After a brief hiatus, I am back here weekly to bring together this week's news relevant and worth reading for athletes. This week we are going into performance-enhancing drugs, potential legal woes facing the BCS, and imaginary bidding wars created by a baseball agent.
Hockey Night in Europe: Investigators Say Cherepanov Was Doping [CORRECTION and UPDATE]
Performance-enhancing drugs are not banned merely because of their unnatural ability to improve a player’s performance, but also because they are dangerous to the human body. This hockey phenom had a prosperous career in his future and now destroyed it to get an edge. I’m not going to get all preachy and go into a long lecture about the dangers of using PEDs, you’ve heard all those. Just don’t be dumb and ruin your lives. All these stories about players who experienced negative side effects aren’t just a coincidence, but the absolute result.
Utah attorney general says BCS may violate antitrust laws
This story is an early and budding chapter addition to the woes of the BCS. In recent years the BCS has taken considerable heat from countless college football analysts, coaches, fans, and even recently from President Elect, Barack Obama. However, all of these examples represent people offering their opinions. Enter Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. He is now in the process of bringing the law, and more specifically antitrust law, into the debate. He is only just researching the Sherman Antitrust Law, but it will be interesting to see if anything further comes from this and the effect it will have on the BCS.
Sources: Giants can't afford Manny
Baseball super-agent, Scott Boras, is once again being criticized by many for his chosen tactics in representing his clients. It is also becoming evident that many baseball executives can no longer trust him or are willing to work with him. He is now being accused of falsely stating that the San Francisco Giants are serious contenders in the Manny Ramirez sweepstakes. These accusations of his fraudulent declarations stem from the “proposed numbers” he has thrown out there and the belief of many high-level baseball executives that they are not economically feasible. Creating bidding wars between teams interested in a player is a tactic that has been used for years by agents to increase the demand for their clients. However, Boras has seemingly taken this to the next level by creating bidding wars between teams that are NOT interested in a player. He has been accused of doing this in the past and it seems that baseball execs are keen to his motives.
As always, this blog is for you guys, so any questions or comments you can reach me at tim@accessathletes.com and I hope you enjoyed the BCS National Championship Game (even though I needed a Sooner win for my college football pool).
