The View From Bennett Avenue

I am a proud graduate of Bergen Catholic High School, located in Oradell, New Jersey. I went there in the late 1970s and early '80s, during a more innocent time in high school athletics. At the time BC's athletic reputation rested on three sports, track and field, basketball and football. Most of the athletes who played those sports did not look much different than the average student. The biggest players on the football team weighed 210 lbs, give or take a few. I can remember what a big deal it was for our team to beat Montclair, because Montclair had two bookend defensive ends who were 240. They seemed gigantic at the time.

Now 240 barely gets you a spot as the backup center on the high school level. The explosion in the size of high school athletes began right as I was graduating in 1982. While there certainly were improvements in how kids weight trained and understood nutrition, a key factor in all of this was in the relative ease in the ability for suburban kids to purchase steroids. Being a private school in a wealthy area, Bergen was full of students who could had the income needed to become huge through chemistry. The kids that I knew who did it were interested solely in being bigger than the next guy or out-lifting a friend.

So the fact that Brian Cushing, the pride and joy of recent Bergen football teams, has been caught cheating as a member of the NFL comes as no surprise to me. There were not only rumors of his drug use when he played for Southern California--a school that has had a reputation for steroid use dating back to the 1970s--but Cushing had fingers pointed his way while in high school. He has always stressed that he has been clean and continues to do so in light of his recent problems.

Cushing's failed test became more noteworthy than the usual failed NFL test thanks to the recent re-vote for the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year award Cushing won easily after a highly successful year playing linebacker for the Texans. For winning that award Cushing ended up being more punished via the continued discussion of his failed test than other NFL cheats, who bettered themselves illegally but did not win any hardware. But that is his problem. Since it is highly unlikely that he is clean he deserves whatever knock his reputation receives. Of course, like Peppers and Merriman and others before, he will go right back to the starting lineup upon completion of his suspension and will return to his big contract.

And I will stop being proud that my high school produced an All America linebacker who went on to be drafted in the first round and then earn honors for his play. We have produced plenty of other folks more worthy of attention than this guy.