Monthly Archives: December 2013

Summing The Sports Up

From the beginning of this semester till now, we all have come a long way into the world of blogging. When I began blogging about controversies in sports, I expected to simply be speaking about teams or individuals that were cheated from a victory. However, I was caught off guard by all the controversies that are gone unnoticed. There are things that are going on at all levels of sports – high school, college, and professional. While the media focuses on major headlines such as the “Black Sox” scandal and Sandusky scandal, we have many discrepancies in sporting events such as the usage of steroids in college football and the ages of Olympic participants.

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Since then, the use of legal supplements by athletes across the ages in a variety of sports and competitions is well documented, right up to the first official ban on performance enhancing drugs by the International Federation of Amateur Athletes in 1928. The question is whether or not sports will become “moral,” eliminating any sort of advantages. In my eyes, I do not feel that this will happen in the near-future, but it will occur in the long run. Although drug testing always lags behind the latest trend in banned substances, the authorities will eventually catch up with athletes who dope, sometimes years down the track. This is because there are many legal substances and techniques that also push the boundaries, they just don’t happen to be on the banned list.

Playing devil’s advocate, it is a challenge for all athletes is maintaining peak physical performance in the face of incredible physiological stress. Because of this, some experts believe that some of the restricted substances should be legalised in order to maintain the health of athletes and protect them from injury. It’s a fair argument in some respects, but cheating to maintain athletic success is immoral. Ten passion blog posts later, the same question exists: What punishment should athletes who use illegal substances receive?