"And I think it's gonna be a long, long time ..."

The headlines were too kind, if anything, and barely reflective of the coverage inside. "Clemens Tries to Work Out of a Jam" indeed. Pop quiz, hotshots. You know you're in trouble when the New York Times:

A) Devotes the top 65 percent of its sports page to your press conference when the other major event of the previous day was, oh, I don't know ... college football's national championship game

B) Calls in a body language expert to call you guilty, the sort of move favored by Bill O'Reilly

C) Has its senior sports columnist call you a liar

D) Has its media columnist call the "60 Minutes" interview in which you defend yourself some weak sauce

E) All of the above

Now, the Yankee fans in the building will probably protest that there was no "F) Everything is fine, nothing to see" option, and good for them. In for a penny, in for a pound, and if you were willing to believe in the Legend of the Fat Traitor Hick way back when, no use throwing in the towel now. Gotta see this one through to the bitter, bulky end.

But everyone else should have chosen option Echo. Not for nothing, but Clemens probably committed career suicide up there at the podium Monday, strutting and huffing like a puffed-up rooster. The man was angry, to be sure, but it was hard to tell at what. The allegations? The media coverage? His water bottle? Very difficult to say.

What was clear is that a consensus has emerged. The new Conventional Wisdom can more or less be summed up in two points.

Point 1 -- He's guilty as shit

Point 2 -- He's a lying, backstabbing weasel

Now, the former is certainly a consequence of the widespread acceptance of the latter. Nothing factually new came out of the "60 Minutes" interview with Mike Wallace; the big draw was seeing Roger issue his denials live on tape, to an at least somewhat tough interviewer, with the lights on and the cameras rolling and all that. The evidence against him hasn't changed one bit. It's still all riding on the word of Brian McNamee, the former trainer who cut a deal with the Federales. No new test results or affadavits popped up since the Mitchell Report came out.

Rather it was Clemens' truly amazing disingenuity and blithe arrogance which turned even former supporters against him in the interim. Clemens attacked the allegations in the report head on, issuing a flat denial and moving on from there. He pulled out the bully moves -- statments of personal affront and aggrievery, threats of lawsuits, references to his awards and honors.

Then, he taped the interview with Wallace, where he claimed to be completely unaware of Andy Pettitte's HGH situation. As many folks have pointed out, Pettitte is the definition of a follower; he might well be described as a Clemens discipline. It runs counter to everything we know about the longtime teammates' relationship to think the pathetically devout Pettitte would have used any type of PED without the tacit or explicit approval of his buddy.

Clemens also made points with no connection to the world that you, I, and Angel Pagan live in. "If he's doing that to me, I should have a third ear coming out of my forehead," he argued, regarding the alleged steroid injections. "I should be pulling tractors with my teeth." Which would be plausible, except for the fact that dozens of current and former players have admitted to taking 'roids, and it's taken for granted that none of them have any extra appendages, organs, or membranes to speak of. Certainly, we haven't caught Guillermo Mota roping steers with his jaw (yet). I mean, what on Earth is the Rocket talking about? Even the most strident denouncers of the juice aren't clamining its side effects are comparable with those of, say, The Ooze.

Let's also recall the sliming of McNamee, who was of course under tremendous pressure by the government agents (tossing around the threat of jail, that is) to tell only the truth. In the "60 Minutes" piece, Wallace tossed up a softball to the Rocket along the lines of, "Why do you think [McNamee] would tell the investigators what he did?" Clemens responded with indignation. "To stay out of jail!" was basically his response.

This, needless to say, only makes sense if you think the government had it out for Clemens, and wanted to compel McNamee's testimony in that regard. There's no evidence of this, and indeed as McNamee was already naming plenty of notable names and scads of Yankees, there can't have been an issue as to volume. As to personal motivation, we need only listen to the taped telephone conversation between the two to hear how the outing personally affected McNamee. The voice is that of a sorrowful, apologetic, almost syncophantic man.

The voice of a liar? Literally nothing would lead you to such a conclusion.

Meaning, of course, Clemens' leaking of the tape wound up being a total backfire, as McNamee clearly never admits to saying anything false and Clemens' insinuations to the contrary rang hollow. It was also a complete backstab, which never goes over well.

Probably most damaging, in the end, was his admissions to B-12 and lidocaine injections, followed by his cavalier disclosure that he "was eating Vioxx like it was Skittles." First of all, what? Not even Brett Favre would be down with that. Second of all, you might have saved some money by going generic. But most importantly, you simply can't concede all those points -- essentially, that you're addicted to non-criminal performance enhancers and painkillers -- and then pretend it's a Stretch Armstrong for someone to think you might have taken an illegal PED. People can read between the lines just fine. People can sense context. The context of a painkiller junkie getting on his high horse about drugs is known most commonly as "horseshit."

Which feeds back into Point 1. No one has ever come out and said "I injected Mark McGwire with steroids" (well, unless you count Jose Canseco as a human, and few of us do), but look at him polling under 25 percent in the recent HOF vote. Sammy Sosa was on the Grimsley Affadavit, but even before, with his 600 home runs and zero positive drug scans, nobody thinks he's got a shot at the Hall any time soon. Why? They assume he's guilty. Q.E.D.

Leaving us ... where? With a likely retirement, and a Hall of Fame environment positively poisonous for those suspected of PED use, and an increasingly hostile fan environment. Rocket Fuel t-shirt sales down? Only the beginning. Say goodbye to them T-Mobile ads and MLB.com promos and cutsey little appearances at Koby Clemens' minor-league games. I'm thinking Bonds-level boos, Palmeiro-style derision, Sosa-level irrelevance. Arguably the greatest pitcher of all time, certainly the best since Walter Johnson was on the hill, and he's going to end up more Ben Johson than Carl Lewis. It would be sad if he weren't so despicable. Quite a hypothetical, I know.

It would of course be a stretch to say I'm upset at any of this. Some people just have it coming, and Roger Clemens had it coming more than most.