Sports news seems as if it’s on steroids

Our sports news cycles have become spurts of normality, squeezed between stories about athletes and drugs.

Sometimes, we can go for a couple of months. But then — wham, bang — there is Floyd Landis, telling all. Or Brian Cushing, saying he didn’t think what he was taking was wrong. Or Floyd Mayweather Jr., pointing his finger at Manny Pacquiao.

They used to be called sports pages. Now it’s the pharmaceutical section. Rite Aid is missing some great advertising opportunities.

Don’t misunderstand. This is not a rant against the media. Media serve as the messenger of stories that need to be told so that people buying the tickets and the goods hawked on TV during sports broadcasts can have at least some idea of what their entertainment dollar is purchasing. Do you write that $4,000 check for season tickets when Manny Ramirez is going to sit out 50 Dodgers games for enhancing his performance with stuff that isn’t Advil?

There is so much of it now. Mea culpas from Alex Rodriguez and Mark McGwire. Shane Mosley, back in the ring with questions about the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative scandal swirling around him. A doctor in Toronto, accused in a federal complaint of having provided NFL players with performance enhancers, the same doctor who has said his patients once included A-Rod and Tiger Woods.

Olympic sprint star Marion Jones is back in the news with her return to athletics and a spot on a WNBA team. We are reminded of Ben Johnson when his infamous coach, Charlie Francis, dies. Horse trainer Jeff Mullins is hit with yet another suspension for putting bad stuff in the horse or the hay.

And somewhere, behind closed doors, they are trying again to make a fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao, while facing the same stumbling block that killed the last one: drug testing.

The subject of drugs in sports always brings to mind two people, Lily Tomlin and Michael Josephson.

Tomlin, the wonderful comedian, once said, “No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.”

Josephson, a friend and mentor who is heard frequently on KNX with his vignettes on right and wrong, has long seen sports as fertile ground for ethical reform. He should be remembered in our prayers as he attempts to clean out the cesspool with a teaspoon.

Big-time sports these days are no different from Wall Street or your corner banker. Everybody wants an edge. Wall Street and the bankers get theirs in mostly legal, although murky, ways. Sports cross that line more and more now. If it isn’t cheating unless you get caught, there must be lots of cheating in sports. For every Cal Ripken Jr., we have a handful of Roger Clemenses.

The specifics of the Landis case bring back to the forefront an element of the performance-enhancing drug world that has been much discussed in the Mayweather-Pacquiao controversy. In our legal system, you are innocent until proven guilty. When Landis pointed his finger at cycling superstar Lance Armstrong, just as Mayweather had at Pacquiao, it suddenly was the other way around.

Whether true or not, Armstrong and Pacquiao are, in the eyes of millions, guilty of enhancing their performances with drugs. Sports give that kind of platform, get that kind of attention.

Armstrong is guilty because he was hugely successful, because he competes in a sport that has been shown to be full of cheaters and because Landis said he is. Pacquiao is guilty because he is hugely successful, because Mayweather and several of his associates said he couldn’t have possibly gotten so big and strong so fast without drugs, and because he refused to take a blood test just prior to the fight.

Millions listened to Landis and Mayweather and said the same thing about Armstrong and Pacquiao: Gotcha.

Armstrong can sue for slander or defamation, win millions, and people will still wink knowingly. Pacquiao has already sued, and depositions have begun in that case. He, too, can win millions. He can also fight Mayweather after taking blood tests just prior to the fight, and win the bout. No matter. People will still wink knowingly.

The juice is out of the needle.

Big-time sports are now so corroded by big money, by TV networks chasing big money with big ratings, and by all sorts of other media chasing the TV networks, that there is no turning back. Big money is the ultimate justification for athletes to cut corners chasing it.

If that is a cynical view, blame Lily Tomlin.

The games will go on as always. There will be much to root for, much to be excited about. And we can always hope that the greatness we see is really, truly untarnished.

But we won’t be surprised if it isn’t.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com