Shawne Merriman, steroids, and the Canadian border

Shawne Merriman was recently found at the border between the United States and Canada with some form of steroids, probably not the best piece of news for a guy who has already been caught in violation of the NFL’s anti drug policy. While Merriman was not arrested, which is a shocker given all the trouble athletes have had crossing the border, the Buffalo Bills should feel very nervous that NFL commish Roger Goodell will suspend Merriam under the league’s personal conduct policy.

Since I live in a border town, much like Buffalo, Canada is a half an hour drive away, I am use to these kinds of stories. I remember Bob Probert getting caught at the border with some Cocaine way back in the 1980’s. These kinds of things tend to not register as big time news. Granted, I don’t know yet how big this story is going to get, but it has all the potential to be very, very bad.

Merriman of course took the classy route and addressed the incident via his twitter account. He said he was disappointed that a Buffalo writer was blowing a routine incident at the border way out of proportion. That gives us a little smoke, and we all know when we see smoke we almost always see some fire. Merriman went on to say that he had no steroids and for now he deserves the benefit of the doubt, but I got to say declarations of innocence made via twitter almost never ring true.

Even the denial alone could lead some to think that while no steroids were found, maybe some other form of illegal substance was, of course that is mere speculation. We have not heard the end of this, and I do not see anyway this ends well for Merriman.