This Week's Opus: Phelps

This is what I've been cooking up all week. Eleven-hour days on the computer at work does not lend well to blogging at home. The last thing I wanted to do once I put my feet up was get on a computer. What was first assigned, sealed and delivered as an op-ed on Michael Phelps' post-Olympics year was then turned into a news piece.

"It was great, but now I'm being told you have to scrap the first person out of it."

"Great..."

Click here for the news piece we posted to ABC News today, but I figured you'd enjoy and appreciate my original, heart-filled version below:

It's been just over a year since Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal in the Water Cube at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, breaking Mark Spitz's previous record of seven golds and winning millions of dollars in endorsements in the meantime.

It was one weekend I was actually happy to be stuck at work because I got to witness history and report it. I've swum my entire life, but I still can't help get the chills every time I watch Phelps race. His seamless technique of riding the water is like nothing I have ever witnessed.

But while Phelps may have a lot of luck and immeasurable talent in the pool, he has proven over the past year he does not have much of that on land.

Just a few short weeks after winning five golds and one silver at the World Championships in Rome, the 24-year-old Maryland native got into a fender bender and was cited for driving with an expired and out-of-state license.

The only word that comes to mind is "D'oh!" I couldn't believe it and was dreading the Monday at work where I knew I'd be bombarded with "What do you think of Phelps?" "Can you believe Phelps?" "What is going on with Phelps?"

Honestly guys, I don't know. He continues to baffle me with his tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

While police ruled the accident was not Phelps' fault -- the woman he hit ran a red light -- Phelps admitted he drank a beer roughly an hour before getting in the car.

He suffered a minor ankle injury, but wrote on his Facebook page it was nothing to worry about: "I am fine and glad nobody was seriously hurt."

Here we go again, I thought.

This isn't the first time Phelps has had trouble behind the wheel. In November 2004, following his successful Athens Olympics where he won six gold medals and two bronze, Phelps, 19 at the time, was arrested for driving under the influence.

He pleaded guilty and was ordered to serve 18 months' probation. Phelps was also fined $250, had to speak to high school students about drinking and driving, and even had to attend a Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) meeting.

In an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Show, Phelps said it was an "isolated incident" and that he had "definitely let myself down and my family down ... I think I let a lot of people in the country down."

Like a bad case of deja-vu, Phelps found trouble once again following the 2008 Olympics.

On Jan. 2, the British tabloid News of the World ran a photo of Phelps that had the world aghast with the headline: "What a Dope." The uber-athlete was shown front and center inhaling from a massive bong. Some were horrified while some argued it made Phelps a sort of real-life hero who not only swims for gold but he eats, drinks and parties just like us.

"It was bad and stupid judgment," Phelps told the cameras minutes before a workout at his childhood pool in Baltimore. "And something I'll always live with."

USA Swimming suspended Phelps from competing for three months and Kellogg cut its endorsement ties with Phelps.

"Like most Americans, and like Michael Phelps himself, we were disappointed in his behavior," Kellogg wrote in a statement.

If Phelps was a Hollywood movie star, his publicist would have been fired by now, but is his behavior that much different from the rest of the male population his age?

According to a 2005 National Survey on Drug Use & Health, 55.8 percent of males aged 18 to 25 had smoked marijuana within their lifetime, 32.9 percent within the past year and 21.1 within the past month.

These statistics do not excuse Phelps' behavior, but they do show he's acting like a pretty typical 24-year-old male and one who probably didn't get to see the lights of a party for eight years.

Rowdy Gaines, three-time Olympic gold medalist and analyst for television networks ESPN and NBC, told me, "You have to remember this kid -- from 2000 until 2008 he missed about seven total days of swimming practice. He trained -- he lived, breathed and ate swimming for eight years. And all the sudden he took six months off. That's a huge jump from one type of a lifestyle.

"I don't think he did anything different from any normal kid of this day and age," Gaines added. "I'm not condoning what he did along the way and the mistakes he made, but I'm not living in his shoes and his transgressions were way overblown."

When I asked some of my followers on Twitter to contribute to the conversation the response followed this same theme:

"Who cares?"

"It's only news because of who he is!"

Even one from a former teammate of mine, "The Phelps incident is not news. Though, Phelps is an idiot for driving w/ suspended license. Pay your fines, dude!"

Kids are taught to never drink an ounce of alcohol before getting behind the wheel of a car, and while my dad strives to enforce this (more than my mom), I've certainly had a beer or a glass of wine with dinner and driven home safely. I challenge you to find a living, breathing adult who has never done this. If they say they haven't, they're probably telling you a big fib.

Gaines says besides being a typical "immature" 24-year-old, part of Phelps' struggle has been going from a virtual nobody to an instant celebrity with his eighth gold medal in Beijing.

"The problem with Michael is he went from being a very small fish in a very large pond, so to speak, into going into a very small fishbowl," Gaines told ABC News. "He went from being a swimmer to being a celebrity... That's a lot to handle."

"They write about him on TMZ. They write about celebrities, they don't write about swimmers," Gaines added. "If he'd won seven golds and one silver, nobody'd be writing about him. He's perfect -- that moved him into one whole different stratosphere of what to write about."

Christine Brennan, a sports columnist for USA Today, said Phelps and his agents decided to make him into a role model and maybe he just wasn't ready for that.

"They definitely made a conscious effort to put him out there as a role model in swimming -- get kids involved in the sport and make the sport of swimming so much bigger," Brennan told ABC News.

"They should have let him be a 23-year-old and a 23-year-old who wanted to party," said Brennan. "They made a choice to try and have it both ways -- make Michael into the all-American role model but also for Michael to party and do all the fun things that Michael wanted to do... My suggestion would have been to let him be a 23-year-old to go to the frat parties and to not set him up as the all-American pitchman."

Martin Binks, director of behavioral health at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, agreed that some athletes tend to act out after a victory -- sometimes to the detriment of their public image.

"It's pretty common human behavior to go out and celebrate after a major success," Binks said. "Unfortunately, athletes are put in the limelight and expected to be role models."

Gaines gave me a little insight into what's coming up for Phelps over the next three years. Phelps' coach Bob Bowman splits the three years until the 2012 Olympics in London into two 18-month periods. For the first 18 months, Phelps will be focused on training, with few really crucial international competitions, while the last 18 will be a lot of racing.

Gaines just wants Phelps to keep doing what he's doing because he's had a tremendous impact on the sport.

"Whatever makes him happy. I want him to be happy because I want him to be around," said Gaines. "Just like golf desperately needs Tiger, we need Michael. It's a trickle-down effect -- he helps the ratings, helps the crowds... I'm hoping he sticks around to 2016 -- I hope he just keeps swimming."

Phelps, like so many of us, is happy when he's doing what he does best -- and that's swimming. He's always been sort of awkward in front of the camera and under the limelight.

Gaines said, "He lives his life best -- and he's admitted it -- when he's swimming, when he's focused and doing what he does best -- being the best swimmer in the world."

The NFL is welcoming back a player who electrocuted and tortured dogs for money and pleasure. If that doesn't put things into perspective, I don't know what will. We hold our Olympic athletes to a high standard. As Brennan so aptly put it, "The word 'Olympics' takes people's breaths away."

We can surely forgive a couple of Phelps' nights, although clumsy, out on the town. Phelps makes swimmers proud to have been a part of the sport at one time or another. I'll get over him having a beer and I look forward to him taking my breath away, once again, in 2012.