There are few things that I would be less qualified to write about than sports. I am so not-connected to the popular athletic diversions that I will, for amusement, solicit sports analysis lines from my sister-in-law to feed to another sports-fiend friend to see if I could get him to think that I knew what I was really talking about ... or that I even watched “the game." My subterfuge was typically met with a smirk, a head shake and a “Mike, Mike, Mike” to convey pity for my ignorance on such matters.

For some years, though, there was one annual event that I stayed pretty on top of; the Tour de France. It is difficult to overstate the athleticism required to ride its 2,200 miles over 21 days ... through bona-fide mountains. Some time in the 1980s, I began to cycle for fitness and pleasure. My distances increased year after year and, while far from “elite,” I would typically ride at least one 100-mile ride (called a “century”) each season. Through cycling and daily swimming, I pressed my resting pulse (your heart rate when you wake up in the morning) into the mid-30s. This is not without a downside. My blood pressure was so low that, on one occasion, I blacked out while standing at the commode of my wife-to-be early in our relationship during a romantic lobster dinner at her home. Awkward!

Anyway ... cycling was kinda my thing, and when I became aware of American Greg Lemond being a contender in the Tour de France I started to pay attention. After a few compelling years of Lemond taking that iconic race, there was a lull when there wasn’t an American contender to push that same nationalistic button.

Enter Lance Armstrong. After a year or two of commentators mentioning the up-and-comer, we heard about his harrowing battle with cancer. To, I think, everyone’s surprise, he came back to compete again. And compete he did. He was something like 24 pounds lighter after his medical ordeal. Believe me when I tell you that that is an enormous advantage when climbing mountains. He was crushing the competition. We were treated to myriad iconic moments as our cinderella hero went on to win the world’s most gruelling athletic competition seven times in a row! A favorite moment was, after feigning fatigue for much of the stage, Armstrong caught up to the leader (Jan Ullrich), glanced over his shoulder to meet his gaze and, without words, said “buh-bye” and shot out ahead never to see Ullrich again that day.

The years past. Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation raised a gazillion dollars for cancer research. He was a national hero and rode bikes with the President. Save for his purportedly unpleasant demeanor, there was everything to admire and nothing to impeach him. Always dogged by doping accusations (Greg Lemond among the accusers), he never tested positive and [rightfully] claimed that he was the most tested athlete in history.

Well ... so much for that. The evidence is overwhelming. It’s hard to credibly argue that Armstrong was clean. It’s unclear what the net fallout might be. Armstrong just left the Livestrong foundation in, I suppose, an attempt to distance his scandal from the charitable organization. Tufts University rescinded his honorary degree. He has been stripped of his Tour-de France titles in a futile attempt to redeem professional cycling. (Would they prefer to give his title to the second-place finishers that were doping also?)

So when did cycling get so dirty? When Greg Lemond came back to compete for his fourth Tour title in 1991, he found that riders that couldn’t stay on his wheel in years past were dropping him, despite his being the fittest and fasted he had ever been. It was probably around then that performance enhancing drugs became ubiquitous in professional cycling. Being the most familiar with cycling; it seems to me that it could be argued that professional cycling is probably the dirtiest of sports (at least with regards to performance enhancing drugs), but it has sullied all the big money sports.

I suggest that athletics, at its best, provides an aspirational goal for our youth to try to perfect the human body for competition and is a personal exploration of one’s own limits. Performance enhancing drugs have diminished that. We don’t necessarily know whether we are witnessing the limits of human physiology and spirit or the limits of chemistry as we follow our respective sports celebrities. It also inserts our youth into a culture that says to them “You may be good, but your best isn’t good enough.”

It would be great if we would refocus athletics on the human aspect as opposed to the chemical aspect. Science historian, author and former competitive cyclist Michael Shermer offered a roadmap to do just that back in 2008. While written specifically about the cycling community, the message could be applied to most any competitive athletic genre. I share it here:

■  Grant immunity to all athletes for past cheating. Because the entire system is corrupt and most competitors have been doping, it accomplishes nothing to strip the winner of a title after the fact when it is almost certain that the runners-up were also doping. With immunity, retired athletes may help to improve the antidoping system.

■  Increase the number of competitors tested—in competition, out of competition, and especially immediately before or after a race—to thwart countermeasures. Testing should be done by independent drug agencies not affiliated with any sanctioning bodies, riders, sponsors or teams. Teams should also employ independent drug-testing companies to test their own riders, starting with a preseason performance test on each athlete to create a baseline profile. Corporate sponsors should provide additional financial support to make sure the testing is rigorous.

■  Establish a reward, modeled on the X prizes (cash awards offered for a variety of technical achievements), for scientists to develop tests that can detect currently undetectable doping agents. The incentive for drug testers must be equal to or greater than that for drug takers.

■  Increase substantially the penalty for getting caught: one strike and you’re out—forever. To protect the athlete from false positive results or inept drug testers (both exist), the system of arbitration and appeals must be fair and trusted. Once a decision is made, however, it must be substantive and final.

■  Disqualify all team members from an event if any member of the team tests positive for doping. Compel the convicted athlete to return all salary paid and prize monies earned to the team sponsors. The threat of this penalty will bring the substantial social pressures of “band of brothers” psychology to bear on all the team members, giving them a strong incentive to enforce their own antidoping rules.

I think such rules could help a lot ... particularly the part about penalizing the entire team if one member is busted. Again; I don’t follow sports, but a lot of you do and a lot of youth are being thrown into a system that, if they pursue it beyond high school (middle school?), has an ever-increasing chance damaging them physically and emotionally because of the ubiquity of performance enhancing drugs. Let’s see that our youth receive the good from athletics.