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I admit it. I watched. In fact, I watched for three hours. Instead of following March Madness, I watched the dog and pony show that was the Congressional inquiry into Major League Baseball's steroid problem. While it made for compelling television, it accomplished nothing. Which is precisely what most everyone suggested it would do.

The problem I've had since the beginning of the whole steroid mess is that there is little that can be done about it. The proverbial ship has already set sail. MLB cannot retro-actively impose drug testing back to 1998. Or 1988. All we can do is make assumptions about the players and the records set. We may get some more admissions of guilt beyond Jose Canseco's, eventually, but we will never know the scope of the problem or have any concrete evidence about all the parties involved.

Sure Congress, fans and some media folks can scream about tougher, Olympic-styled testing, but is there any sport more awash in the controversy over performance enhancers than the Olympics? Their "gold standard" testing methods have caught a number of athletes attempting to violate it's drug policy. I guess that means we can rule out the premise of tougher standards acting as a deterrent.

In addition, these wildly successful tests employed by the IOC, have yet to quell rumors about a number of their athletes suspected of being steroid/growth hormone abusers. If the rumors are correct, these must-have methods have failed as often as they have succeeded. Even with cutting edge testing, Marion Jones hasn't failed an IOC test that I am aware of. Yet, Ms. Jones finds herself as knee deep in the BALCO mess as anyone in MLB.

The IOC is hardly alone in this. Lance Armstrong gets tested by the Tour de France organizers about once an hour and they cannot find a single illegal drug. Not one. Maybe Armstrong and Jones are clean. Maybe they are ahead of the testing. Either way, the rumors won't go away and their records remain. This is better than MLB's current situation how?

I hate to say this, but making the drug policy broader, enacting stronger punishment and using the Olympic testing methods will not clean up baseball. It won't. It may make some people feel better. It may allow some members of Congress to say they've addressed an issue, but it won't come close to eliminating the problem. The new age of science and medicine is here and it's not going to go away regardless of what public policy is.

That's not to say that imposing new standards is wrong. I'm all in favor of sweeping changes to MLB's drug policy to make it difficult on those who opt to use performance enhancers. However, what everyone, Congress included, needs to remember is that we already have laws against steroids on the books. Did that stop a single MLB player from using them? From obtaining them? From distributing them?

Did any of the U.S. government's law enforcement officials, whose job it is to investigate and stop this sort of stuff, drop the hammer on a single MLB player in all those years they claim Bud Selig and company turned their backs on the problem? Who exactly should get charged with the error on that one?

The problem with baseball's steroid controversy is that there is more than enough blame for just about everyone. The government certainly failed to enforce it's own laws. MLB failed to foresee a problem and failed to keep up it's public perception, by banning steroids, the way other sports had. The Players Association's leadership was more concerned about cashing checks than the health of their constituency. The media, once the public watchdog, took a collective nap during what forever will be called the Steroid Era.

Forgive me, if I just don't have much faith in all the same parties that failed their initial responsibilities to the game, themselves and us when they suggest they now have answers. It's fairly obvious after yesterday's public debacle that none of the parties are an ounce smarter than they were in 1988.