Written by:
Chris Frates
Sep 20, 2007
A dogfighting quarterback, a gambling basketball referee, a steroid cloud hanging over the new home run record and the grisly murder-suicide of a professional wrestler.
With a summer full of sports scandals, it was only a matter of time until some chairman flexed his influence and called for a congressional investigation that will bring sports superstars, and the klieg lights that follow them, to town.
And for now, the target is wrestling.
Never mind that wrestling is not really a sport and that more people could probably pick quarterback Michael Vick than wrestling superstar The Great Khali out of a locker room lineup. Congress has announced it’s ready to rumble.
The revelations that steroids were found in the house where wrestler Chris Benoit killed his wife, his son and then himself in June caught the attention of congressional investigators.
The House committees that looked into steroid use in professional baseball in 2005 have asked Benoit’s employer, World Wrestling Entertainment, for information about its drug-testing policies.
The WWE finds itself in the cross hairs of California Rep. Henry A. Waxman’s House Oversight Committee and Illinois Rep. Bobby L. Rush’s Energy and Commerce subcommittee, with Rush planning to hold a hearing this fall.
The developments are a reality smackdown for a company that sells comic book story lines to millions of fans each week. But the WWE has the advantage of studying baseball’s legislative film.
Aside from giving Waxman a reason to quote from “Field of Dreams,” Congress’ baseball investigation saw some of its biggest stars quizzed about steroid use and led to the stiffening of the sport’s testing policy and penalties, as well as to the launch of an ongoing independent inquiry headed by former Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Maine).
“Yeah, there’s a lot to be nervous about,” said Eleanor Hill, a veteran of congressional investigations.
The baseball steroid investigation marked a turning point for congressional sports probes, said Senate Associate Historian Donald Ritchie.
Before 2005, lawmakers didn’t examine players’ behavior. They let the leagues police that.
Congress had always followed the money, Ritchie said. For example, the Senate has investigated corruption, mafia ties, fight-fixing and payoffs in professional boxing.
Alleged steroid use among baseball players, and now wrestlers, shifted the debate from finance to public health.
Lawmakers are concerned that kids may begin to use steroids and other performance enhancing drugs because the ballplayers and wrestlers they idolize are thought to do so.
“Illegal steroid use in professional sports has gained plenty of attention, but the record suggests that the problem is most pervasive and deadly in pro wrestling, an unregulated form of entertainment that is watched on TV and in arenas by an estimated 20 million fans a week, including children,” Rush and Rep. Cliff Stearns (Fla.), the subcommittee’s ranking Republican, wrote to WWE Chairman Vincent K. McMahon. (The panel also sent the letter, which requested drug testing information, to two lesser-known professional wrestling organizations.)
The lawmakers included a USA Today article that said wrestlers “are about 20 times more likely to die before 45 than are pro football players, another profession that’s exceptionally hard on the body.”
Hill, who was the staff director for the joint congressional intelligence committee that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, is a partner at King & Spalding and advises clients who find themselves under investigation. Her message is simple: Cooperate.
