If it wasn&#8217;t so embarrassingly sad, pathetic and counterproductive, I&#8217;d actually find humor in the media&#8217;s attempt to shame professional athletes away from using performance-enhancing drugs.</p><p>Drug users are generally immune from shame. And celebrated, multimillionaire drug users couldn&#8217;t find shame in the dictionary, let alone comprehend its definition.</p><p>This little game we&#8217;re playing with baseball players and steroids is going nowhere. Alex Rodriguez is back swatting home runs for the Yankees. Manny Ramirez will return to the Dodgers for the Fourth of July, and Dodgers fans will rejoice.</p><p>And, soon, Selena Roberts will once again be best known for getting the Duke lacrosse story wrong and refusing to admit it. Well, that might not be quite true. Based on the reviews of her book, &#8220;A-Rod: Game of Innuendo,&#8221; she might be known for writing the worst sports biography in history.</p><p>And exactly what has been accomplished by the demonizing of Bonds, Clemens, Rodriguez, McGwire and Manny?</p><p>We, the media, have further eroded our credibility with the public. We appear as disingenuous, opportunistic, self-serving and money hungry as the players we&#8217;ve shredded.</p><p>Is the game any cleaner? Not in my opinion.</p><p>What should we do?</p><p>We need to try a different approach. Rather than a get-tough, drug-war campaign, we need to pressure professional sports leagues to take a long-term approach to slowing the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports.</p><p>Stick with me.</p><p>I have been arguing for years that all sports have been dramatically changed by television and television money. During the course of his career, A-Rod might make as much as $500 million.</p><p>What steroid would you be willing to take for $500 million? OK, what steroid/performance-enhancing drug would a teenager be willing to take if he/she thought there was a $500 million or $5 million payoff down the road?</p><p>And if you&#8217;re a sports-obsessed parent/guardian, what performance-enhancing drug would you allow your child to take in pursuit of professional riches? One more question. If you lived in a third-world country and dreamed of playing professional sports in America, what drugs would you take to ensure you caught a scout&#8217;s attention?</p><p>Because of television and its corruptive money, performance-enhancing drugs are pervasive in all sports played for money. That&#8217;s my cynical, semieducated opinion.</p><p>If you have a child playing sports, you know exactly why I have this opinion. You see the desperation of the parents. Do you remember eight or nine years ago when the Blue Springs couple was promoting its 3-year-old son as the next Michael Jordan? The parents called every local and national media outlet seeking attention for a baby. They were convinced they discovered the basketball Tiger Woods.</p><p>Hey, maybe they did. Who knows?</p><p>My point is pro sports are the original &#8220;American Idol.&#8221; How you get to the big stage is pretty much unregulated in high school and college. Now I might be wrong, but it seems like I never hear about college football, basketball, baseball or hockey players failing tests for performance-enhancing drugs.</p><p>The athletes are not &#8220;clean.&#8221; That&#8217;s a sweeping generalization that I&#8217;m quite comfortable making based on my long-ago experience as a college football player.</p><p>The old rules don&#8217;t work. The old approach doesn&#8217;t work. America needs a whole new outlook on sports and a whole new approach to restoring integrity to the games we play for money.