Lance Armstrong is considering finally admitting that he doped, Juliet Macur of the New York Times reports.
According to Macur, Armstrong "has told associates and antidoping officials that he is considering publicly admitting that he used banned performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions during his cycling career."
The motivation for this confession, according to Macur?
Armstrong wants to compete in organized sports again.
And Lance Armstrong is reportedly hoping that, if he finally comes clean, the anti-doping agencies will lift his lifetime ban.
It's easy to understand why Lance Armstrong would want to compete in organized sports again: He's an extraordinary athlete and competing is what he does best. And it's possible that Armstrong's conversations with the doping agencies are just part of a broader legal strategy to get agreements from every entity that might come after Armstrong in advance of an Armstrong confession.
But from a broader perspective--a moral perspective--this might be called "putting the cart before the horse."
Because there's a lot more riding on a Lance Armstrong doping confession than whether Lance Armstrong can compete in organized sports again.
Specifically, there's Armstrong's future public reputation.
And his financial fortune.
And the careers and reputations of the many, many people that Armstrong lied about, insulted, attacked, and destroyed over the years while protecting his own fortune and reputation by lying about racing clean.
And then there is just the simple, moral "doing the right thing," which--after more than a decade very publicly doing the wrong thing, again and again--Armstrong might want to consider doing, assuming that doing the right thing is something that is even remotely important to him.
In other words, there is something more important in a Lance Armstrong confession than competing in organized sports will ever be:
The beginning, possibly, of redemption.
Because, don't forget, this confession would come after a decade of explicit, angry, and vicious denials, in which Armstrong and his lawyers attacked many former teammates, colleagues, and friends who helped him achieve all of his victories and then did nothing more than tell the truth.
It would come after Armstrong received tens of millions of dollars in prize money, sponsorships, legal settlements, and other compensation that depended on his telling the truth about having raced clean.
And it would come after a decade in which millions of Armstrong fans wanted to believe him and gave him the benefit of the doubt despite an ever-increasing mountain of evidence that he was lying...only to be made to feel like fools in the end.