Earlier this week, word broke that Houston Texans linebacker Brian Cushing tested positive for a banned substance early in the 2009 season. As a result, Cushing, the '09 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year, was suspended for the first four games of 2010. Interestingly, the NFL knew about the positive test—which, after viewing this before and after, was not exactly shocking—but the former USC star was allowed to remain on the field for all 16 games.

Due to the new development, the Associated Press decided to put the '09 Defensive Rookie of the Year vote up for a recount. Although I disagreed with the AP's decision to do so, it was surprising how easily Cushing was able to win again despite the PED cloud hanging over his on-field accomplishments.

Reacting to the news, NBC Sports' baseball writer Craig Calcaterra shed light on the double standard with which professional baseball and football players are held to, mainly by the media and some politicians, when it comes to steroid use.

Calcaterra:

And it is a totally different reaction. Cushing is the third NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year to be suspended for performance-enhancing substances in the last eight seasons, following Julius Peppers and Shawne Merriman.  The equivalent to this in baseball would be if Evan Longoria, Ryan Howard and Hanley Ramirez all tested positive for PEDs. If that had come to pass Congress would be involved, columnists would have their heart medication doubled and we would all be forced to think of the children under penalty of law.

In football? No big whoop.  No one wringing their hands over the NFL's obvious PED problem. No one excoriating the league for having a testing and appeals procedure that allows for a five-month lag between the failed test and the appeal and another three month delay between the appeal and the decision, all of which allowed a known-PED user to play the games in which he won the Rookie of the Year award in the first place.

The post is worth a full read, but I really enjoyed the point about the Rookie of the Year awards. It is hard to deny that athletes who test positive in baseball are treated differently than their football counterparts. After reading it, though, tauntr wanted to directly quantify how different each sports is treated when it comes to cheating. So we decided to dig deeper into the ridiculously obvious double standard, finding that the hypocrisy is even larger than expected. Indeed, check out the alarming results from our study, in graph form.