The Weight of Justice

A week from now, half of the nation will be cooking, grilling and frying every kind of food you can imagine.  They’ll be gathering-up extra chairs, re-arranging furniture, and making room for all the extra company that will be flowing in at show-time.

The early discussions around the table will begin around 3pm. They’ll talk it, analyze it, and decide it to death. They’ll talk about the pro’s and the con’s, what the statistic’s and the experts say will happen; and all of that will be turned and twisted every way imaginable to soak-up air-time until the big event.

The only problem I’m going to have with all those pre-game/pre-show conversations, is that the main topic won’t necessarily be about the business at hand. One of the biggest money makers of the entire year will instead be a discussion about cheaters. The possibility of blackened integrity and loss of trust. The hovering questions will float above like word thoughts in a balloon, begging to know, are the two best teams really playing each other this year; will the real “winner” be the winner in the end?

I watch the Super Bowl every year, no matter what two teams make it to the big competition; I watch it just like I watch the World Series in baseball. I always hope I have a team I like in the running, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. But if I don’t, of the two available, I pick out who I would like to see win that title the most, and that’s who I cheer on.

This year it’s going to be different because of what has happened; it’s broken my spirit, changed my outlook, and made me once again question why all good things simple and real cannot remain so without the interference of factors designed to change the face of reality for all.

Some footballs were deflated in one of the last playoff games of the season. The team accused of possibly having part in that cheating fiasco won that game; in points. There are those who say the score was so lopsided, the other team didn’t have a chance to win regardless; but is that really the point? Should the fact they “would have won anyway” be the way we look at this transgression?

I, as an avid sports fan, am sick and tired of supposedly responsible, very well-paid, and intelligent men of sports who cannot understand that the rules, whatever they may be, are in place for a reason, for everyone. I’m sick of cheaters, dopers, and liars. And I’m especially sick of these horrible leaders, exemplifying these traits to up and coming sports players participating in tee-ball, pee-wee football, and any other organized sport. You crush my dreams of hero’s every time you fall down, and you create doubts and bad thoughts in the eyes of the little ones watching you, looking-up to you.

Deflate those egos – leave the rules intact. Because this I believe: a cheater never really wins, and a real winner will never cheat.