The news from the past few months has made me want to be famous. More specifically, I want to be a sports superstar, and not for the money, ladies or prestige.

I want the get-out-of-jail free card.

For whatever reason (wait, they are famous), celebrity athletes always seem to wriggle out of trouble.

My favorite NBA player of all time, Sir Charles Barkley, managed to get pulled over on New Year’s Eve trolling for a lewd act while being blitzed out of his mind. And all he got was a couple month suspension from his high-profile TNT analyst job. If I did that, I would probably be in jail, and if I was employed, I’d be fired.

But it isn’t just former players getting special treatment. Look at the unfolding Michael Phelps saga.

The dude smokes some bud out of a bong, gets photographed and the sponsors find out that a guy who had the greatest individual achievement in Olympics history might have done it with PDD (that is, performance debilitating drugs). I wonder if he has his personal pool air filled with THC to relax him while he trains.

But since he is a role model and the stuff is illegal, technically, he gets a slap on the wrist and the IOC, Speedo and the world smile as it’s Michael being Michael.

I agree that from a public relations move this is great. Swimming has become relevant again before the 2012 Olympics and Mr. Phelps gets to sit down on talk shows again to talk about how he is growing as a person.

The question to ask is this: Do professional athletes get drug tested for substances by their sponsors? If any of us normal people got caught smoking on the job, as Mr. Phelps just did, our employers would probably not like that very much.

It is true that he never said he smoked marijuana, which will play well in the court of law, and that Mr. Barkley will have to face some sort of justice regarding his DUI arrest. But as I learned in DARE class back in fifth grade, small indiscretions can lead to bigger ones.

For instance, not paying taxes when you get nominated for public office might lead to corruption. Good call and even better job vetting on that, Mr. President.

But then again, it was seen as okay for Tom Daschle to not pay his taxes, and he isn’t even really famous.

Back to sports, it also seems to matter what sport the transgression occurs in. Shawn Merriman a couple years back got caught using steroids and then won the Defensive Player of the Year award. Now Alex Rodriguez is probably wishing he played wide receiver for the Giants.

My time to get into the big leagues is waning. But as the public and the justice system don’t seem to care about legal and ethical problems in sports not called baseball, I’m going to start up my tennis game in the spring and do my best not to shoot my self in the leg next time I go to a club in Chicago.

Brian Regan is a McCormick senior. He can be reached at [email protected].