Michael Phelps Suspended for 3 Months By USA Swimming

Life has an interesting way of showing even the most famous how the ups and downs work. This summer in Beijing, Michael Phelps was our national hero, forcing any American worth their weight in red, white and blues to wear out their respective couches when he swam. That was a high point for the young Olympian.

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Now is the low. After the pot pictures heard 'round the world hit the newsstands last week, everyone has been jumping quickly off the Phelps bandwagon and quickly on the ridicule van. Now? Phelps will be out of swimming for three months after USA Swimming suspended him.

"This is not a situation where any anti-doping rule was violated, but we decided to send a strong message to Michael because he disappointed so many people, particularly the hundreds of thousands of USA Swimming member kids who look up to him as a role model and a hero," the federation said in a statement.

The Phelps story has become one of intense argument. On one hand, you have the critics that would throw stones if Phelps was indeed strapped to a stick in the middle of town, denouncing their beloved star because of the mistakes.

Others have taken the "ignorance" argument, saying that Phelps can do whatever he wants in his free time as long as he doesn't get caught by some digital camera.

We even have some critics saying that there really isn't anything so bad about this. It's just marijuana. He's still just a kid. Why do we have to kill our hero just because of this?

Drugs are something that find their way into sports day in and day out. We deal with athletes being caught with pot (hello, Micheal Vick at the Miami airport) all the time, and we deal with it. This is different. This was our kid. He was our boy. The highest-tier athletes around loved him during that improbable stretch, and celebrities even admitted to occasionally getting shivers down their spine when his long arms paddled through the lanes.

It might not be a race issue per se, but it is a white kid that had role model slapped on him (whether he liked it or not) getting caught doing something that is actually available to most kids, even if parents don't want to believe so. It's pot. Anyone can get their hands on it. Anyone can figure out how to use it. With Phelps being someone that parents were proud to point to as a fairly straight player, his grilling seems to be as atomic as possible.

I think a suspension was necessary because it showed that this isn't condoned in our society. Do I agree with all the downfall that has landed on Phelps? Maybe not, but that is how life is. Sometimes you have good days, sometimes you don't.