Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro have all hit more than 500 home runs and, based on numbers alone, should be locks for Cooperstown.

But, they are not.

They have cheated the game of baseball by taking steroids. Baseball writers refuse to vote for these athletes because they deceived fans and tarnished the game.

What about Shawne Merriman, Rodney Harrison, Shaun Rogers and Ohio State’s Shawn Springs? These NFL players used steroids and on numbers alone deserved to go to Pro Bowls.

And they did.

Last week, football writers had a chance to voice their opinions on steroids in football. Defensive Rookie of the Year Brian Cushing was nailed with a four-game suspension for testing positive for hCG (a hormone known to be used by steroid users at the end of a cycle).

In light of this information, the Associated Press conducted a re-vote.

Cushing, though he received fewer votes, still earned a majority and retained his award.
Cushing winning this award was not only a contradiction, but also an egregious lesson learned.

Think about it. Steroids in baseball seemed to be an epidemic for the past two decades.

The sport has gone through congressional hearings, new, stricter steroid policies and a Mitchell Report that did absolutely nothing.

Baseball is moving away from the “steroids era” by cracking down heavily on performance-enhancing drug users.

At the end of the 2005 season, baseball altered its steroid ban so that the first positive test results in a 50-game suspension, a second in a 100-game suspension and a third in a lifetime ban.

After this policy, there have been significantly fewer issues surrounding steroids and baseball.

Now, let’s revert back to Cushing. Writers failed to teach football players that using steroids is the wrong thing to do. In fact, they have insinuated that using steroids is 100 percent OK.

Steroids were all right when Shawne Merriman received a Pro Bowl selection in the 2006 season when he sat out four games for taking PEDs.

Roger Goodell then created a rule, which many refer to as the “Merriman rule,” which forbids a player who tests positive for steroids from being selected to the Pro Bowl or winning any performance awards in the year in which they tested positive.

Obviously, four years later, we see how much Goodell is sticking to that rule.

The San Diego Union-Tribune conducted its own “Mitchell Report” in 2008 and discovered that at least 52 former Pro Bowl players have been tied to steroids or related substances.

When the league gave Cushing his four-game suspension, they could have easily stripped away his award. It would have been a good stance against using steroids in football.

But, it could not take a stand, instead diverting the issue to the media. They let a group of writers decide where football wants to head with steroids in the upcoming years.

The writers chose to re-affirm the use of steroids.

What’s even more mind-boggling is that one voter, Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, changed his vote from Jairus Byrd to Brian Cushing.

Enough with the double standard.

If this happened in baseball, there would have been three days of coverage and a permanent blemish on the player’s record.

But, since football is a physical sport, we accept the use of a substance or two to gain an advantage over other players.

Football players are deceiving the fans and ruining the integrity of the game the same way that steroids do in baseball.

In the end, it is teaching the wrong message to children who aspire to be athletes when they are growing up. They look up to these players and what do they learn?

If we want to stop the illegal use of steroids, the NFL and MLB need to be role models for the next generation.

If kids grow up knowing that using steroids is wrong, then they will instinctively not do it.

This process might take longer than one would hope.

When people look back in the record books, they will see the defensive player of the year was Houston Texans linebacker Brian Cushing.

When I look back, I won’t remember Cushing for how he excelled on the field, but how a group of sports writers and the NFL promoted the usage of an illegal substance.

It’s tough to advise against steroids when you can be honored for it.