Victims of the Crime

So the NFL’s testing protocol has been assembled to give the best possible appearances with the least possible impact.  Why else would you announce that you will begin testing for HGH, for instance, and then implement the test so laughably poorly that it is guaranteed to catch absolutely no one?

Consider that the WADA, utilizing the best available testing protocols, doesn’t catch all of the cheats.  Marion Jones, who had her Olympic medals stripped after admitting to prolonged PED use, passed 160 tests.  The cheaters are almost always a step ahead of the authorities, even if the authorities are allowed to use every weapon in their arsenal.  Tie both their hands behind their backs and put a few cement blocks on their feet—as the NFL and the players’ union have deliberately done—and you have no drug testing policy at all.

To make matters worse, football allows for all sorts of excuses.  As of this writing, 111 players tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.  How over a hundred players were stupid enough to get caught is mystifying enough.  What’s more amazing is that only 54 of them were suspended.  So, even if you do get caught, there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance that you’ll get absolutely no punishment whatsoever.

Additionally, the financial incentive to cheat is much, much greater in football than it is in Olympic sports.  Superstars like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps make millions of dollars, but the vast, vast majority of Olympians are, these days, working full- or part-time jobs to make ends meet.  If a long-distance runner takes Erythropoietin (EPO), it gives him or her a better chance at making a couple thousand bucks.  If a running back takes steroids, it gives him a better chance at making millions.

Football players have a much greater reward associated with performance-enhancing drugs, and a much, much smaller risk.  Is it any wonder, then, that a 2009 study by Scott Horn, Patricia Gregory, and Kevin Guskiewicz found that players suspected that 90% of professional football players had used steroids?  As far back as 1990, when the game was less lucrative and the players much smaller, a survey of NFL players found that 67% of offensive linemen admitted to using steroids.  These days, the 90% figure is probably not far from the actual mark.

Some people have no philosophical objection to the use of PED’s.  They players, they’ll argue, have the right to do what they want to their own bodies.  They understand the risks, and decide to assume them.

Unfortunately, this creates an environment in which only PED-users can be successful.  It means that when a young man starts aspiring to play in the NFL, he will one day be forced to decide whether to forgo that aspiration for the sake of his health.  PED restrictions exist—or at least, they ought to exist—to try to level the playing field, so that individuals who want to compete cleanly are able to do so without having to sacrifice their health.

Unfortunately, the way drug testing is conducted in the NFL—with its winks and nods to drug users—nearly forces any NFL aspirant to make that choice.