by calebweinstein
In recent years, the noble world of public sports has been beset with scandal after scandal. Chronic brain damage, athletes performing unsavory deeds, and the ever-present specter of doping hang around this industry like a miasmic cloud, choking away the pristine and slick family-friendly imaging that it has.
Advances in pharmaceuticals and the development of them outpaces drug testing, and the protocols for randomized drug testing seem to be circumvented quite frequently. It’s practically an open secret that all your favorite players are on some form of drug or another.
This situation is in dire need of a remedy, and the best way to do this is to pull aside all illusions and dispel all myths surrounding the world of professional sports. When athletes had their brains turned into tapioca pudding via repeated head trauma, it was aired publicly and then not spoken of again, however, doping is different. With doping, a high athlete will gain a significant advantage over a clean one, and it’s “not fair” to the players to be forced against chemically augmented opponents. Yes, sure, they’ll get three million dollars even if they lose, but let’s pretend that this sort of shit matters.
The solution I propose is an elegant and simple means of dispelling all unfair doping scandals: legalize everything. Now, no player has a chemical advantage; everyone would be high as a kite on bath salts and meth. This would create high-paying and high-demand jobs in the pharmaceutical industry, introduce a new caste of celebrity chemists who cater to football teams, and most importantly, make everyone on the field move twice as fast. Because I know what people watching sports want. It’s like NASCAR: you’re here to see the crashes and piles of meat. If people cared then all the brain damage and drug abuse would’ve left all the major leagues dissolved in a few minutes.
Now, an athlete is a pile of meat that twitches for the amusement of the bloodstained masses, a commodity to be bought and sold and observed. One may call me inhumane, but there are huge lines of people who wish to hurl away their humanity in favor of being paid and famous for throwing a rubber ball across a field. If they were told that they would be forced to become high and eventually battered into a vegetative state, that is more honest and fairer than the deceitful nature of current contracts, the implication that show business is clean or fair.
It is time we dispelled all lies in our professional sports. It is time we embraced the debauchery of watching young men destroy their bodies and minds for our enjoyment, by merely publicizing and making a spectacle of what already happens in the dark.
It is time we legalized all drugs in professional sports.
Categories: caleb weinstein, opinion, september 13, vol 26