Waxman renews push for reform in wake of Panthers steroid report
09/08/06
A California congressman is continuing to push the NFL to step up its steroid testing following a report about steroid use by members of the Carolina Panthers' 2004 Super Bowl team.
In a letter faxed Thursday to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the NFL wrongly claimed that an Aug. 27 Charlotte Observer story about steroid use on that team provided no new pertinent information beyond what was contained in a league report on the case given to congressional investigators last fall.
"The new report by the Observer, if true, shows a deeper penetration of steroids into the NFL than the NFL report acknowledged," Waxman wrote in the letter, which The Observer reported in Friday editions.
Waxman is the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform, which has been investigating sports doping.
The Observer story detailed multiple, refillable steroid prescriptions given to Panthers players by a South Carolina doctor during the 2003 season, which ended with Carolina losing the Super Bowl to New England.
The Observer story relied on documents made public in a federal criminal case against Dr. James Shortt and the newspaper's own reporting to link the records to six NFL players. That group included three starting offensive lineman on the 2003 Panthers squad and two other team members.
The records were detailed in a report prepared for prosecutors by steroids expert Dr. Gary Wadler.
Waxman's urged Goodell, who took over as the league's new commissioner earlier this month, to reform the league's drug testing procedures and take another look at the players' involvement with Shortt.
None of the players implicated in a federal investigation of Shortt are still with the Panthers.
Shortt, formerly of West Columbia, S.C., pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to illegally prescribe steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) to several players. He was sentenced in July to one year and one day in prison.
Last September, then-commissioner Paul Tagliabue said the NFL had completed its internal review of the case and concluded the Panthers were not aware of the players' visits to Shortt.
League spokesman Greg Aiello has acknowledged, however, that the league did not review Wadler's report about the case until Aug. 29, two days after The Observer's report.
Waxman said the Observer story, plus a recent HBO report about HGH use in the NFL "shows that there are still important lessons to be learned for the league, including how the NFL drug testing program could have failed to detect this use of banned substances."
