand of kindness by pulling his starting five after the Heels had seized an early lead. Working against a substandard complement was the opening Young, who had missed three shots and made two turnovers already, needed. By the time Carolina’s main men could return, Young had scored 10 points in five possessions and the Jackets had a seven-point lead.
And then all the Jackets got going, and when all the Jackets get going they’re a sight to behold. Carolina, which won the 2005 NCAA title despite playing only occasional defense, was exposed as similarly flimsy. Tech scored on 20 of 25 trips over 14 breathtaking minutes, prompting Ol’ Roy to say: “Every time I looked up, they were making shots and we weren’t there.”
Tech led by 14 in the first half and by 14 again in the second, and for long moments it seemed the Jackets would win in a breeze. But the Jackets, as we know, never do anything the easy way — it’s how they came to have a losing conference record and an RPI of 52 in the first place — and Carolina, as we know, always makes a run. (Dean Smith is still storing up timeouts for that express purpose.) And when finally it came, the Heels’ surge forced Tech to show the sort of poise it hadn’t five days earlier.
The Heels drew within five, then four. Crittenton ran the shot clock down to eight seconds before drawing a foul from Brandan Wright. He made one free throw. Then Wayne Ellington missed from the perimeter and Mario West rebounded, and with 55 seconds left the erstwhile walk-on hit the free throws that called to mind the words of a songwriter of some note: It’s all over now, baby blue.
And for this night it was. Surely Carolina will be heard from again (though the Heels might want to guard somebody sometime soon). But so will Tech, which is going to the NCAA tournament for sure, going with the capability of staying a nice long while.
Permalink | Comments (26) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
