When Houston Texans' linebacker Brian Cushing was notified in May of a failed drug test he took last September, he refused to believe the results came out correctly. There was no way the test could be right.

There must have been some mistake, Cushing thought.

Cushing vehemently denied testing positive for HCG, a fertility drug commonly used in conjunction with steroid cycles to help restart testosterone production. He said he never injected or digested any form of steroids and would stand by that conclusion.

In the end, though, that just didn’t matter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. A positive test is a positive test.

Per the NFL’s rules, Cushing became automatically ineligible for this season’s first four games after his positive test became public knowledge approximately three months ago.

Cushing appealed the suspension, but on Thursday Goodell upheld the ruling, which will keep the former USC Trojan out until Oct. 10 when Houston hosts the New York Giants.

The NFL issued this statement: "At the request of Texans owner Bob McNair, Commissioner Goodell reviewed additional medical information presented on behalf of Brian Cushing.

"The club and Cushing were notified today that after carefully considering all the information, including a review by outside medical experts, the Commissioner finds no basis for changing the decision that Mr. Cushing’s suspension for the first four games of the regular season remains in place."

Cushing was not available for comment Thursday.

The sad part about all of this is that there is a case in Cushing’s favor. It wouldn’t be hard to stop for a minute and think about believing him.

Cushing said he took numerous drug tests after the one he failed in September, and all of those came up clean. Cushing believed that he was completely innocent, to the point that he even offered to take a lie detector test to rid himself of the steroid-user label that will now follow him around.

Cushing took the test and passed it.

The problem is that there are just too many holes in the story for Goodell to believe it. The fact that Cushing said he played his “best football” after the September test is irrelevant.

What’s worse is Cushing’s reported explanation for his positive test. He offered up the alibi that he tested positive because he “over-trained.” According to Cushing, he worked out so hard that he experienced spikes in testosterone, which in return triggered the positive test.

In this day and age of medical intelligence, health, and drug awareness, that reasoning wasn’t going to go over too well. There have been too many, “I didn’t knowingly take steroids” sob stories in recent years to believe anything as loosely described as “over-training.”

This is not to say, however, that Cushing did indeed use steroids, because for all we  know, he may be telling the truth.

A positive test is a positive test, but a passed polygraph is a passed polygraph. So who knows?

Cushing has faced steroid allegations since his high school days, which could not have helped his case here, at least not in the public’s eye.

Many people thought Cushing ballooned as a linebacker at USC after leaving his home in New Jersey, but there’s never been any evidence to suggest that Cushing used steroids at Southern California.

Unfortunately for Cushing, Goodell had to make the difficult (maybe not so difficult if you asked Goodell) choice and refuse to rescind Cushing’s suspension.

Goodell had no other choice simply because he would have granted a way out for other steroid users if he granted Cushing his freedom.

The precedent that would have been set in Cushing’s case was much too dangerous for a guy who, after all, didn’t have inconclusive evidence stacked in his favor.

Fairly or unfairly, Cushing had to be a scapegoat.

If over-training has become a valid excuse for a positive drug test, then it could theoretically be applied to every professional athlete that tests positive in the future.

What makes Cushing’s reasoning so dangerous is the obvious question: What exactly constitutes over-training? How does an athlete determine when he is over-training, and how would doctors and trainers know the exact affects that stem from excess physical exertion?

It’s a muddy issue, an alibi that is impossible to defend because of its fluidity.

For years, it seemed as if the NFL simply turned its back on steroid use in its sport. The men who carried the NFL brand every week grew to become unfathomably strong, explosive, and powerful. How human bodies could withstand that kind of beating routinely, nobody knew.

And, more importantly, nobody cared.

The NFL was a juggernaut, the glistening diamond of American sport. Fans enjoyed the violence of the sport, physical damage to those involved be damned. Give us our Sundays, give us our football, and get the hell out of the way.

But as the years passed and baseball became essentially known as the grandfather sport of steroid use, we became more aware of the long-term dangers of steroids, and things changed.

Health became important. Safety became important.

The NFL has made great progress in the diagnosis and handling of concussions and head-related injuries. The same should be done for steroid use, and to the NFL’s credit, the league is doing that.

If Goodell let Cushing play in Week One this fall, the NFL would never have a compelling case in the fight against steroid use. One soft excuse would lead to others, and players and agents would always point back to Cushing.

We probably will never know if Cushing took steroids or not. It would be a shame if he really didn’t and serves a suspension. It’s already sad that a guy passes a polygraph test and, because of the history of our sporting society, we find it incredibly hard to believe him.

But Roger Goodell had to do it.

In the end, four games for Brian Cushing is a small price to pay for keeping the integrity of the NFL, and its case against steroid use, intact.

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