Why fans shouldn't forgive Armstrong

The United States Anti-Doping Agency has brought formal charges against Lance Armstong, a seven-time Tour de France champion. He denies using performance-enhancing drugs. Click through the gallery to see other athletes accused of using drugs to boost their careers.

Olympic track star Marion Jones was sentenced to six months in prison in 2008 for lying to federal prosecutors investigating the use of performance-enhancing substances.

Baseball outfielder Barry Bonds, the single-season and all-time home run record holder, was convicted in 2011 of obstruction of justice for impeding a grand jury investigating the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Bonds had testified that he thought his personal trainer was giving him arthritis balm and flaxseed oil, not steroids or testosterone.

Slugger Mark McGwire evaded questions about steroid use before Congress in 2005 but in 2010 admitted that he had used steroids during the 1990s.

Pitching legend Roger Clemens is on trial on charges that he lied to Congress in 2008 about being injected with human growth hormone and steroids by his former trainer.

Home-run hitter Sammy Sosa was among the players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003 testing by Major League Baseball, according to the New York Times.

Mixed martial arts heavyweight fighter Alistair Overeem failed a random drug test in 2012 but blames it on prescribed anti-inflammatory medication for an injury.

New Orleans Saints defensive lineman Charles Grant tested positive for banned substances in 2008 and was suspended for the rest of the season. He is currently a free agent.

Former New Orleans Saints running back Deuce McAllister tested positive for a banned diuretic in 2008.

Shawne Merriman, then of the San Diego Chargers, was suspended for four games after testing positive for steroids in 2006.

Former linebacker Bill Romanowski admitted using steroids during his career.

Houston Texans linebacker Brian Cushing was suspended for four games after violating the NFL policy on performance-enhancing drugs in 2010.

HIDE CAPTION

Sport's era of shame?

Sport's era of shame?

Sport's era of shame?

Sport's era of shame?

Sport's era of shame?

Sport's era of shame?

Sport's era of shame?

Sport's era of shame?

Sport's era of shame?

Sport's era of shame?

Sport's era of shame?

Sport's era of shame?

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Editor's note: Jeff Pearlman is a columnist for SI.com. He blogs at jeffpearlman.com. His most recent book is "Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton." Follow him on twitter @jeffpearlman

(CNN) -- They are always the last to understand.

It's weird, isn't it, the way our greatest cheaters and liars go so far and so hard in their efforts to win and dominate and overcome that, en route, they fail to see the inevitable downfall that awaits?

Back in the early 2000s, when I was a baseball writer at Sports Illustrated, Barry Bonds treated everyone —teammates, coaches, opponents, fans, writers — as if they were specks of crud beneath his (regularly manicured) fingernails. He camped out in front of a wall of four lockers, had his own clubhouse videographer, his own clubhouse physical therapist, his own perky publicists. He was the greatest home run hitter who ever lived: a slugger who, well into his late 30s, was bashing 450-foot shots over the deepest of outfield walls.

Then — Balco. And Game of Shadows. And flaxseed oil. And embarrassing testimony.

Jeff Pearlman

Where is Barry Bonds today? Answer: Who the hell cares? His website is down. His cards can be had, straight up, in exchange for two Kirk McCaskills and a Sil Campusano. He will never be hired to work in the game, as either a broadcaster or coach. His records — in the minds of most fans — don't count. He is invisible. Worse than invisible.

He is insignificant.

News: Lance Armstrong banned from world Ironman events over doping probe

Lance Armstrong victim of vendetta?

Armstrong suspended from Ironman

2005: Lance Armstrong denies doping

Which leads us to Lance Armstrong. In case you missed the news, Wednesday morning the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency filed new charges against the seven-time Tour de France winner, threatening to strip the cycling legend of his triumphs. According to the agency, blood samples taken from Armstrong in 2009 and 2010 are "fully consistent with blood manipulation including EPO use and/or blood transfusions." The agency also accuses Armstrong of using and promoting the use of EPO (a blood booster), blood transfusions, testosterone, HGH and anti-inflammatory steroids. In an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," Tyler Hamilton, Armstrong's former teammate, said he witnessed the star using EPO on multiple occasions.

Armstrong, of course, denies all the charges. I don't believe him. He says he is clean and innocent -- just as Barry Bonds was clean and innocent, just as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and Marion Jones and Shawne Merriman and every other too-good-to-possibly-be-true athletic freak was clean and innocent, too. He is a victim of the media. A victim of jealousy. A victim of haters. A victim of sport inconsistencies. Why, he's passed 350 tests and, even if the testing system is a complete joke, well, hey, he passed.

Ludicrous.

What Lance Armstrong is allegedly doing -- what all athletes in his shoes seem to do — is beyond damaging. Across the world, millions of people believe in Armstrong's narrative. They love his wins, yes, but what drives them and inspires them is the way he faced cancer and battled back from a near-death experience. Young children in pediatric care have been relayed his story, have been told that one day, if you stay strong and fight and believe, you, too, can be just like Lance Armstrong.

Sigh.

Surely, somewhere along the way, Armstrong apparently convinced himself that there was no other way. As the common athletic thinking goes: If everyone else is cheating, I need to cheat, too. That logic, now pervasive throughout all levels of sport, has turned our athletic endeavors into fraudulent clown shows.

For every Bonds and McGwire and Roger Clemens, there were clean ballplayers being robbed of their greatness. I'll never forget a conversation I once had with Sal Fasano, a journeyman catcher who spent his nine-team, 11-year big league career desperately trying to hold on to a job. We were chatting about all the catchers who were named in the Mitchell Report; all the men who loaded up, then stole the positions he was battling for.

"There's an idea that everyone cheats," Fasano said. "Well, I don't, and I never have. For me, it's about integrity. That's what counts."

Like Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong is the last to know where he is headed. We are already beginning to speak of him as we do Alf and Emmanuel Lewis and Small Wonder on one of those "I Love the '80s" shows. We'll look back at his cycling reign and shrug, because it will be merely an illusion, an ugly period when people cheated to win, then faced a lifetime of banishment.

News: Lance Armstrong responds to agency's doping allegations

We will laugh. Then we will shrug. Then — nothingness.

Lance Armstrong will be invisible.

As he should be.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jeff Pearlman.