In the words of the late Johnny Carson, This is some wild and crazy stuff.""
Lately the sports world has looked more like a soap opera than anything else, and I am just waiting for us all to find out that there is an evil twin who has caused the last earthquake that shook the town.
Some tragic stories have come out within the last few weeks, and even the last four months, that have left me scratching my head.
Take O.J. Simpson. The juice sure got loose here. We all know about Simpson's past, and to no one's surprise, O.J. was caught stealing football memorabilia from a hotel room in the Palms. However, the best part is that some of the memorabilia that he was stealing was his own.
If you haven't seen the video of good old O.J. getting the cuffs slapped on him, it is must-see TV. I am in no way saying that what he has done is in any way acceptable (he is a joke of a human being and deserves what is coming to him), but it's still comical to see him completely meltdown as loads of profanities and gibberish spew out of his 60-year-old mouth.
Nothing beats a cool glass of O.J., but I'll have to pass on this one. Simpson is now facing 10 felonies, including kidnapping, and could possibly spend life in jail.
But while O.J. is screaming about his game balls, something good actually happened: The largest steroid bust in the history of busts and/or steroids.
Within the last few days, the Drug Enforcement Administration made a steroid bust with enough juice to make WWE stars and Barry Bonds look like scrawny boys who haven't reached puberty yet.
According to ESPN, which is the ""all-knowing eye in the sky"" when it comes to everything sports, a four-day series of raids ended Sunday. During these raids, the DEA shut down 26 underground steroid labs and made more than 50 arrests across the country.
The illustrious DEA also identified 37 Chinese factories that supposedly supplied the raw materials for the labs. During the last 18 months, there have been 124 arrests in 27 states and a total of 56 closed labs. The DEA has seized $6.5 million and 532 pounds of raw steroid powder, with 308 of it coming within the last week.
Even if a name doesn't come out of this that is newsworthy, this is still a huge story. But it is also incredibly shocking to see how deep this really goes. We all know that steroids are prevalent in sports, ranging from high school to the professional level, but to see a bust this size - which in no way has ended the steroids ring that plagues sports today - is monumental.
The DEA is reporting it has a database of more than one thousand customers, so it could be only time before we do get a name, of any kind, to blow this whole thing so far up that it will take a year for anyone to talk about anything else.
These are just a few things to make headlines within the last week or so. However, there is a long laundry list of things that have happened in sports that are completely unacceptable: The ballad of Tim Donaghy, the NBA ref who not only bet on games, but determined the outcome for people he owed money to. Then there is the Michael Vick saga, as even now ESPN is showing ""The Vick Divide,"" where town members sit around and voice their opinion on everything that can be discussed about Vick.
Overall, it makes me sick to think that something as simple as sports has become so corrupt.
People like Simpson, Vick and Donaghy do more damage to their sports than good. Does anyone really remember how good O.J. was at football? No, and the same goes for anyone else.
As nice as it is to see steps being taken in the right direction as far as some things go, the steroid bust will hopefully shed more light on such a dark underbelly of society and will be looked back on as the beginning of the end.
But it seems that there will always be people like Simpson, Vick and Donaghy to take the headlines away from stories that really matter, and in the end, that is the real tragedy.
If you're feeling overwhelmed by the darkness covering the sports world, e-mail Nate at ncarey@dailycardinal.com.
