Is the new HGH player testing going to reduce the size of US football players?

[astro]

Per this articleHGH testing is slowly coming online and will be in place in a year or so. Is this going to reduce the size of the average football lineman?

The NFL announced following the labor agreement with the NFLPA that players would be tested for the performance enhancing drug this season, but the union has resisted, questioning the fairness and accuracy of the test.

Goodell said he thought there would be HGH testing during the off-season and regular season.

“We certainly hope so,” he told reporters at his annual State of the League news conference during Super Bowl week. "We’re prepared to do it, we agreed to do it last August. We have been working to try to address the issues.

“We believe the science is clear. We do not hear any dispute from scientists around the world. The fact (is) that this test is valid and that we have the basis to enable an HGH test that is fair to the players.”

[Cubsfan]

I don’t know wether or not it will make players smaller but if it did I think it would be a good thing. Based on no scientific evidence and purely my personal feelings I think the players getting bigger and bigger is making it more and more dangerous as having a 225lb CB slamming into a 200lb RB at full speed it probably more dangerous than having a 180lb CB slaming into a 175lb RB.

[EllisDee]

I thought HGH was gone from your body days (or even hours) after use.

[Oredigger77]

I doubt it will have any effect on the size of NFL lineman. They are taking the top 1% of the top 1% and there are plenty of genetic freaks like me to fill up the teams. I played college football, completely clean, at the DII level and I played at 6’6" and 320. I was by the biggest guy on my teams but there were several other starters in the 6’4" 300# range who to the best of my knowledge were clean too.

The big source of steroid use on my team was from defencive players and some of the runningbacks and receivers. The oline guys were naturally huge and were working of getting faster, I was told if I could run a 5.1 sec 40 I would get drafted. Now admittedly I was at a small school that only sends 2 or 3 guys to the combines each year and I’m sure steroid use is much higher on the DI level but even with it completely removed its not hard to find enough huge guys to fill out a team.

If anything I would expect more of discrepancy between different positions as they focused on the attribute that that position needs and it’s much easier to find a single attribute freak and add a second with 'roids, be it strength or speed. So while lineman will still be huge they may be slower and running backs may still be fast they may not be as strong, of course there still will be individuals who are naturally both but I’m not sure if those population numbers will be enough to fill the entire league.

I think the bigger factor will be injuries and career length. It will be harder to recover from the day to day knicks and bruises and they will add up over the length or a season and make it more difficult to come back year to year. We saw the elongated careers is baseball and while we haven’t had a chance to see if they will shorten out after the ban it wouldn’t surprise me, again genetic freaks and lucky bastards don’t apply.