All Doped Up

There is one final way in which the game of football damages our national health: performance enhancing drugs (PED’s).

PED use is absolutely rampant in the NFL.  The NFL denies it.  They use all of their public-relations machinery to make it seem like there is no problem.  They even used their leverage to induce ESPN to cancel Playmakers, a highly-rated and critically-acclaimed series, in large part because it created the (true) impression that professional football players use steroids to cheat.

This is understandable, but abhorrent.  The league has seen first-hand what happens to other sports in which cheaters get caught: high-profile, highly-publicized PED busts create the impression that the sport has a drug problem.  This negatively impacts the sport’s image.  Ratings go down, money dries up. 

It’s better for the bottom line to pretend that you have a stringent testing, set up a laughably weak testing policy instead, catch a few offenders who are brazen or stupid enough to still get caught, give these offenders nothing more than a slap on the wrist, and rake in the cash.

Could that possibly be true?  Well, it’s fairly easy to prove that football has deleterious effects on players’ brains.  The cases and the statistics speak for themselves.  It’s just as easy to demonstrate football’s emphasis on unhealthy weight.  Because of the wall of misinformation and obfuscation put up by the NFL, it’s more difficult to persuade your average person on the street that professional footballers are a bunch of steroid-inflated cheaters.  However, the evidence is compelling:

First, compare the testing policy of the NFL to that of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)—the organization in charge of testing Olympic events, and the most stringent testing agency on the planet.  WADA requires athletes to inform them of their whereabouts every single day, so that they can be available for random drug testing.  Both blood and urine samples are taken and analyzed for the presence of PED’s, their chemical byproducts, masking agents, or the chemical byproducts of masking agents. 

A player is presumed to be responsible for whatever is in their body; ignorance is no excuse.  In fact, there are almost no excuses whatsoever.

The NFL, by contrast, conducts one annual blood test, in which they might detect the presence of a substance like Human Growth Hormone (HGH).  Dr. Gary Wadler, former chairman of the WADA, called the protocol “blatantly ridiculous”.  They state that they conduct random drug testing, but lineman-sized loopholes exist. 

For instance, the New York Times reported in August of 2011 that NFL players are NEVER tested on game days.  This is unbelievable.  Olympic athletes are always being taken from the finish line to the testing area—it will happen to every single medalist at the next Olympics.  The sports care about whether or not they are clean.  The NFL does not; it is not in their interests to catch teachers.  Refusing to test on game days makes it legal, de facto, for players to take any drugs which clear the system in twenty-four hours.

There have been numerous reports that players are given advance notice of impending tests, several days in advance.  This completely defeats the purpose of random testing.  There are no repercussions in place for players who are not available for their random tests; players who know they’ll test dirty can simply make themselves scarce.  According to Don Catlin, former director of the Olympic Analytic Laboratory at UCLA, even a few hours of notice is sufficient to allow athletes to get away with substantial PED use.  Several days’ notice essentially makes the entire program worthless.

Shawn Craford tested positive under WADA protocols.

Michael Garvin never tested positive under NFL protocols.