Cheating in Sports

I looked back at my old posts and thought that I already wrote about this.  Apparently I haven't.  Even if I had, it wouldn't be the first time I repeated something.  I noticed I wrote a lot about Saratoga last summer, as well as the days flying, and food.  Those topics sound like something I would talk about over and over and over and over again.  Now on to the serious topic.  I used to be a very big fan of Alex Rodriguez.  Once I found out he took steroids, I lost all respect for him.  There are so many people that have taken steroids and other performance enhancing drugs so that they can play better than the other athletes in their sport.  Lance Armstrong won 7 Tour de France's in a row because he cheated.  Apparently many other bikers cheated, too.  They say it was a level playing field.  Either way, who cares?  You are a huge role model to so many people.  What do we tell students when they ask about him?  "It's okay.  Even though he cheated, he still does wonderful things with his Livestrong foundation that raises cancer awareness.  We can overlook the fact that he cheated to win."  No!  I am not taking away from that foundation.  He has done amazing things with cancer awareness and will continue to do so.  However, I can't get past the cheating that he did.  There are many athletes out there that do the right thing.  However, there are so many athletes that cheat, commit crimes, and are generally not nice people and they overshadow the athletes that do great things outside of their sport.  As a huge sports fan, it really aggravates me because whether they like it or not, these athletes are role models.  I have so many students that want to be professional athletes when they grow up.  They are living in a time where they might feel like it's okay to take drugs to play better because everyone else is doing it.  It's not okay to cheat at all!  I love seeing records broken.  Unfortunately, every time a record is broken, people will ask if it was legit or not.  It's unfair to everyone.  Why can't you just play your sport for the love of the game and to see how well you can do legally?  Instead, it's all about drugs and making more money because the millions you make apparently isn't enough.  All these athletes want more and more money each year.  It's sickening because so many people have very little, yet can still get by.  Stop taking performance enhancing drugs and stop asking for more money!  Play your sport because you want to be a role model and you love to do it.