Gary Lambrecht, The Examiner
2007-12-31 08:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

With the new year mercifully beckoning, the world of competitive sports should resolve to take a dip in boiling water with a bar of soap and a wire brush — then give itself a nice scrubbing.

Soon, as in oh, by Jan. 2. It’s officially time to bid farewell to 2007, which will be forever known as the Year of the Cheater.

That way, for starters, we can block from our minds any hint of curiosity regarding that smeared, postseason college football event billed as the Music City Bowl.

The game that kickoffs off this afternoon at 4 in Nashville, Tenn., will pit the University of Kentucky against the Florida State Seminoles, who have been reduced to the Semi-Team. This is due to a little internal problem involving 36 suspended players, many of whom are involved in an academic cheating scandal.

I don’t mean to pile on the ‘Noles. Hey, they didn’t do anything a bunch of other entitled, semi-pro, student-athletes at some other institution of higher learning wouldn’t have at least thought about trying.

They just got caught.

By exposing itself this way and addressing the crisis, Florida State has served a weird, dual purpose. It has seized upon every true educator’s dream — a teaching moment. And it has brought fitting closure to one hell of a dirty year in the wide world of sports.

It’s been a dizzying ride in 2007, with scofflaws, dopers and fixers working furiously behind the scenes to rig and soil the games we love, or at least used to.

You know you’ve reached the tipping point when you start to feel jaded by the endless parade of denials, half-denials, appeals and mea culpas.

Starting last summer, the hypocrites on the playing field really got busy bludgeoning us.

A year after cyclist Floyd Landis became the first man not named Lance Armstrong to win the Tour de France in this century, Landis became the first victor in the 105-year history of the race to be stripped of his title for doping after testing positive for synthetic testosterone during the 2006 event.

But that merely was a warm-up.

Around the time the hammer was falling on Landis, the NBA had its integrity potentially bruised for eons. It was learned the FBI was investigating whether veteran referee Tim Donaghy had bet on professional basketball games over the previous two seasons, including games in which Donaghy had officiated.

League commissioner David Stern was as floored as the rest of us, and the investigation is ongoing. But Stern didn’t have to wait long for other deceivers to emerge and bring fresh attention their way.

There was New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, getting turned in by his former friend and assistant coach Eric Mangini, the head coach of the New York Jets, for illegally filming the Jets coaches’ defensive signals during the teams’ regular season-opener.

That has turned the Pats — steaming toward an unprecedented, 19-0 season — from the most admired pro football franchise to demonic symbols of what has gone wrong in sports.

But we’re not done — not even close. Track star Marion Jones, who graced the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney by winning five medals, admitted using illegal steroids while training. She has been stripped of her medals.

Then came the Mitchell Report, which shed more light and attached about 85 faces besides the disgraceful Barry Bonds to a steroid cancer that most baseball fans knew had been infesting the game for over a decade. The report’s most notable achievement was painting (future Hall of Fame?) pitcher Roger Clemens as a conniving bookend to Bonds.

Sure, the cheaters will always be among us, in all walks of life, even sports. Politicians will never totally corner the market. Remember, the Black Sox scandal is nearly 90 years old.

But the barrage of betrayals has left a layer of soot on the 2007 sports year that makes me pine for those innocent days of my youth, when you wondered if Gaylord Perry or Phil Niekro would get caught throwing a spitball.

For now, I think I must go watch a high school basketball game to get a whiff of pure competition again.

At the very least, I think I need a year-end bath.

You done with that brush?

Gary Lambrecht writes about the NFL, Major League Baseball and college sports. He can be reached at glambrecht@baltimoreexaminer.com.