Doping

Under heavy fire from WADA, Lance Armstrong cut ties to LIVESTRONG today.  Read more here.

The Tour de France has stripped Armstrong of his seven titles and sponsors have deserted him.

Too little too late?  Do stripping titles/medals, public humiliation, and lifetime bans work to stop drug cheats?

Of course they don't!

A better way to curb doping might be to hit offenders - and their bosses - in the wallet.

Smart contractors hold their subs accountable.  It was common practice for contractors to hold back some of my money in case there were ever problems with any of my work.

If (after a couple of months) the work passed all inspections, punch lists, etc., I got the rest of my dough.

If things weren't up to snuff, I had two options:

1) I could make the corrections myself and get paid, or

2) the contractor could use my money to pay someone else to fix the screwup.

Maybe cycling sponsors and race organizers should try something similar.  Pay the athletes a fair wage while holding back a percentage until they're sure cyclists didn't gain an unfair advantage via doping.

Pro sports here in the U.S. do a poor job of controlling the doping problem.

Take major league baseball, for instance.  A doper played in the majority of a team's games before failing a drug test.

What if the San Francisco Giants had to forfeit all 113 games in which their drug cheat, Melky Cabrera, had played in 2012?

No playoffs.  No World Series.

The team would have lost millions, right?

If that type of penalty were a possibility, wouldn't teams police their own and suspend players long before MLB nabbed them?