Wait a minute, wait a minute. Let's not get off track here. Drugs and stimulants and supplements and ludicrous workout schedules and hideous notions of what does and does not constitute "enhanced performance" are absolutely wreaking havoc on the collective body of America's sports-playing young men and women. They are cutting a black swath through the best athletes of our time in our country.

	Rashidi Wheeler's death was attributed to exercise-induced bronchial asthma.

They represent the very worst of us, a nearly complete disconnect from most of the basic notions that sports were invented to impart in the first place. They will take us down. And there is no finding in any single case that is going to dilute that grim, but undeniably supportable, version of the truth.

The Rashidi Wheeler story is about to go down an entirely different road, and only a fool would argue that it is necessarily an invalid one. With people on board like Johnnie Cochran and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Wheeler's family now is pursuing the question of whether Wheeler's death, no matter what caused it, could have been prevented by Northwestern University's providing adequate and appropriate medical care.

About that, the most reasonable reply from anyone looking from afar is this: It is possible. And if it is possible that a different medical response at the scene of Wheeler's fatal collapse during football practice would have made a difference, then it seems all the more likely that, as Rick Telander suggests in Tuesday's Chicago Sun-Times, Northwestern University will attempt to reach a quick settlement with the Wheeler family over the loss of their 22-year-old son.

But if in this process the message gets lost about supplements and training regimens and their incredibly dangerous effects, then we'll be the poorer as a sports-loving society. And programs will resume, quietly but effectively, with their over-the-top preparation schedules and their whispered suggestions to 310-pound linemen that they might need to "get stronger" or "come harder," and young glory-seeking athletes will resume ingesting the kinds of things that can ultimately trash their sculpted or mammoth (or mammoth, sculpted) bodies.

And we will lose.

The Cook County medical examiner has concluded that Wheeler died from exercise-induced bronchial asthma and essentially has discounted the presence of the banned stimulant ephedrine in Wheeler's system as a contributing factor in the tragedy. I can tell you without the slightest fear of being contradicted that, for thousands and thousands of high-school and collegiate athletes following the Wheeler story, the immediate response to that finding will be, "See? I'm good to go with my Ultimate Punch," or whatever stimulant- or muscle-mass-soaked supplement they happen to be taking in an effort to gain that extra fractional percentage of edge that they believe they'll need in order to become stars.

They will believe that Wheeler's death was nothing more than a fluke, and so will many of their coaches, whose brief bouts of soul-searching over their training schedules and their expectations will come to an abrupt end. Athletic directors will turn their attentions to other concerns. University presidents will get back to the business of balancing budgets.

And it will go on. The NCAA recently noted that, according to its own survey, more than 40 percent of the athletes under its umbrella use some kind of nutritional supplement; and do you follow the storyline here? This percentage represents only those respondents who were willing to acknowledge the use. Heavens, what might be the actual number? More than that, whose idea was it to call these substances "nutritional supplements"? If I were running a black market for this stuff, that's exactly what I would call it -- but of course I wouldn't need to black-market the kind of products that players like Rashidi Wheeler are said by teammates to have ingested because they're available over the counter.

Let's keep at least one eye on the ball here. Ephedrine, the substance found in supplements like Ultimate Punch (which Wheeler reportedly had been taking), is banned by the NCAA and the International Olympic Committee because, among other things, it has been linked to heart attacks and strokes. This is dangerous, dangerous stuff.

It also is stuff that has been shown to produce a fairly wicked shot of adrenaline, which is what makes it attractive to peak-performing athletes in the first place. Maybe it produces a sensation of increased energy. Maybe, in some bodies, it actually enhances endurance. To any athlete who is either competing at an elite level or hopes to be invited to so compete, that is one powerful lure.

It also might have contributed to the fate of Rashidi Wheeler, according to an expert on ephedra alkaloids, who told the Los Angeles Times that the ephedrine and caffeine in Wheeler's system, combined with intense exercise and possibly another stimulant contained in the asthmatic's inhaler, could have triggered heart arrythmia and sudden death.

Then again, it might not have -- and within that shadow of doubt lies the free pass to continue business as usual that you can be sure a chunk of American sporting society was hoping to discover.

Rashidi Wheeler's family is moving to the entirely different question of how its son was medically treated after he began to seize. You can almost feel the substance-ingesting athletic youth of the country moving right along with that line of thought. And you can feel the message being missed.

Mark Kreidler of the Sacramento Bee is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.