FanHouse VictorConte

Bob Knight the basketball coach was never afraid to express opinions that might make people upset, whether talking to his players or his bosses or the referees, and Bob Knight the ESPN commentator hasn't lost that trait.

That's never been more apparent than it was when he talked about Alex Rodriguez on ESPN Radio.

We now interrupt our playoff programming to bring you an update on baseball's greatest villain: Barry Bonds.

In case you forgot about it, Barry Bonds is getting ready to go to court as part of that whole BALCO investigation we used to hear so much about. Bonds faces possible jail time if he's found guilty of perjury for lying to the grand jury during the investigation, but he did get some good news on Friday.

Tammy Thomas is a former bicyclist who was on trial for the same crime in the same BALCO investigation, and she won't have to serve any prison time even though she was found guilty.

In U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Judge Susan Illston sentenced Tammy Thomas to six months of home confinement on her four felony convictions for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Some experts said the decision was a hopeful sign for Bonds. He is scheduled to go on trial in Illston's court in March, accused of the same offenses as Thomas and facing the same prosecution team. He has pleaded not guilty.

The prosecutors had asked for Judge Illston to sentence Thomas to 30 months in prison, but the judge said that would be incredibly unfair considering that Victor Conte -- the man who ran the BALCO lab -- only had to serve four months in prison.

Of course, as some legal experts point out, this doesn't necessarily mean that Bonds will be dealt the same fate. Thomas is essentially a nobody -- had you heard of her before reading this? -- while Bonds is a very well known athlete. Sentencing Bonds to jail time would send a very loud message to anybody thinking about lying to a grand jury in the near future.

We now return to our regular playoff programming.

There's nothing quite as annoying as a reformed smoker. They always walk up to you while you're having that one cigarette you set aside in the day for me time. Telling you how to fix your life by quitting. I'm sure it's true, but there's a time and a place for that kind of talk. And this isn't it.

Oddly enough, the International Olympic Committee might be having these same exact feelings following reformed steroid peddler, Victor Conte's latest interview.

"The Olympics are a fraud. It's all about money," Conte told BBC Sport. "Those who control the money, control the anti-doping policies. They are still inept to this day."

Yup, this is the same guy that served jail time for conspiracy to distribute and money laundering. And to be honest, he sounds a lot like Jose Canseco if you watch the video portion of the interview. I'm not knocking the guy. If he's out to clean up drug testing in sports, I'm all for it.

He did meet with former Anti-doping Agency head,....wait for it....Dick Pound. And gave pointers on how his operation worked. And he isn't afraid to call out Olympic officials in general.

"I have been told by Olympic officials that there have been positive drug tests that have been covered up," he revealed. "They (the officials) have direct knowledge of this and at some point this information will come out

I hope, unlike Jose Canseco, he doesn't start dropping names (oops!). It's enough that he inform officials about how to get around their testing practices. Even if he is exaggerating just a little, Conte doesn't paint a pretty picture of the competence of drug testing in Olympic and professional sports. And given recent events in baseball, it's not hard to believe. It will be interesting to see a response from the IOC or any professional sports. Or if any respond at all. I would like to know the sports I follow are clean. Even if that meant a reduction in performance. And if you see me off smoking a cigarette by myself, how's bout you give me a few minutes peace.

When the news broke that Shane Mosley was using steroids during training for his second victory against Oscar De La Hoya, the boxer used excuse 703-B to explain how they got in his body: "I didn't know what I was taking."

The idea that a professional athlete, especially a boxer, just takes whatever someone gives him without the slightest concern about what they're ingesting has never seemed all that plausible. It wasn't believable when Marion Jones used it before finally admitting her drug use and it's no easier to believe out of Mosley's mouth.

The explanation took another hit last week when BALCO founder Victor Conte said his forthcoming book would "set the record straight" about Mosley's use of performance enhancers. Mosley, who fights Zab Judah on May 31, responded to that by suing Conte for libel and slander and claiming that Conte told him he was being given legal supplements and vitamins. Conte answered back yesterday.

"I didn't deceive him; he knew what he was taking and I told him that before he took it...I told him it was an undetectable steroid that wouldn't show up in a test."

Conte also says he's got all the doping calenders and receipts for the drugs that Mosley bought to bolster his claim. Mosley's used those receipts, he paid by check, to say that he's not stupid enough to pay for illegal drugs with personal checks. Following that logic, he is dumb enough to pay $900 for vitamins, though.

BALCO founder and "Ape Walk" song creator, Victor Conte, is a free man today. His encarciration for criminal probation expired at midnight last evening. (I hope they let him out in the dead of the night.)

And it looks like Mr. Conte is wasting no time spinning his tales of steroid debauchery into a tell-all book. From the NY Daily News:

Slated for publication in September under the Skyhorse imprint, the book's working title is "BALCO: The Straight Dope on Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and What We Can Do To Save Sports." Conte, in conjunction with co-author Nathan Jendrick, promises to share "the dirt, the drugs, the doses, the names, dates and places, and a 'prescription' for a brighter future."

He promises the "complete truth in its honest, unadulterated and raw form" and says he is "ready to tell the world everything."

Whoa, whoa, whoa wait a second here. This sounds like a complete knockoff. Didn't Will Leitch already tell us how to save sports? And isn't Jose Canseco already releasing his second tell-all book on a similar subject? Although, i do like my truth in it's "unadulterated and raw form," so I guess I can give this one a shot.

By now, we all know the drill: Barry Bonds was indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. One of the key provisions involved this little sliver of evidence: "During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing substances for Bonds and other athletes."

