Registered: Jan 2001
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The best policy: NFL's drug testing

By Cris Collinsworth
Special to NFL.com

(Oct. 23, 2003) -- On more than one occasion during my broadcasting career, I have offered an opinion that did not reflect well on the NFL. It is my job to report when something in the league is not right.

But when the NFL is doing something right, people should know about that as well.

I take great pride in the way NFL has handled the steroids issue. If you read the newspaper, you know a new type of steroid -- THG -- has been making headlines. Questions have been raised about whether the NFL is doing all it can to eliminate steroid use as a means of competitive advantage.

Each year, the NFL tests for recreational drugs. Players are given a specified date and plenty of advanced warning. If a player fails a test for recreational drugs, he must have a serious addiction problem. Even if he fails the test, he is given a second test before he is suspended. The league treats recreational drug use as a medical issue and wants to get the player some help at that point.

That is not the case with steroids. The NFL has taken a much tougher stance here. On the first positive, a player is suspended for four games. He is suspended for six games following a second positive, and a third positive will result in at least a one-year suspension.

The reason for this is to maintain the competitive balance in the league. If players were using steroids, there would be a temptation for non-users to try steroids in an effort to compete physically. The NFL is setting this tough standard to keep players on a level playing field and to protect them from themselves.

As a player, from a competitive standpoint, I never cared if an opposing player was using recreational drugs, because it would only hurt his performance. Of course, on the human side, I hoped he would receive help, but it wasn't going to improve his performance on the field.

However, with steroids, performance might be enhanced. Thus, each week players are given random tests for steroids. A computer will randomly select six players, on each team, each week, to be tested. To show how random the test is, my HBO partner Dan Marino said he was tested eight times in one season.

Compare what the NFL is doing with steroids to other sports such as the NBA, Major League Baseball and the NHL. It is by far the most stringent test in all of professional sports. I applaud Gene Upshaw and the Players Association for allowing this to happen. It would have been easy for the players union to use this as a bargaining chip in negotiations, but they recognize how important it is to maintain the competitive balance and protect their players.

I would hate to see what would happen if the NFL did not test for steroids. When I covered the Olympics for NBC, the joke among the track and field athletes was that it wasn't a contest between the fastest runners, but rather who had the best pharmacist. I would hate to see the NFL come to that.

Like the Olympic athletes, the NFL has a higher standard. In addition to testing for steroids, the league also tests for masking agents. If a player tries to pass a test by using these masking agents, they are suspended, even if a steroid is not detected.

It is important for the average fan to understand what NFL players go through each week in order to maintain this competitive balance. Imagine walking into work each Monday morning and being required to give a specimen for testing. NFL players are subject to testing each week, and they do so willingly.

That is why the NFL and the players union should be complimented for what they are doing with steroids. In addition to keeping the competitive balance, they set a standard that trickles down to college and high school players. A high school player might want to use steroids to get a college scholarship. A college player might want to use steroids to reach the NFL. But by taking such a tough stand on steroids, the NFL and the Players Association are setting a standard that is positive for all players, at all levels.

The goal is to maintain a competitive balance on every level, and dissuade those who might believe they can artificially earn a spot on football's greatest stage. The NFL has fumbled on a few issues along the way, but it has scored big on this one.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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A four game ban for steroid use? Woooo

The current two years and above bans in athletics are too low; four games? Jesus. That is weak. You have to get three failed tests to get a one year ban? Comparing to baseball, hockey and basketball doesn't necessarily mean much.

It will be very interesting to see if the THG tests, which are now being used in the rugby world cup, uncover anything; they will be testing, over the duration of the competition, about half of the players competing. If a rash of positive THG tests comes out, followed by a lot of bans, it will certainly send a message to rugby players that the so-called 'designer drugs' are not necessarily as safe as they may have appeared.

I was going to post something about the THG business, actually; the guy at the centre of it has been producing 'nutritional aids' for quite a large number of athletes. It does seem, though, that whistle-blowing is how these people are going to be caught, because testing is difficult to match against steroids, and so on, that are designed to be hard to detect. The THG test now available was developed after someone blew the whistle on what the stuff actually was (sent a sample to a testing lab, or something like that, I believe).

I guess that it depends on what people want the sport to be like. People who are into bodybuilding (probably not a sport, as such) seem to prefer to see the most perfect possible specimen and not care that steroid use is required to get that big; with strongman competitions, the strongest possible is the key. Professional tour cycling is pretty much riddled with banned substances, and again, people don't care. Personally, I prefer my favourite sports to be free of those things, if it's possible (although perhaps it isn't), but others would prefer to see the whole thing out in the open and just see how good someone can be, however they achieve it.

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Smug take into consideration that the NFL season is a rather short season, possibly the shortest season in Pro sports. Its all relative.

Adding to this further. if you are a second or third string player and you get a ban chances are you wll be waived and hence not get paid. If you are a starter it will be a big hit to your team, and lose a player all their incentive based cashflow, which for some players is the majority of their income. Jimmy Smith of Jacksonville missed the first floor games of the season and the team suffered terribly because of it. He was the teams game breaker.

