Three Cheers for European Sports Associations

Huge news today in soccer as four Italian teams, including Juventus and AC Milan, were penalized for match-fixing. Good job by the Italian football league for reacting swiftly and strongly against a terrible scandal.

Similar props are deserved by the Tour de France for tossing out several teams, including the athletes who finished 2nd through 5th, before the race began for a doping scandal that broke at the race before the Tour. They may have been too harsh: the man who finished fifth last year, the delightfully aggressive Alexander Vinokourov, was forced to withdraw without being implicated because his team didn't have enough riders to compete. But it's a small price to pay for cleaning up the sport.

Contrast Europe's tough line with the soft stances by American sporting leagues. You can get caught using steroids in baseball and still get back on the team during the same season. Simply miss a drug test in soccer, like Rio Ferdinand did a few years back, and you get banned by FIFA from all soccer games for a year.

The difference is the power that American sporting unions have. Still, it's a shame Bud Selig doesn't have the backbone to follow Europe's lead and take a harder line on steroids now, while the MLB players union is already in a corner.