Seems pretty damning, no? Well, Bonds' lawyer seems hellbent on fighting this. And really, when you hear about how BALCO actually administered its steroids tests, you might likely agree.

It was November 2000, and Bonds was preparing for the season in which he would shatter Mark McGwire's single-season home run record.

According to Conte, himself a convicted steroids dealer, Bonds would visit the lab on Saturdays and after normal business hours with an entourage that included his trainer, Greg Anderson, and his personal physician, Dr. Arthur Ting.

Anderson had convinced Bonds to use BALCO to develop a dietary and supplement regimen, which Conte designed based on the results of the blood and urine samples.

Conte said Bonds was put through the same tests as other elite athlete clients, including tests to detect the use of 30 different steroids.

First it's all over the news that baseball's drug testing policy is a joke. Then news breaks that a player, Mike Cameron in this instance, failed one of the aforementioned tests, in this case for a banned stimulant. Cameron blamed "an energy drink or whatever," which is pretty stupid (I mean, I drink a lot of Mountain Dew and I've never failed a test for stimulants). In fact, BALCO boss Victor Conte says it's really stupid:

"It's not a very high likelihood it's from a contaminated substance," said Victor Conte, the founder of the BALCO lab that supplied dozens of elite athletes with performance-enhancing substances. "It's certainly possible that some of these products still have a kick in them, but most of these are loaded up with caffeine or synephrine, neither of which is banned by baseball."

[...]

"This isn't drug testing, this is IQ testing," Conte said. "All you have to do is look at the list and find one of the 30 that's not on the list and use that. This guy (Cameron) didn't fail a drug test. He failed an IQ test."

Harsh words, but sometimes the truth hurts. Then again, maybe he was just drunk. It seems to me like you actively have to try and fail a banned substance test in professional sports. Still, I think we're missing the larger question here. If Mike Cameron is stupid, what's Neifi Perez?

Previously at FanHouse
MLB's Steroid Testing Policy Actively Flouted
Mike Cameron Suspended 25 Games
Mike Cameron: 'I've Played Drunk'

Internet high-five to BBTF.

Last week I told you that BALCO attorney Troy Ellerman agreed to a longer prison sentence than the original maximum sentence. Now, news has come out that Ellerman has been sentenced to prison for two and a half years. To refresh your memory, Ellerman is the man who leaked the confidential grand jury testimony of ballplayers such as Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, and Gary Sheffield to San Francisco Chronicle writers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams.

Just as I said before, you have Ellerman going to prison for two and a half years, while both Victor Conte and Greg Anderson have completed their prison terms. Jason Giambi will be meeting with George Mitchell later in the month. Meanwhile, Barry Bonds is still partying like a rock star at night, and cracking home runs, well, by night as well. Something just doesn't seem right.

Previously at FanHouse:
BALCO Attorney Troy Ellerman Agrees to Long Prison Sentence

Mike Piazza recently did an interview with BeliefNet.com, and it turns out he's an All-Star Christian. At least, that's what the headline tells us. Personally, when fielding my Christian All-Star team, I'd go with St. Peter behind the plate. That guy has a gun, and he's no chump with the bat in his hands either.

Anyway, during the interview, Piazza was asked for his take on the steroids scandal in baseball today.

"There is a lot of swirling and a lot of innuendo, a lot of rumor, a lot of hearsay. And, I think, to get back to balance on a larger issue, Major League Baseball has sort of admitted and sort of acknowledged that there could have been abuse by some players in the past.

"It's kind of like going back and reinvestigating the Kennedy assassination. It's impossible to really put a finger on where it derailed and where it went wrong. And I think that everybody, in a sense, was realizing that someone--the people and the higher ups--were looking the other way. And some of the players didn't really acknowledge that it was so much of a bad stigma. And so, I think that just the fact of not dealing with it at the time was probably the biggest issue that I see at fault. But I think now people--and especially in Major League Baseball--they've acknowledged it and we have very strict testing now. They were just testing the other day."

Piazza's right, it is just like the Kennedy assassination. Baseball is JFK, Bud Selig is Jackie, we are Texas Governor John Connally, and it's pretty obvious that Victor Conte was having some fun in the book depository. But who is that on the grassy knoll? Is it Barry Bonds? Mark McGwire? Sammy Sosa? Who!?

To be serious about this for a second, Piazza does have a valid point. Fans, media and the government can all argue about who's to blame from now until the end of time but it's not going to accomplish anything. In the end, President Kennedy will still be dead, and Bud Selig will marry some rich foreign billionaire. It's fate, people.

Lesson be learned, you leak federal grand jury testimonies to reporters, you will go to prison. For a long time. That's what's happening to Victor Conte's BALCO attorney Troy Ellerman, who gave information about athletes being investigated for steroids use such as Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, and Gary Sheffield, to San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams.

In papers filed in San Francisco federal court Thursday, prosecutors said Troy Ellerman is willing to accept that sentence [maximum of two years and nine months] after a judge last month rejected the original 24-month maximum sentence as too lenient.

Federal prosecutors did agree to reduce his maximum fine to $60,000 from $250,000.

District Court Judge Jeffrey White, who rejected the earlier deal, still must approve the new agreement when Ellerman returns to court July 12.

How long the actual sentence is remains to be determined. But we do know that this guy will be going to prison for quite some time. So that should take care of Ellerman, with Greg Anderson and Victor Conte already having served their terms. Next up, Bonds, Sheffield, and Giambi? I doubt it, but it's certainly a possibility.