With the uprising of the BALCO investigation and the integrity of baseball imperiled, one must ask the question, "Does the American public take sports too seriously?"

Mitch Cozad, backup punter at Northern Colorado has answered the aforementioned question unequivocally. In the era of steroids, which has prompted the increasing of the stringency of drug testing, Cozad decided to attempt an alternative method of performance enhancement.

On Monday night, Cozad stabbed starting-punter Rafael Mendoza in the kicking leg. Some might say that this is simply a case of acting without thinking -- however, a quick look at the motive points in the opposite-direction. Whatever pressures Cozad was facing that week, he obviously felt it necessary to obtain the starting roll -- extremely necessary.

Now, I hate to speculate on matters like these -- but I will anyways. More than likely, we're looking at a prototypical plight of peer pressure -- how about that alliteration? I'm having fun, let's make more assumptions. It's quite probable that said pressure was applied by a mixture of media and parental expectations

I mean, that's how it is -- right? If you're not the starter, you're obviously not very good -- especially when we're talking about punting. It's bad enough being the backup-quarterback, I can't even imagine what it must be like to take the spot of backup-punter. Because, we all know how often punters go-down in the game of football -- it's almost inconceivable.

Perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe Cozad just got caught up in the adrenaline -- which, of course, comes hand-in-hand with punting -- saw Mr. Big-Shot-Mendoza walking to his car -- surrounded by attractive women, as he is the staring punter -- and decided, "I'm going to put that guy in his place."

On the other hand, maybe not.

Now that I've ripped on punters as much as humanly possible, let's get serious. This is the future generation we're talking about, after all. Have we really gotten to the point where if one misses the starting job, he or she should stab the starter?

The sad, but ultimate truth is that sports are being taken far too passionately. Now, it's deplorable to mention politics on any website which relates to sports -- we've lost touch with reality, and sports are pulling us further and further away. It's time to sit down and have that platitudinous conversation with your kids and let them know that it really is acceptable to be the backup.

It's kids like Mitch Cozad who remind us what can happen to an insecure adolescent who just can't #### the fact that he is the reserve. This is true of many college athletes who spend much of their high school careers as the star-players of their respective towns -- regardless of position. Unfortunately, with the coming of high expectations, there will be cases of consummate failure, which will test the will-power of the person involved.

Honestly, we can all sit and laugh at the stupidity of Cozad's actions, or we can learn from them. These situations occur every day, whether or not the proverbial Mitch Cozad decides to express his anger physically or emotionally -- upon himself or upon others -- we need to recognized that there is a problem, and work on a solution to fix that problem.