What's done is done
Jones cheated, lied, cried and confessed, but it doesn't make sense to wipe away her records and medals as though she doesn't exist
I'm all for the continued flushing of Marion Jones' reputation. She cheated, and lied about it. Because of her cheating, she had the success, the glory, the riches. And now, having been forced to admit using steroids, she is shamed and broke. Her Olympic medals have been returned and she's going to prison.
Are you watching, kids?
That said, this headline on ESPN.com bugged me: ''IOC Officials Move to Erase All References to Jones.''
OK, hold on a minute. You cannot just take a big eraser and wipe Jones away, as if she never existed. She did. Her races did. Someone was running down her lane, unless they're planning to go over all the videos and airbrush her out.
The problem isn't in the condemnation, but in the attempt to just go back in time and pluck things out. Jones was there, at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. You watched her, and someone can't just remove her from your memories.
And the International Olympic Committee is tangling itself up in the impossible by trying to rewrite history.
Jones and Barry Bonds have always had a connection in this steroid mess as two of the most successful athletes, both customers of BALCO, the designer steroid lab. Now, in light of Jones' confession, something else stands out about Bonds.
If Bonds eventually is busted for using steroids, too, is forced to acknowledge it, is seen crying on the steps in front of a federal courthouse the way Jones was last week, then what?
Shame, disgrace, prison, sure. But if the IOC is going to try to re-invent history, then is baseball commissioner Bud Selig going to do it, too?
If you can wipe Marion Jones away from history with a giant eraser, than can you wipe away Bonds' home run record, too?
No, you can't. They want Jones' relay teammates to return their bronze medals. Would baseball then want the San Francisco Giants to return their pennant, Bonds' teammates to return cash bonuses?
The problem is these events didn't happen on an island. They're all tangled up. There are too many things.
One of Jones' relay mates, Passion Richardson, told the CBS Early Show Wednesday that ''I competed fairly, and I should not have to suffer the consequences for someone else's bad decisions and choices.''
But USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth said that the relay was tainted because a cheater was on the team. The bronze medal should go to the fourth-place team.
And if rules are followed, and they give Jones' 100-meter gold to the silver medalist, then it will go to Katerina Thanou, who was suspended for two years for ducking steroid tests surrounding the 2004 Olympics. Remember she couldn't make it because of a (faked) motorcycle accident?
It's sort of like Floyd Landis' Tour de France title, taken away after he was caught doping. You look down the line of the people who finished just behind him, and if you want to find someone who hasn't been tainted by a doping allegation, bust or suspension, then you're going to have to go deep down in the standings to find first-through-third-place finishers.
I'm not downplaying how serious steroid use is. Hardly. You look at football players -- Do you really think those NFL players get to 350 pounds naturally? -- and they show college players what they have to look like, and they show high school kids, and so on. So this is a real health issue for our kids, and that's why so many states are requiring high school steroid testing now.
But it all happened, and there is no giant eraser for our memories. They can't recapture the past from the steroid cheats.
If Bonds falls, then Selig can't possibly just pretend all those homers were never hit. The games were played. Bonds was in them. Runs were scored when he hit the ball out of the park.
If these games didn't happen, then I want my money back.
Look, just worry about the future now, and trying to determine whether it will ever be possible to trust athletes and sports again. We've heard forever that the drug cheats will always stay one step ahead of drug-testing science.
And maybe that's true. But law enforcement agencies around the world are hunting these cheats down. Nobody busted BALCO customers for failing tests. But the feds tracked them down.
We've seen several big steroid-distributor busts around the country lately, and lots of athletes are going down, and about to go down. And the tests are catching some athletes, too.
In bicycling, a sport that is almost ruined by steroid use, there's a move among the athletes to self- police, to save their sport. Every day, every week, another athlete goes down. Landis is in the news. Jones is going to be there for a while.
At some point, maybe we'll see a bottoming-out. Maybe the steroid cheats will be on the run.
And they'll do it just a little slower.