You can sift through the dug scandals and we still won't be able to find all the culprits, and they're plentiful. To put it simply, there are two kinds of competitors out there: The kind that wants to win, regardless of money and they'll do whatever it takes. The other kind wants to win because there is a ton of money on the line and they see it as a business.

Ob course, there is the other kind of athlete, the competitor who loves to compete and won't cheat. They love their sport and the purity of competition and the training involved because that's the way it's supposed to be. But those numbers aren't talked about much anymore.

The people in those stories pop up now and then to warm the heart and remind us that they still exist-and they do. There are many athletes that compete for the love of sport, wanting to win badly but accept their fate on the straight and narrow. And with the truckloads of cash out there that team owners say they don't have, it's becoming more the goal than living the life as a clean competitor and what it all means to be a top athlete.

Professional sports are huge business in this day and age, but we already knew that. Throw in a dash of pressure, a pinch of the fear of a career ending injury, a lump of scientific advances and you've got a mess-souffle.

Every athlete seeks an edge, there's nothing wrong with that. But like some movies of today that go for the easy mark with shock and awe, as opposed to the real psychological thrillers of the "old days," too many athletes also, ignore the psychological capabilities and take the easy way out today.

And for those sympathetic to athletes caught with their needles exposed, it's cheating any way you slice it. You take two athletes with comparable build, weight and height, put them on the same exact work regiment and equipment, give them the same exact diet but feed one steroids and keep one clean, who do you think is going to get bigger and stronger? This is why it's cheating.

Are the ones who are adamantly against performance-enhanced drugs old fashioned? Maybe. But there's nothing wrong with that either.

Earlier this month, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a senate hearing that "The status quo is not acceptable." Pressure from politicians is fine if they're sincere about following through. And it appears to have already sprouted results with the players representative, Donald Fehr saying, "You have to be able to look at things again as current situations change."

But how do we, as a society, get the players to change their way of thinking? Better yet, how do we get society to change its way of thinking?

The problem of cheating goes deeper than popping a few muscle-enhancing pills. We live in a get-it-any-way-you-can society. Just get to the top. It shows in our court system with this sue-happy society we now live.

People seem to want to just take whatever they can get from the other guy. And if they can get ahead any way they can, they'll do that too. Consequences be damned.

Ob course, insecurity plays a big part in competition. You ever hear of the saying that the bigger a guy is the more insecure he is? If you've ever hung around a gym, especially one with serious weightlifters, you know it's true.

There's so much competition for every job, every sport that people are increasingly having a hard time with competition. It seems the going trait is to lower the other guy, as opposed to rising above adversity and doing what's best within yourself to become a winner.

What else would all this trash talking in bars and on the playing fields and courts be about?

If you think athletes are bad look at sports message boards for crying out loud. They're as bad, or worse, than the athletes.

Trash talking? Let it fly, do it any way you can seems to be the American way of life. We're as much to blame as the athletes.