Should There Be Outrage at the NFL Over Steroids?, By: Dayn Perry

February 13, 2007

In this the "Steroids Era" of sport, you may have noticed a curious phenomenon: the NFL has been spared most of the outrage.

Baseball certainly has its share. There's the constant fretting over Barry Bonds' moral standing, there's Mark McGwire and his paltry Hall-of-Fame support, there are the congressional hearings, there's the furor created by BALCO and the best-selling Game of Shadows, there's Ken Caminiti, there's Rafael Palmeiro, and countless other examples. In the NFL, however, the scourge of steroids gets comparatively few column inches. Sure, there was the brief stink over Pro Bowler Shawne Merriman's violation of the NFL's drug policy. Now imagine how things would have played out if an All-Star baseball player of similar standing had tested positive for steroids. Apathy becomes Old Testament-style wrath.

So there's a disconnect between what happens in darkened corners of locker rooms and how the fans and media react to it. Part of the phenomenon is that baseball's records are, of course, more sacrosanct than those of football. Fans see such untoward behavior as an assault upon the pantheon of the sport: 755 homers, 56 straight games, 3,000 hits, 300 wins, and on and on. In football, however, individual records have less currency and aren't quite so hoary and time-honored. But there's more to it than that.

QUESTION OF SURVIVAL

Because of baseball's leisurely pace and prevailing lack of violence, observers see the use of steroids as a corruption of the native merits. It's not a sport of violent collisions (although catchers would argue this point), and it's not a sport in which brute force carries the day. Football, obviously, is quite different. It's a game of hard hits, concussed quarterbacks, broken bones, missing teeth, gnarled faces, blood, guts, viscera and all the rest of it. Because of these workaday terrors, it's hard to blame football players for doing something-anything-in the service of survival. The use of steroids better squares with what we believe about the game. In part, it's this perception that makes steroids such a serious and overlooked problem in football.

The League itself is also content to ignore the epidemic. In track and field, for instance, violators are stripped of their records and banned for years at a time. In baseball, an initial offense gets you a 50-game suspension, which amounts to more than 30% of the regular season. In the NFL, however, first-time offenders are suspended for only four games, or just 25% of the regular season. And those out-of-work sprinters? They often get tryouts with NFL teams or their subsidiaries in Europe. That's precisely what happened with Justin Gatlin and Dwain Chambers. So not only are the policies lax, but the NFL will also provide sanctuary to excommunicated cheats from other sports.

There's also the NFL's seemingly willful ignorance of emergent science. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell not long ago renegotiated the league's drug policy with the Players Association. However, conspicuously absent in the policy was a testing program for human growth hormone (HGH). Goodell parried the criticisms by saying there wasn't a reliable test for HGH available.

However, Dr. Gary Wadler, who's a physician and a high-ranking committee member for the World Anti-Doping Agency, disputed Goodell's claim. "The fact of the matter is that there is a test," Wadler told USA Today. "There are several tests."

As well, Travis Tygart, chief counsel for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, pointed out that there's now a peer-reviewed blood test for HGH. "For someone to say that there is not an effective test that could be used within the near future is simply inaccurate," he said.

Then there's the matter of whether the NFL's skeleton of a policy works in the first place. Roughly 60 players have been suspended since the NFL began disciplining drug users 1989. That's not many, and the numbers raise the suspicion that the league isn't terribly serious about all of this. The other, larger shoe dropped last year.

DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL

In August, the Charlotte Observer reported that six members of the Charlotte Panthers team that went to the Super Bowl in 2004 had received multiple refillable steroid prescriptions. Subsequent court documents revealed two more names to the list. The players, which included three starting offensive linemen, avoided detection by the NFL for years. In fact, two of the linemen-Todd Steussie and Louis Williams-received prescriptions for five banned substances less than a week before the team's Super Bowl loss to the New England Patriots. In the sentencing phase of the prescribing doctor's criminal trial, U.S. Attorney Winston Holliday said the players considered the league's testing efforts "almost a joke."

The primary upshot of the players' cheating and the league's prevarications is a lack of competitive integrity on the field. Off the field, however, the culture of drug use may be exacting a grimmer toll. Many retired football players suffer shortened life spans and endure intense pain as a result of their playing days. The bone-on-bone nature of the sport is certainly to blame, but the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs likely also plays a role. Many of the familiar maladies suffered by football players-enlarged hearts, joint pain, back problems-are also associated with steroid abuse.

The NFL doesn't make earnest efforts to end steroid abuse, and indeed the low-grade "Social Darwinism" of the scouting combines and training camps, which demand that players be ever faster and stronger, encourages taking such unsavory steps. Then, of course, the league leaves these players to their own devices after five years of retirement. That's not an acceptable state of affairs.

It's undeniable that both sides have incentive to use these drugs. The NFL wants its stars' performances to be ever-more astounding, and the players want the riches that come along with on-field excellence. The use of performance enhancers helps both aims. What's not acceptable is that some players who perhaps otherwise wouldn't dream of compromising their health in such a manner then feel pressure to "juice" in order to keep up with the player who indulges with no such reservations. It's a coercive pressure.

So really the only way the NFL and the players are going to take the needed steps is if the fans and the media ramp up the outrage. Baseball's acts of contrition are owing to, in no small part, public pressure. That's what's needed with regard to the NFL.

It's time for all of us to turn our oh-so-steely gaze on the NFL and impart to them the need for change.