Last edited by pj on 10-24-2003 at 11:07 AM

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You have to fail a test three times to get banned for a year, though. If that is good compared to the other sports that the article mentions, that just says that the other sports are really bad, rather than raising NFL to some high status in the war on 'performance-enhancing drugs'.

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I think the comparison to baseball is particlularly unhelpful considering the number of stimulants permitted in baseball.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
You have to fail a test three times to get banned for a year, though. If that is good compared to the other sports that the article mentions, that just says that the other sports are really bad, rather than raising NFL to some high status in the war on 'performance-enhancing drugs'.

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It doesn't look like a terribly serious attempt to stamp out the use of steroids, though.

I like the way that he says, in effect: 'to show how random it is, this event that is unlikely if it is random, occurred' using Marino's eight tests as an example. Based on just that example, it would be simpler to assume that Marino was picked deliberately (I'm not saying that he was, but that is the sensible implication from the single example that he gives). I guess that a mastery of probability distributions isn't key for sports journalism (even though they use statistics, which are related, with glee).

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Thing is Smug that if Marino was the target it would show a highlighting of a player at a talent position, which tend to be Quarterbacks, Running Backs, Wide Recievers, and the other positions of high athleticism. These players are key in football, losing them can wreck a teams season (a good case in point is Michael Vick of the Atlanta Falcons who was lost to injury for eight weeks) without this player on the team, opposition team have been able to let rip on the Falcons without fear of being exploited by Vicks speed. These players are gamebreakers. I'm not saying i agree with the NFL targeting players, but if it did, then i wouldnt be outraged, as its the gamebreakers who are on the field the majority of the time anyway. A drug taking player on the sidelines will have very little impact on the game.

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I'm not sure how you can reasonably argue that the NFL is excellent in its efforts to abolish steroid use, but neither do I think that you can reasonably argue that saying it is far better than other major American sports is insignificant or not worthy of praise.

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Conclusion: You're both idiots and should stop talking about it.

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If I can explain: Offering a comparison with something that is objectively poor in order to illustrate goodness doesn't achieve the desired effect.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
If I can explain: Offering a comparison with something that is objectively poor in order to illustrate goodness doesn't achieve the desired effect.

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I didn't think that it was as bad as baseball, actually. I just thought that it was bad, with regards to enforcement of an anti-doping policy.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
I didn't think that it was as bad as baseball, actually. I just thought that it was bad, with regards to enforcement of an anti-doping policy.

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The problem in this case is how is it dealt with when it is detected (the THG business has shown in some detail why it is in general hard to catch people). Catching them is obviously the main priority, but when you do catch them if you merely slap them on the wrist, that is weak, I think.

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Let's face it, you simply CANNOT get as physically big as NFL lineman without some kind of steroid intake. Some of these guys leave college football and put on nearly 50 pounds of muscle bulk in under a year (!)

THG is just the tip of the iceberg I am sure - there must be many more chemical aids to body building that are undetectable by current testing regimes.

And don't get me started on Premiership football. The testing regime here is probably the WORST in any major professional sport in the world.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
The problem in this case is how is it dealt with when it is detected (the THG business has shown in some detail why it is in general hard to catch people). Catching them is obviously the main priority, but when you do catch them if you merely slap them on the wrist, that is weak, I think.

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A quarter of a season for something like steroid abuse? It's a joke. You get the two year ban in athletics for a first offence and for most athletes that is over a quarter of a career (at least, the profitable part of a career). And that two year ban isn't long enough, as far as I am concerned.

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This maybe be a dumb question, but I really don't pay a damned bit of attention to steriods, but don't steroids have nasty long term side effects?

I know back in the late eighties, we had some big anti-steroids campaign at school for a while, because some study showed that steroid use was rampant in school kids playing sports. I'd never even heard of steroids until they started this massive education campaign, and I quickly lost interest when they started describing a multitude of horrific possible side effects. Now I realize a lot of that was probably propaganda, but it still sounded like a risky fucking bit.

But time has passed, drugs of all sorts get better, so I'm wondering if the more modern steroids are safer?

The reason I ask, it's obvious to me that if steroids are dangerous, then obviously it's probably bad policy to let guys who are role models for many high school kids use them, but if not, then is it just a sense of 'fair play' that keeps them banned or what?

-m

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Mordecai, you should look into HGH, a substance with very little negative side effect and the potential for a big payoff.

I think the NFL system is pretty good. A 4 game suspension is pretty significant for the reasons prozacjones mentions, as well as the pride and competitive determination that these guys have. They don't want to miss. Perhaps instituting immediate 16-game suspensions or permanent banning for a single failed test might show a stronger face, but I don't see much to criticize here. And there aren't many failures (I think some Lott guy eventually got banned for his failure to get off the juice).

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I wasn't looking for a steriod to take iNute, but thanks, maybe I will look into it.

Really though, what's so bad about steroids if they don't make your nuts shrink and give you tits anymore?

-m

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bad acne still plagues the best of them.

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