Super Bowl

It's an exciting day in the world of Performance Enhancing Drugs, as two bombs have been dropped on major athletes in major American sports. 

In Baseball, investigation into a clinic in Florida has once again linked everybody's favorite multimillionaire Alex Rodriguez, among others, with a clinic distributing PEDs. This is much more recent than his allegedly "isolated" use of them from 2001-2003. 

And, leading up to Super Bowl week, SI has printed a report suggesting that Ray Lewis took Deer-Antler Spray, of all things, to help his recovery from a triceps tear--a substance that includes a substance banned by the NFL. The Ravens have issued a denial that features this argument: "Ray Lewis has never tested positive for banned substances."

If that sounds familiar, that's because it is the same defense used by Lance Armstrong for 14 years prior to his confession to Oprah of rampant PED use.

Personally, I'm not surprised; I'm a cycling fan and to be one is to understand the effectiveness and elusiveness of cheating. Years of looking into it have left me with the conviction that PEDs are widespread and widely un-caught in many sports. It is simply too easy to get away with.

Ironically, if Ray Lewis were to be nailed for this, it would be roughly analagous to catching Al Capone for tax evasion--a punishable infraction, but only a small portion of what is a much larger web of drug use in the League. Not to say that Ray Lewis is in any way unusual in what he may or may not do, because I don't think he is.

I am guessing a lot of these anecdotes are going to be coming out this week, but here is one from Coach McCartney's son about their time as coaches' kids in the Michigan football program:

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/blog/bruce-feldman/21616259/bo-must-be-proud-of-these-guys

Matt Hinton over at CBS Sports has an interesting article up, looking at the Super Bowl starters on both teams by their star ratings out of high school.

Click it

With the Super Bowl coming up, I had a question for the board: what's your favorite sports time of the year?

For me, it's the kickoff of the college football season.  Weather's still beautiful, start of a new year--it's better than Christmas. Oh yeah, and all the girls coming back to Ann Arbor isn't a bad thing, either.

Summer is my least favorite.  I've never been big into watching baseball, and seeing how that's the only thing on all summer, it's a good thing I enjoy being outside.

So what sports time do you look forward to the most all year?

With the recent crack down of the sports streaming sites it might be difficult to find I imagine.  Does anyone know of any sites streaming the game?  I am going to miss the first half thanks to work and the crew following me will miss the whole thing unless we can find one.  Any help is greatly appreciated.

I've already tried all the (new) usual suspects.  (atdhenet.tv , channelsurfing.co, etc....)  We can't do p2p streams at work either.

Michigan, OSU, Tennessee, LSU, and ... Central Michigan (!):

http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1185168

Also in the state of Michigan, two under-the-radar recruits from Sterling Heights playing in the big game:

http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1185550