© 2024
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
An update has been released for the Android version of the WAMC App that addresses performance issues. Please check the Google Play Store to download and update to the latest version.

Keith Strudler: Finding Jobs For Lawyers

I keep hearing about how there’s a glut of lawyers, and how people entering the profession can’t find jobs. I’m sure that’s true. But you’d never know it if you paid attention to international sporting events, where legal action seems as endemic as drug scandals. The two have converged in recent days as the US Justice Department is considering filing conspiracy and fraud charges against Russians involved with an exploding performance enhancing drug revelation involving Russian athletes largely around the 2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games, where the home nation had strong interest and opportunity for artificially boosting their team’s accomplishment and resulting medal count. All this is coming to light as various Russian coaches and officials reveal what seems a wide spread and highly systematic program of doping athletes and cheating drug tests by replacing tainted samples with clean ones. It’s the big reveal of something most everyone suspected but couldn’t prove – that Russian athletes set the bar for chemically enhanced performance. That perhaps explains how Russian sports programs continued to thrive as the rest of the nation seemed to collapse around them. For those longing for the good old days of the Soviet Union, this might be just what the doctor ordered.

Also reminiscent of the Soviet days and its Cold War, Americans – namely the American government – have wasted no time in taking on their Eastern enemy. That’s why the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York is investigating anyone who might have benefited from Russia’s doping program – athletes, coaches, Russian officials, probably even Drago from Rocky IV – to see if they can prosecute. And while it seems odd that the US Federal Government would sue, say, a Russian luger, apparently they will if there was any US tie to the case. That could mean the use of an American bank, or something seemingly tangential to the issue. This is not dissimilar to the US Feds going after FIFA for their assorted criminal behaviors, none of which were particularly pertinent to the machinery of American life. Regardless, it’s clear the US Government is just fine with trying to clean up international sport. And silly me, I thought the Feds only prosecuted American hedge funds, like in the TV show Billions. I’m only hoping someone in Russian Sports works for Axe Capital – and you’re welcome for anyone who gets that reference.

I have no idea whether these lawsuits have legs or how they might discourage the future use of PED’s in the Olympics and other international sporting events. Given the risk/reward that is PED use in sports, I can’t imagine a criminal hearing from a country half way across the globe is your primary concern. Not knowing how this might work, it just seems hard to imagine Russia extraditing their sports program to the US so they can stand trial for filtering steroid money through an American bank account. That would make CSI Miami look fully believable.

Perhaps more generally, this investigation does remind us of the high stakes game that is international sports, one that absolutely cannot be played on a level playing field. The IOC has proved wholly ineffective in keeping drugs out of Olympic sports, a reality that’s further compromised through their awarding recent Olympic Games to countries with less transparency than a brick wall. Or some might say iron curtain. By gambling on nations that showed little interest in rights of any kind – human, athlete, you name it – they’ve given the keys to the car to parties without even the slightest interest, much less history, of staying in their lane. So while it’s great that Russia and China are willing to pay for the Olympics, through God know what dictatorial means, don’t be surprised when they decide not to fully comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency’s protocol, which were supposed to bring the Olympic movement back from the testosterone fueled brink of the 1980’s. So much for that.

What does all this mean for the Olympic movement? One could suggest a few existential threats to this international pastime – crushing debt, a fractured audience, eroding borders among them. And drugs. Selling the idea that the Olympics are neither clean nor fair is like trying to open a distillery in Utah. It’s just a bad long term strategy. So if the Olympics wants to see, say 2024, it’s best to get ahead of the renegade drug industry fueling medal counts. That means more than just banning Russian sports federations, which they’re threating to do. It means putting ethics before dollars, if for no other reason than it’s actually good business.

Now, are these lawsuits a good idea? Is this the proper use of American tax payer dollars? Do we not have anything better to worry about? That’s a question for someone with greater economic insight than I. At the very least, perhaps it might give some unemployed lawyers something to do.

Keith Strudler is the director of the Marist College Center for Sports Communication and an associate professor of communication. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler

 
 The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

Related Content
  • I have no problem admitting that I am afraid of several things. Like roller coasters, I really hate roller coasters. I’ve been on two in my life, one out…
  • I work in academia. So I am painfully familiar with what one might consider a longstanding disagreement. In a work environment where people might stay in…
  • If you’ve listen to my commentaries for any length of time, you’re fairly aware I’m no soccer savant. I watch the World Cup, and I’m old enough to…
  • Today’s Las Vegas is far more than dirty casinos and adult night clubs. There’s high end restaurants, Broadway shows, five star hotels, and even a…