Feds would have trouble convicting Lance Armstrong

The thinking went like this: It would be tough as year-old beef jerky to convict Barry Bonds in a Bay Area courtroom of lying about the use of performance-enhancing drugs, that convincing a federal jury made up of those from the area in which Bonds became baseball's home run king and before a judge whose rulings suggested she owned season tickets to the Giants seemed more impossible than Bonds fitting into a size small hat.

The thinking was right.

Imagine then how difficult it would be to convict Lance Armstrong and his most fervent supporter: the world of cancer.

There is having a section of baseball fans on your side in the court of public opinion and then there is having those who have been affected by or stricken with our most deadly and frightening disease, which means the majority of those walking planet Earth.

The government won't be trying to convict merely a sports hero if Armstrong is indicted on charges of fraud. It will be attempting to take down, in many eyes, a universal treasure who has done more to aid cancer research than anyone else alive. It will challenge the weight of 80 million yellow LIVESTRONG bracelets and more than $400 million in funds raised to fight the dreaded C word.

Memo to the feds: Good luck with that.

That's not to say they shouldn't try harder than against any other suspected doping athlete, including Bonds.

Armstrong wouldn't simply be the biggest fish to catch. It would be like hooking a whale shark the size of Texas.

For good reason.

I don't believe in Superman outside of a comic book or movie screen. My faith isn't strong enough to accept someone owned the natural powers not only to beat cancer, but then remained clean of PEDs to win the world's most grueling bike race seven straight times while his closest competitors were all doped out of their minds.

That's fairy tale stuff suitable to line the shelves of your local bookstore. Hundreds of negative tests mean nothing in the doping world. Just ask Marion Jones.

Armstrong dominated the world's dirtiest sport at the height of human growth hormone and designer steroids, and we're supposed to believe he did so without doping while all the other riders around him either admitted to or were caught doing so.

I just love good fiction.

I don't care about Tyler Hamilton or Floyd Landis, about former teammates of Armstrong who are liars and cheaters themselves. There isn't a person in this Armstrong saga who doesn't own some sort of agenda -- with King Lance possessing the largest one -- and to consider any of them likable is nauseating.

Cheaters don't prosper.

They just get richer.

But if the "60 Minutes" piece with Hamilton on Sunday convinced more people Armstrong indeed used EPO and testosterone and underwent blood transfusions in preparing for and winning his Tour de France titles, there's no guarantee such claims will ultimately lead to him spending time in a cell.

Society will always consider the cancer side of Armstrong far more compelling than the racing side. You would think they go pedal to pedal, that somehow they have remained entwined over the years.

But as time passes and more come forward claiming they either knew of or saw Armstrong dope, those inspired by him conquering cancer seem even more steadfast in their support of him.

It's easy to understand. My best friend died from cancer in the eighth grade. Two of my uncles died from it. My cousin continues to battle it. Armstrong has for years been the face millions upon millions of people have come to identify with survival. His has been a message always viewed as more important than any suspicion of doping.

Upon his return to cycling in 2009, Armstrong stated his comeback needed to be measured in number of lives saved than races won.

I can see federal prosecutors banging their heads against courtroom tables now.

Believe it. Bonds, Jones, Roger Clemens ... none comes close to the idea of Lance Armstrong being indicted and facing a jury. He is a hero to millions who has been untouchable to feds chasing doping allegations without the aid of a smoking gun.

Cycling great Greg LeMond once said if Armstrong's story is true, it would be the greatest comeback in the history of sport, but if it is not, it would be the greatest fraud.

Either way, convicting him of the latter or anything else could prove near impossible.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday and Thursday on "Monsters of the Midday," Fox Sports Radio 920 AM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.