Golden Tate stood in the Giants fieldhouse and took his medicine like a man, a look of pain on his face as he offered his mea culpa.

“The tough thing I am dealing with is I’m letting down a lot of people,” he said softly. “My family, the guys in the locker room, the people in the organization that brought me here. That’s kind of what’s been crushing me with this whole situation.”

He faced the unpleasant music for a little more than eight minutes, and toward the end he said:

“I’ve lost a lot of sleep, and it has kinda hurt me to my core having to explain to the organization what’s going on.”

As much as you might have felt on a human level for Golden Tate, he has no one to blame but himself, and he learned it the hard way.

You do the PED crime, you do the time. Whether you thought it was or wasn’t a crime at the time or not. Whether your fertility doctor gave you and your wife faulty information or not.

There is a zero-tolerance policy for cheaters, and there is the same zero-tolerance policy for naïve innocents and the misinformed. To the NFL, it doesn’t matter whether Tate gets the benefit of the doubt in the court of public opinion.

Tate confessed to taking clomiphene, and if you take clomiphene, the NFL substance abuse police will punish you. So Tate will spend his first four games as a New York Giant watching the New York Giants play football without him.

Clomiphene is an estrogen modulator that can treat infertility. Clomid for men is used when a low sperm count is caused by low testosterone levels.

Once he realized in late April that he was in PED jeopardy, Tate reported it to the Giants and to the NFL before his test came back positive.

Good intentions do not get you off the hook. And so Tate lost his appeal.

“Ultimately,” Tate said, “I’m responsible for what I put in my body.”

Bingo!

End of story.

If Eli Manning took clomid — for whatever reason — Eli Manning earns himself a four-game suspension.

From the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency:

“Clomiphene is not FDA-approved for use by men for any condition. On the most recent Clomid product insert, the FDA states that are ‘no adequate or well-controlled studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of Clomid in the treatment of male infertility.’ However, it may be prescribed off-label, meaning that a doctor may prescribe a medication for a use that is not indicated on the FDA’s approved packaging insert or label. Once the FDA approves a drug, healthcare providers can typically prescribe the drug for an unapproved use when they judge that it is medically appropriate for their patient.”

Steroid.com reminds us that steroid users have turned to Clomid as a Post Cycle Therapy (PCT) treatment.

“I don’t have all the answers,” Tate said. “It’s a slippery slope. If you let my situation slide, then you have other guys that would probably try to say the same thing and it can open up a can of worms.”

Bingo! Again.

Tate trusted a doctor he claimed told him that he had given the substance to other NFL players.

“If the doctor says, ‘I’m not sure,’ I would have 100 percent looked into it,” Tate said.

It’s no excuse. Tate, the Giants’ $37.5 million man, is the one who has to be sure.

Suing the doctor, which Tate is considering, and Pat Shurmur supporting him might make him feel better, but it won’t get him back playing the game he loves before Week 5.

“I totally believe him. He told me exactly what happened, the timeline of things, and he was very open and honest when anybody asked him any questions behind the scenes,” Shurmur said.

Tate has long been one of the good guys. But good guys make bad choices and bad mistakes too.

“Look at me, I’m not trying to cheat,” he said. “I think I have represented the NFL shield pretty well in my career. I have achieved a lot of things, and I hope this doesn’t smear that reputation that I have worked very hard for.”

He has caught 611 passes and 38 TDs over a 10-year career. He doesn’t deserve to be remembered only for this. This too shall pass. Just not soon enough for Golden Tate.