Brian Cushing Suspended 4 Games

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by ethat001

You guys are all wrong.

BRIAN CUSHING IS THE SMARTEST GUY IN THE WORLD.

I encourage EVERY young athlete to do drugs. Get your hands on the best steroids money can buy. It CLEARLY pays off. In baseball, football, wherever. Just try not to get caught UNTIL you've played for a while and gotten paid.

In the end - a mediocre young athlete can bust his butt off and fail -- and bag groceries at Safeway. OR - he could use steroids and get drafted, get millions of dollars and even get DROY. What happens if you get caught? You get to keep your awards, keep your MILLIONS, and you even get one month more vacation in September. Four game suspension is nothing, and if anything it encourages more people to do it. Why wouldn't a player like Justin Tryon or Rob Jackson start taking steroids? If they don't make the team their lives are marginal if not over. And the penalty is obviously small -- no one apparently cares.

I think there are two parties at fault:
1) Sports leagues (& Congress) -- harsher penalties for crimes such as this. He should've lost his DROY and probably should have been suspended the season since he was already suspected of prior drug use.

2) Fans - including ourselves. We still buy tickets to watch ARod, Bonds.. And Houston fans will still cheer Cushing by next year when he gets that interception for a touchdown...


[disclaimer: i actually do not think anyone should do steroids. i'm just pointing out that given the current regulations and punishments, it makes financial sense to do so because it is not really punished]

Too late to make the big time first round contract bucks.

This really isn't the NFL's problem. If anything, it suggests that it's testing system, which caught Cushing, is about as effective as any system out there. So they suspended him, because they caught him.

If he's a habitual user, and I'm not saying he is or isn't, then the big story here is that they NCAA's testing system blows, or more likely, it's not actually a random system. The Texans were perfectly justified taking Cushing where they did and giving him all that money, because he wasn't just a one year wonder breakout player who slipped through the cracks one year, but rather, he was a four year player, and nearly a three year starter at USC who never once got caught in college, where there is actually plenty of interest around keeping student athletes away from drugs.

I don't give a crap what professional athletes put in their bodies. If this is your way of making a living, and you can comply with the policies of your league, I don't care if a guy needs eighteen pills and three cortizone shots (cortizone is an anabolic steroid) to get through the day. If that's what makes him perform his best, then he should do it. If he breaks an existing rule, then he takes his suspension like a man. Don't do it again. More specifically, don't get caught.

To recap: NCAA testing, woefully inadequate. NFL testing, excellent. I don't know if Cushing gets my vote for DROY over Orakpo or Matthews (specifically Matthews), but the whole idea of a revote is moronic. And good for the football writers for not making like the baseball writers moral majority. Again, I don't know if Cushing's on field play made him the best rookie, but apparently, those with a vote did feel that way, so that conversation should have been over at that point.