Fumble: Phelps falls in hole and keeps digging

At first, I was going to call a Touchdown for Michael Phelps, last summer’s Olympic hero for winning eight gold swimming medals in Beijing, this winter’s latest casualty of drug use + not-so-good-friend with a cell phone camera. The photo of Phelps taking a hit off a bong at a party was hot news, and when he quickly issued an unqualified mea culpa in a statement to the Associated Press (calling his behaviour “regrettable,” demonstrating “bad judgment” and “youthful and inappropriate”) and vowing that there will not be a repeat, I thought he had played it the best way he could. But it was the subsequent comments made by Phelps later in the week that turned it into a Fumble. He was still contrite, but suddenly began floating the idea of not competing in the 2012 Summer Games as a result of the controversy. “If I decide to walk away, I’ll walk away on my own,” he said, adding that “if it’s now or in four years, who knows … it’s not a decision that I’m going to make today, and I’m not going to make tomorrow.” By entertaining what is – until he actually makes a decision – a hypothetical scenario, Phelps is not only keeping the pot-use story alive, he has now cast a huge pall over his entire future as an Olympic athlete, which holds potentially larger negative impacts on his many endorsement deals. Never, ever speculate about “what if” scenarios, unless it is somehow central to the message you need to convey. That’s obviously not the case with Phelps’ situation – no good can come from uncertainty about his competitive future – so it’s a Fumble.