Rumors and innuendo

Even at the high school level, rumors are part of the deal. Most of them are little more than side banter - speculating on what's going to happen with certain coaches who are coming and going, who might be in the mix for another job, certain teams and why they're going in one direction or the other - that never sees the light of day.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case with Maine South football and rumors that started circulating about a number of players testing positive for steroid use. A coach asked me Friday if I had heard about this rumor which was circulating through his circles - and he wasn't bringing it up with glee or a "you should try and get these guys" manner. Just wondering if I had heard anything about it.
Quite often you do have the proverbial "where there's smoke there's fire" with these things. Nothing surprises anyone anymore - unless you were "stunned" by Mark McGwire's recent "revelations" that he was just using the juice to get healthy and it had no effect on how many home runs he hit.
Another coach said he had also heard similar rumors being spread. So I called down to the IHSA on Monday to ask if there was any validity to any of this and one of the people there said there was none (the IHSA now performs random drug testing during its postseasons in hopes of deterring anything like this).
But the rumors were also cropping up on the internet - and kudos to Tim O'Halloran of the "Edgy Tim" website for quickly removing posted comments about it shortly after they appeared. The result was Maine South coach Dave Inserra had to come out in the media and defend the fact that no one on his team failed IHSA drug tests.
We'll likely never know who or how this rumor started. Was it someone unhappy with Maine South's success and looking for a way to try and drag the program down? Could be. And with today's technology it's easy for these things to spread quicker than a southern California wildfire.