I forgot to mention this in the previous post, but then again, maybe it deserves its own place on here.
You all know that in addition to college football and college basketball, the Penn Relays are an important piece of what I do here on the blog. So I want you to think back with me to the Saturday of the 2004 Relays.
Perfect sunshine, a huge crowd, and an atmosphere with the kind of buzz the USA vs. the World event deserved in an Olympic year. As the public address announcer read the lineup for the the USA's 4x100-meter team, he came to the anchor leg:
"... Marion Jones!"
The crowd let out a short, sharp, deafening roar that remains one of the loudest I've ever heard at Franklin Field.
But they might not have seen that morning's New York Times, which contained the first story linking Jones to the BALCO steroid scandal.
Ever since that day, and that cheer, Jones has run away from years of allegations that her dazzling performance at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 was steroid-enhanced.
Yesterday, as Frank Fitzpatrick writes on the front page of this morning's Inquirer, Jones finally admitted the truth.
Today, the career of one of the most celebrated sprinters in American history lies in ruins. Like Justin Gatlin, another star of the Franklin Field track who received our collective presumption of innocence, we once again have to consider the integrity of what we've seen with our own eyes.
Marion Jones betrayed her sport. And in so doing, she betrayed us -- and I mean us in the literal sense, right here in Philadelphia -- as well.
