Double Standard

Shawne Merriman is having a noteworthy season. Despite missing 4 games this season, he has compiled (as of December 23) 49 tackles and 12.5 sacks, and is apparently in the running for Defensive MVP, as are Jason Taylor and Brian Urlacher, among others. Normally, I wouldn't have a problem with Merriman, the reigning Defensive Rookie of the Year, being in the MVP discussion, but the nature of his 4-game absence should just disqualify him from any postseason awards. Let's look back to October 22nd, when the reason for Merriman's absence was given. He didn't miss 4 games with an injury or for a death in the family, or any other reasonable excuse. Merriman was instead suspended for 4 games for a violation of the NFL's substance abuse policy. Not for alcohol or marijuana use that, while condemnable, would not help him as a player. Merriman was given a 4-game timeout because of steroid use.
Many "experts" on ESPN, including Sean Salisbury and Cold Pizza's Skip Bayless, have chosen to act as though Merriman was merely on vacation for a couple of weeks, rather than serving his punishment for using performance-enhancing drugs. Including Merriman in the Defensive MVP talk is reprehensible and an affront to Taylor and Urlacher, who (we presume) have been playing within the rules of the game, and not cheating. That's not all of what is bothering me, though. This entire steroids issue smacks of hypocrisy. The baseball world has been rocked recently with turmoil over whether or not Mark McGwire, a suspected steroid user, should be allowed into the Hall of Fame. Now in the NFL, we have a player that we know used steroids, but nobody talks about it. That's just retarded. Anybody remember a guy by the name of Bill Romanowski? He was so jacked up on steroids he smashed his own teammate's eye socket. I'm not exactly comparing Romanowski to Merriman, but the point is that steroids in football is, for whatever reason, no big deal, and I don't understand why.
If you're going to damn a baseball player because he probably took steroids, then you need to do the same for a football player that you know was on the juice. Merriman will be a cheater until he gives me 3 years of clean drug tests and a plateau of excellent play. And he sure as hell had better not win any major award this year.