President Bush has a better chance of eliminating terrorism in every corner of the world than of putting an end to performance-enhancing drugs in sports.

		WHAT BUSH SAID Full text of Bush remarks on drugs and athletics in his State of the Union Address

Not to be cynical.

Hey, Bush's strangely timed plea during his State of the Union address for owners and players to get tough on steroids sounded nice. Who doesn't want to hear that? For that matter, who isn't in favor of a balanced budget and no new taxes?

But once you get past Bush's grandstanding and his pathetic attempt to get votes at a time when the economy is a farce and American soldiers are dying in Iraq, it's clear there won't be an end to performance-enhancing drugs in his lifetime or his twin daughters' lifetime or his grandchildren's lifetime.

The players don't want it to happen. They like things just the way they are. They love cashing those multimillion dollar checks, even if they end up coming at the cost of their life in the not-so-distant future.

The NFL players won't admit there's any drug use in their sport. Union chief Gene Upshaw reacted in horror to Bush's speech Tuesday night, saying, "I don't know who Bush is talking about, but he's not talking about the NFL, because we've already dealt with steroids, performance-enhancing drugs and all of that."

Right.

I'll pause here to allow your laughter to die down.

Upshaw knows better. He knows his players are smarter than that. They and their chemists are at least two steps ahead of the NFL's drug-testers. Only the real stooges get caught.

Major League Baseball is worse. The players won't agree to anything more than the barest minimum of testing and punishment for offenders. The system in place in baseball would be laughable if it weren't so sad.

It should be noted all of that is just fine with the football and baseball owners. Bush used to be one. He used to be Kevin McClatchy before he became the most powerful man in the world. That's neither here nor there now, but it's still intriguing to think what America might be like if McClatchy were president.

Slap me, please.

Bush hasn't been removed from the Texas Rangers long enough to have forgotten the premium the owners put on long home runs. They know the fans love them. That's why they put in their hitter-friendly rules and diluted their pitching with expansion and tightened their baseballs and built their bandbox ballparks.

Do you really think the owners want to see the end of steroids if there's any chance it would make the game's sluggers any less fearsome?

The same is true of the NFL owners. They can lie to themselves all they like about how their drug-testing is working -- better to sleep at night -- but they're not about to push harder for something that might detract from their successful, lucrative sport. Violent collisions between huge men sell. Why mess with that?

It's not as if it's the owners' sons who are potentially destroying their bodies with the performance-enhancing drugs. It's not their sons who might die in their 40s or 50s or 60s. You think that sounds cruel? Maybe it is, but it's pretty hard to feel much sympathy for the players. Aren't highly paid mercenaries supposed to know the risks when they take a job and start putting chemicals in their body?

The fans don't seem to care much, anyway. They're so used to cheating in sports that they've come to expect it. No one blinked when Sammy Sosa was caught using a corked bat. He's so lovable, hitting those mammoth home runs and doing that little heart-tapping, kiss-blowing thing that he does. No one cared that Mark McGwire was found with androstenedione in his locker. What difference did it make as long as he kept hitting those tape-measure shots, one after another, all the way to No. 70? Sure, there have been a few screams about Barry Bonds bulking up like Hulk Hogan, but that's more about his personality than steroids. People love to hate him.

The fans might be the biggest reason there won't be any change in sports soon. Nothing will change as long as they keep buying tickets to see the long home runs and brutal collisions, keep watching the games on television and supporting the sponsors. It's all about the money.

That's why Bush needs to refocus his strategy for his desperate bid to get re-elected. He needs to ignore this kind of impossible challenge and concentrate on more reasonable goals.

Saving face in Iraq.

Erasing the deficit.

Creating enduring peace in the Middle East.