Professional Athletes who Cheat in Sports

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Professional athletes are role models to the American children across the Nation. Professional athletes must follow ethical standards to play fairly in their sport. This means that players must compete without the assistance of performance enhancing drugs such as steroids (Tynes, 2006). Yet, professional athletes choose to cheat by taking illegal substances, which results in the death of some players and a wide variety of health problems. The Federal Government realized that the use of anabolic steroids is a form of cheating and defrauds the players and fans of “real” competition. As a result, for the concern of the athletes’ health and concern for the ethical standards of the game played, the Anabolic Steroid Act of 1990 (ASCA) was enacted (Tynes, 2006). The ASCA was passed to help the growing concerns of the wide spread of harmful substances that could cause long- term effects (Tynes, 2006). The ASCA made it illegal to take an unapproved substance while playing a professional sport.

This research paper will examine professional athletes who participated in the major leagues and Olympic Games who used steroids to defraud the Major Leagues Business and Olympic Associations to gain fame and fortune. The paper will examine the BALCO scandal (CNN.com, 2014), where many professional athletes admitted to taking steroids to improve physical sports performance. The BALCO scandal "outs" players from the American National sports leagues to Olympic competitive sports. A cover up of drug use led to not just a few but many players who chose to use steroids to improve their game. The case went to the courts and left many players to tell the ugly truth about other professional players. In some cases, the players denied responsibility and ...

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...BILITY OF THE LEAGUES?. Marquette Sports Law Review, 17(2), 651-678.

Thompson, T. (2007) Giambi admits he took steroids. DailyNews. New York.

Tynes, J. (2006) Performance Enhancing Substances: Effects, Regulations,and the Pervasive Efforts to Control Doping in Major Leagues. Journal of Legal Medicine. 27:493-509.

Unknown Author (2014) Barry Bonds convicted of obstruction of justice in performance-enhancing-drugs case. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles.

USAToday (2007) BALCO Investigation Timeline. USA TODAY SPORTS ONLINE NEWSPAPER. Retrieved from: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/balco-timeline.htm

USAToday (2007) Mitchell Report Timeline. USA TODAY SPORTS ONLINE NEWSPAPER. Retrieved from: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2007-12-13-mitchell-report-timeline_N.htm

Wikipedia (2014) BALCO Scandal. Retrieved from Wikipedia.com on March 14, 2014.

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