It may sound cliché, but the Saskatchewan Roughriders players who were in Estevan on Sunday afternoon were some of the most down to earth pro athletes I have ever come into contact with.
Barrin Simpson, Keith Shologan, Ike Ikenna, Cary Koch, and Joel Bell, and Luca Congi all attended the Athletes in Action Roughrider supper at the Estevan Curling Club, and other than the fact that they were the giant men signing autographs, you couldn't tell them apart from the other 400 people in attendance.
That's because the football players acted like they were just average Joes. They sat at fans' tables, ate with them, mingled with them before and after dinner. Luca Congi even played catch with some of the Estevan Chargers peewee football team, who were obviously in awe.
While the focus of the event was on how the players followed and continue to follow their faith, they also talked about their road to the CFL and the ups and downs they encountered along the way.
Keith Shologan mentioned that he lived an hour and 20 minutes away from home during high school, just so he could play football. He ended up living with the school's secretary, who took him in after his mom called the school asking about bus routes.
It's stories like this that give our young athletes hope, in a world that is continually telling them that they'll never make it.
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Now onto a not so positive topic.
Mixed martial arts continues to be the fastest growing sport in the world. Like it or not, the sport is quickly becoming mainstream, and like in baseball, football and other sports, the use of performance enhancing drugs (PED) is becoming more and more prevalent.
Take UFC middleweight fighter Chael Sonnen for instance. Sonnen, the sports king of trash-talking, had an amazing year, defeating a top contender in Nate Marquardt and then beating the living daylights out of champion Anderson Silva, before getting caught in a submission late in the final round.
Sonnen was granted an immediate re-match with Silva and things continued to look promising for the 33-year-old Oregon native. That is until Monday, when the California State Athletic Commission announced that he had failed a drug test prior to his title fight with Silva.
My question here is: What are these athletes thinking? Whether it's professional sports or the Olympics, if you use steroids or PEDs, you are going to get caught! Is it really worth tarnishing your reputation and potentially ruining your career?
With the number of athletes failing drug tests these days and the technology used in finding these dopers, the chance of getting away with it are minuscule.
So for Pete's sake, don't be so stupid.
