Cushing's real syndrome? Believing we're dopes
This week, the impossible happened. Just when you thought an athlete couldn't possibly get more self-absorbed, more ridiculous and less willing to take personal blame for his foibles, a man named Brian Cushing comes along.
Cushing is a star defensive player for the Houston Texans who was busted last year for flunking a drug test and subsequently suspended the first four games of this coming season. Since then he has articulated repeated excuses for why he was busted but this latest concoction is so good it deserves a special column.
|
|
| Cushing puts his team's credibility on the line with his outlandish excuse. (US Presswire) |
"I think that's the final diagnosis we came up with and a lot of doctors have supported why this has happened," said Bill Romanowski, er, sorry, I mean Cushing.
"The Overtrained Athlete Syndrome, you know, is basically where anytime you take a leave of absence, you kind of get a hormonal spike; not very high at all," Cushing said. "That's as far as I can go right now. I think every individual is different. I think every individual is genetically different. I had a unique situation where something like this occurred.
"We have, really, the science to back it up. It's taken months. It's really beyond what we ever thought and I think it's beyond the regular medical doctor. We've gotten in-depth and there's been a lot of money spent on the research and there's been a lot of interesting results that I think are going to help us."
Sounds all, like, sciency and stuff.
Overtrained Athlete Syndrome. Yes, Cushing really pulled the OAS card. Instead of a helmet, Cushing must wear a tinfoil hat.
Here's the best part.
Cushing has somehow conned the owner of the Texans, Bob McNair, into supporting this theory. McNair presented "facts" to the commissioner this week that he claims back Cushing's story.
"I had a meeting with the league's medical staff and presented additional medical information about Brian Cushing," McNair said in a statement. "The doctors will review the information and we'll hear from them at a later date."
Other defenses McNair and Cushing are considering:
• "If the steroid doesn't fit, you must acquit."
• "Brian has TMS: Tony Mandarich Syndrome."
While at the NFL offices, McNair wore his Q-ray bracelet, promised Goodell he had a Nigerian cousin who would front $10 million with no strings attached and Bernie Madoff was on line one.
One day an NFL player is going to inject so many performance enhancing drugs into his system he'll transform into this and some idiot will make an excuse for him.
It's one thing for Cushing to present this quackery. It's another for an NFL owner to walk into Goodell's office with a straight face and back what is clearly junk science at best or a flat-out lie at worst.
Overtrained Athlete Syndrome is voodoo. The pyramid scheme looks at this so-called manifestation and says: "I'm impressed."
The idea that Cushing's hormonal spike was due to him reducing his intense workout schedule is asinine. And deep down McNair must know this. He's a smart man. He has to understand, in his heart, Cushing isn't telling the truth and the science is bunk. But McNair is so desperate to keep Cushing on the field he'll believe anything Cushing and his people say.
"It means a lot," Cushing said of McNair's support. "That's the kind of owner you really want to play for. I've noticed and learned in these last couple months that I'm in the perfect situation with the owner and just an organization like this. I couldn't be playing anywhere better in the world that supports me like this. He's just backed me 100 percent in everything. He's believed me since Day 1 and that's meant a lot to me. I think everyone in this organization has. They know the kind of worker I am, the kind of player. They take my trust and that means the world to me."
This means McNair is now officially an accomplice in this scam and when Goodell laughs them both out of the room -- and eventually he will -- McNair will look just as silly as Cushing does.
Could there be overtraining syndrome? It's possible. It's also possible my ass might be launched into lunar orbit atop a really big rocket.
We've seen this steroid movie before. Barry Bonds said he took flaxseed oil (Over Flaxseed Syndrome?). Mark McGwire for years said he never took steroids then admitted he did. Floyd Landis initially claimed his elevated levels of testosterone were naturally created then admitted he made the whole story up. In the past we've been asked by steroid fakes and phonies to trust them only to be badly burned, so pardon me if I'm not ready to be burned twice by this particular fake and phony.
Goodell can't let this stand because doing so would open up a floodgate of dog-ate-my-homework excuses for drug cheats. There would be the Undertrained Athlete Syndrome, the Barely Trained Athlete Syndrome, the Too Much Texting Syndrome, the Too Much Beer Syndrome, the Not Enough Beer Syndrome, the Tequila Sunrise Syndrome. On and on it would go.
Cushing claims he has a bevy of scientific evidence to back up his claims yet he won't release any of it. When he describes this syndrome he doesn't give any specific details. Cushing just repeats nonsense and gobbledygook and uses vast generalizations that can't be disproved.
Still Cushing knows there are suckers who'll believe him.
In fact he has already hooked one trout: the owner.
And he should know better.
