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.

 

Conspiracy and Penn State

But, you might protest, could there really be that broad of a conspiracy?  Wouldn’t somebody spill the beans?

Consider Penn State University.  Over the course of a decade, a number of people in positions of power worked in conjunction to cover up something even more sordid than performance-enhancing drug abuse: the sexual assault of children.  An investigation into the incident determined that, for over ten years, the school President, vice President, athletic director, and head football coach had “failed to protect against a child sexual predator”.  A significant contributing factor in this awful debacle had to have been the desire to protect the school’s Big Football program.

If rooting for good ol’ PSU can cause men who knew better to cover up criminal sexual conduct, then do you think it would be much of a stretch for the football culture to cover up PED use?

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.

Creeping Impact

The impact is starting to be seen at the lower levels of football.  Most NCAA Division I football players would love to play professionally.  They all want to win.  The pressures are adding up to more and more drug use in the college game.

On average, every team at a bowl game has one player who is going to test positive for PED’s.  Again, the tests can only catch a fraction of the—especially since the NCAA affords athletes 48 hours notice about tests.  The actual figure is likely much higher.

Jason Scucanek, who played for Brigham Young University (BYU), stated that on his team, he had proof that over a dozen players were using steroids, and that the number might have been as high as twenty.  Keep in mind, this is BYU; the school is hardly the anything-goes, football-first institution that you might find in the Deep South.  If BYU has twenty players on steroids, what do you think is the case at Florida, Florida State, LSU, Alabama….

Even at the high school level, football players are abusing PED’s.  A 2003 survey of 15,000 players found that six percent admitted to PED use.  With over a million boys playing football each year, that’s 60,000 high schoolers taking steroids!

Once again, the health effects are hardly worth it.  Liver damage.  Enlargement of the heart.  Increased risk of heart disease and death.  Depression.  Suicide.  Testicular atrophy. 

And again we have to ask why our young men are choosing to shrivel their balls and shorten their lives?

To succeed at a child’s game.

Get Out

I started taking anabolic steroids in 1969 and never stopped. It was addicting, mentally addicting. Now I'm sick, and I'm scared. Ninety percent of the athletes I know are on the stuff. We're not born to be 300 lb (140 kg) or jump 30 ft (9.1 m). But all the time I was taking steroids, I knew they were making me play better. I became very violent on the field and off it. I did things only crazy people do. Once a guy sideswiped my car and I beat the hell out of him. Now look at me. My hair's gone, I wobble when I walk and have to hold on to someone for support, and I have trouble remembering things. My last wish? That no one else ever dies this way.

--Lyle Alzado, former NFL great

Lyle Alzado: 1949-1992

             You can save somebody from that fate.  If you play football, stop.  Get out of a sport where your highest aspirations are almost forced to include steroid use.  Get into a sport that cares about catching drug cheats. 

            If you have a son, keep him away from the game.  Don’t let him get sucked into the mania that inclines otherwise rational individuals to ruin their lives for a moment’s glory.

            Spread the word.  Get other people out of the sport, too.  Turn off the game, and encourage others to do the same.  It’s guaranteed to make our lives healthier, happier, and longer.