When the drug testers at the 1988 Seoul Olympics busted Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson for steroids, it was the worst thing that ever happened to track and field. Until now.

The Johnson scandal damaged the reputation of the sport in ways unquantifiable. Surely hundreds of millions of dollars of sponsorship money evaporated in the aftermath, as even people who had no interest in sports began to mutter than mantra, "track is dirty, track is dirty."

Even before, insiders acknowledged that Johnson had no post-Olympic marketability. A clean Johnson would have scored even fewer endorsements and opportunities than the wonderful Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who won more medals and struck out in a big way financially.

So if the bust of a zero like Johnson could have such a long-term effect on the sport and its financial prospects, what could be the long-term effects of the discovery of the new designer drug THG?

We still don't know the extent of the case, but we know it will be huge. It's like hearing a shoe drop and knowing that your upstairs neighbor is a centipede. More, much more, to come.

Already five track athletes have been nailed for positive tests for the designer steroid that BALCO Labs in California is under suspicion of having created and marketed. Among the names are Regina Jacobs and Kevin Toth. The authorities are working their way through more samples from the USA Championships, the World Championships and out-of-competition testing. There will probably be more positive tests. They're even considering the legal options of testing samples frozen after the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City.

(The Washington Post now reports that Chryste Gaines and hurdler Chris Phillips tested positive for modafinil, the drug that tripped up Kelli White at the World Championships. No word on whether Gaines also was a narcolepsy sufferer. Also, 400-meter star Calvin Harrison admitted testing positive for modafinil this summer.)

This time, we have something else to go on, as well. The marketers at BALCO were anxious that the world know they worked with many, many celebrity athletes; they publicized these names well. So even if we don't get positive tests on all of them, we can expect that a great many careers will be tainted with the stigma of guilt by association. The list of names is, quite frankly, shocking, and includes many of the most prominent names in track and field as well as other sports.

Another twist is that the IRS and Treasury authorities are involved in the case, as a criminal investigation into the company's finances has been launched. We might see athletes who get away without a positive test but are implicated as customers during courtroom proceedings.

Naturally, we will hear from them that not all of BALCO's customers took the drug, that some were really only going there to pick up legitimate vitamins. Some might say they took the drug, but they thought it was a legitimate nutritional supplement. Some will say they can't figure out why their names were dragged through the mud, they never went there in their lives, except for the time that their car ran out of gas on Gilbreth Road and a stranger helped them out of the rain.

And, like so much BS, they will hope the story will soon be flushed away, and they can resume making money from the sponsors and fans that held them in high regard before.

One of the most intriguing fallouts to the story is that USA Track and Field has reacted in much the same way as Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca: shocked, shocked, to find out there is drug taking going on in this sport. And the organization is pushing through with a new, far tougher set of penalties, too late for this latest scandal, but hopefully enough to scare future miscreants away from the perils of drugs.

For the first time, USATF, as part of a new proposed "zero-tolerance" drug policy, is suggesting cash fines to go along with heavier penalties. It also would penalize coaches of athletes who are implicated as drug users. And while I welcome a world with serious penalties for those who cause the sport's reputation to be dragged through the mud, I can't help but feel that someone is blowing a lot of smoke.

In the past, the sport's aspirations for tougher drug penalties died on the vine. They were rejected by the lawyers, who insisted that they were not defensible if the athlete took legal action against the USATF and IAAF. Haven't we seen so many athletes with tough lawyers essentially blow their opposition out of the water to the point where it seemed more athletes were getting drug charges dismissed than were getting suspensions?

So what has changed in the legal climate? I'm no lawyer, but I just don't recall hearing about any recent Constitutional amendments that closed the loopholes for sports cheats. We're still going to have to hear about due process, confidentiality and protection against restraint of trade. These are all important things that we need to make sure are available to the innocent. And I don't see how we're going to ever have a firing squad take care of the guilty.

Once all the smoke clears, what will we be left with? We will still have athletes, all of whom will swear they are innocent. We will still have the lure of gold in our sport, and the temptation that goes with it. And no matter how the USATF rewrites its drug penalties, no matter what the other sports involved do, we will have another generation of people out there, not sports fans at all, who will recite the mantra, "track is dirty, track is dirty."

I hate to be a cynic. When I was a child it made it hard for me to believe in the magic of Santa Claus at Christmas. But I enjoy the holidays now. I am somehow able to suspend my disbelief.

I suppose I can keep doing that at the Olympics, every time I see a gold medal ceremony.

Jeff Hollobaugh, former managing editor of Track and Field News, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached by e-mail at michtrack@aol.com.