Don’t label Bear as steroid user, By: Nick Hut

BOURBONNAIS – Obafemi Ayanbadejo sounded like a guy whose longtime girlfriend just broke up with him.

The Bears’ fullback was confused and hurt. He also was determined to keep his head up and move forward.

No love affair ended Thursday for Ayanbadejo, but something he loves was at least temporarily taken away from him.

Ayanbadejo will have to give up football for four weeks starting Sept. 1. He will not be paid. He will not be allowed to practice or be at the Bears’ facility. He will not play in any games, either.

Under the NFL’s drug policy, this is Ayanbadejo’s punishment for testing positive for a banned substance in January. Although it is easy to sympathize with him, he is at least partially to blame for a lack of diligence.

“I’m human,” he said. “I’m not perfect. I make mistakes.”

As Ayanbadejo noted, no player has won an appeal of a suspension for using a banned substance. The NFL’s policy holds players 100 percent responsible for what they put in their bodies, no matter how fuzzy the label on the supplement.

Such a stringent policy in this age is understandable, if not totally fair.

“I do support the rules,” Ayanbadejo said. “I just have a little bit of a problem with the way they’re executed.”

Ayanbadejo learned of the positive test result in April and informed his team, Arizona, at the time. The Cardinals released him without waiting for his appeal to go through, and the Bears signed him in June after he informed them of his situation.

There is a stigma attached to players who test positive for performance-enhancing drugs, especially in the muscle-bound world of the NFL. On ESPN.com Thursday evening, for example, a headline read: “Violating steroid ban nets Ayanbadejo suspension.”

Ayanbadejo did not take a steroid and should not be lumped in with players who have tested positive for steroids. He messed up, but there are different degrees of error.

Still, a review of the facts as even Ayanbadejo described them seems to justify some sort of punishment. And the minimum punishment is four games under the terms of the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement.

Ayanbadejo admitted to using something called Max LMG, created by ALRI – a company he plans to sue. He said he did not know the supplement actually is an anti-estrogen product that in turn boosts testosterone.

Ayanbadejo, an 11-season veteran, should have been better informed. If you do a Google search for Max LMG, the first page that comes up includes the headline: “Produce More Testosterone Without Added Estrogen Conversion.”

That alone should have set off an alarm because excess testosterone explicitly is forbidden in the NFL’s drug policy. At the very least, Ayanbadejo should have brought the product to the attention of a team trainer.

True, as Ayanbadejo noted, this supplement and many like it are not licensed by the Food and Drug Administration. They can get away with shady labeling.

In fact, if you continue with the aforementioned Google search, you find virtually every Web site that once offered Max LMG now lists it as “discontinued” or “out of stock.” That sure seems to suggest a product that was not exactly on the up-and-up.

Ayanbadejo, while not a chemist, had a plausible explanation for what can happen with such products after ingestion by an unsuspecting player.

“Guys take certain things and [the makers] just change a molecule [in] it and it’s no longer that substance, but it’s something else that’s related to it,” he said. “And when you do a test it comes up in your system as a substance they’re trying to create.

“It’s a designer form of an illegally-banned substance. And that’s the leg I’m going to stand on legally when it comes to pursuing civil action.”

The merits of the prospective lawsuit remain to be seen, but Ayanbadejo has other concerns. He must use the next few weeks to convince the Bears he is worth keeping around even though he will miss the first quarter of the season.

“I’m pretty frustrated at this point,” he said. “But I’m going to do my time. I’m going to disappear back into the woodwork and just work hard. Hopefully I’ll come back Oct. 1 after this is done [and] I’ll be able to come back here and keep working and keep playing.”