Sports Montage

…terrible, I know.

Football has had a rough couple of days, has it not? In the time it takes wunderkind Calvin Johnson to catch a poorly thrown MarthaBrady Quinn post route, the NFL world has not one, but two Orlando “Cleveland” Browns to the collective eye. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Pacman Jones was pulling the “letting it rain” equivalent of Hurricane Andrew on a Las Vegas strip club, it also came out today that the venerable, esteemed Pittsburgh Steelers might be embroiled in the steroid outrage of the..day, namely the raid of a Jupiter, Florida “rejuvenation clinic”.

Every Chinese Buffet’s worst nightmare

To summarize it for those of us who continued reading and didn’t click on the link, essentially in addition to the no doubt many, many track, baseball, and cycling athletes who are using the “rejuvenation services” (because other sports don’t have steroid problems..), it is possible and even somewhat likely that some of our favorite Steelers from backup punter Mike “Roseanne” Barr to Quality Control Defensive Coordinator “Crazy” Lou Spanos have been all juiced up. Shocking, huh?

Oh God, what’s my girlfriend’s name again? Mulva?

What makes this most interesting - apart from slowly destroying the ridiculous myth as sport’s most violent and strength-dependent major sport as being clean - is that this is the second time the Steelers have been majorly involved in a systemic and organized steroid scandal. For those of us whose compulsive playing of Tetrinet have ruined all semblances of memory, the Steel Curtain-era Steelers have fallen in record numbers (highlighted by the ridiculously tragic Mike Webster story), no doubt in some part due to a team-wide reliance on anabolic steroids.

Richard Rydze, the team physician in question, of course said all the right things in his denial..mostly that the Steelers were never involved, and that the young (read: old) citizens of the Steel City from Aspinwall to Zelienople were using those ‘roids to get their sassy selves to Bingo and to yell at their grandsons for never calling (sorry Grandma!).

I’ll call tomorrow, I swear!

And let’s face it, based on the play of the Steelers this year, I’m inclined to believe it. On the other hand, it’s also conceivable that the other teams were simply on stronger steroids, which would finally explain to me why so many teams try to sign washed up sprinters to become never been wide receivers. Hey Justin Gatlin, the Steelers need a slot receiver! And uh, bring your entourage too, we’re not going to see Richard for awhile..

Regardless, this is the last thing the NFL needs. It’s bad enough that the NFL has essentially an All-Star team of criminals committing their lifetime achievement equivalents of “Purple Rain” or “Nevermind” on a seemingly weekly basis, but they’re doing it in the most bizarrely public (PacMan Jones, Tank Johnson) and hot-button (this story) way possible. And has anyone seen Roger Goddell lately? I get the feeling that he’s on Paul Tagliabue’s back porch, crying and sucking on his thumb whilst in the fetal position. Also, it’s raining.

Why do I get the feeling that no matter how much coke the writers of “Playmakers” could have possibly done, they would never would have come up with a weeks worth of stories quite like this past week. But hey, we’re just moving day by day ever closer to “The Running Man” and well, that would be pretty damn sweet, wouldn’t it?