Under the deal BALCO laboratory owner Victor Conte, who has confessed to providing performance enhancing drugs to some of world's most famous athletes, will admit to one count of conspiracy to distribute steroids and a money laundering count. Other charges will be dropped.
The pleas in U.S. federal court, however, could spare top athletes the embarrassment of testifying in a trial in September, leaving many questions surrounding the scandal unanswered.
"Somebody who systematically tried to destroy the whole basis of sport by helping athletes and their coaches to cheat gets to walk away with a four-month sentence," said Pound.
"An athlete who got caught doing the same sort of thing gets two years. There's certainly a mixed message.
"Part of it is the difference between the regularity system of sport and the criminal justice system, but the message it not that encouraging."
"It kind of ends up with a whimper and a very light sentence that many think is not commensurate with the gravity of the offences."
More than a dozen elite athletes have been suspended since the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency identified BALCO as the source of a previously undetectable steroid in 2003.
