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Go ahead. Everybody's doing it now, including the United States Anti-Doping Agency. Everybody's taking it to another level, too. Suspicion might soon equal conviction. If sprinter Marion Jones is banned from Olympic competition, sans evidence of doping, sporting in America has reached a new low. It appears the USADA wants to highlight the fine print in its rulebook and sacrifice the speedy Jones to put a phony veil of integrity over the steroids scandal. The USADA is prepared to investigate Jones and other Olympic athletes connected to the BALCO doping case. If it finds nothing and feels stumped, it would use its powers to ban athletes. No positive urine sample will be necessary. The USADA has suspicions. That's all it needs. Motto: If you can't prove it, assume it. How American. If the USADA were a prosecutor, it would be admonished for wasting the court's time. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? In sports, it's the other way around, and this is tangible proof. Innuendo is about to ruin some athletes. Jones has threatened to sue. "I'm not going to sit down and let someone or a group of people or an organization take away my livelihood because of a hunch, because of a thought, because of somebody who's trying to show their power," she told reporters Sunday in New York during the U.S. Olympic Team Media Summit. I can't say with certainty that Jones is clean. Then again, I can't say with certainty that a swell guy like wrestler Rulon Gardner is clean. Certainly, the connections between Jones and BALCO are fishy. But circumstantial evidence shouldn't be enough for a conviction. If the USADA finds indisputable proof, get rid of Jones or her beau Tim Montgomery or any other athlete. Until then, they should be allowed to make the U.S. Olympic team. Such bulldogging will be permitted, however. None of the supposedly important people has a problem with it. Of course, the United States Olympic Committee doesn't mind. The International Olympic Committee now has expressed its support. Even sprinter Maurice Greene has been brainwashed. "The whole thing with this BALCO case, they made the stuff to be undetectable, so they weren't supposed to find it," Greene told reporters in New York. If the USADA told Greene his body fit the prototype of a steroid user, he wouldn't be saying the same thing. Of course he wants Montgomery out of the Olympics. A gold medal could depend on it. It's idiotic to support any entity that would use speculation as a primary reason to punish. Such an action is unfair and carries the stench of damage control. Sadly, if Jones is penalized in an effort to restore Olympic righteousness, few people will care. Corruption in sports has made fans rebuke mercy. If athletes are within 100 yards of wrongdoing, they get the jaundiced eye. During spring training, no one understood how right Dusty Baker was when he compared the steroids probe to sports' version of McCarthyism. It has come to that. Don't fool yourself into believing this is justice. Nevertheless, suspicion and the resulting cynicism rule sports. The USADA only would be acting on an emotion that fans already have. Pretty soon, you'll be athletic profiling. You know what? Karl Malone shouldn't be able to play for the rest of the playoffs. He's 40 and has muscles like that? He's on something. Who else is gone? LeBron James, anyone? Serena Williams? Freddy Adu? It's time to harness suspicion. This is getting out of control. 
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