Why does the NFL get less about steroid use than MLB?

Great Debates
1

In March, Congress calls Major League Baseball (Commissioner Selig, current and former players) to task on Capitol Hill about steroid use.

Selig and most of the players are very poor witnesses and MLB is considered to be an outlaw league full of phoneys.

This week, the NFL goes to testify. This time, the House members, barely pay attention to whatever Commissioner Tagliabue and NFLPA head Upshaw say. They are congratulated because the “NFL has a plan”. This plan which has identified numerous steroid users (including four members of the Carolina Panthers, including the punter!). And one NFL team drafted a player who tested positive for steroids in the first round (Luis Castillo of Northwestern by San Diego with the 28th pick).

It’s obvious that NFL has a PR machine second to none in the world of professional sports. But is its reputation deserved? Does the NFL really do anything to combat steroid use better than any other sport?

2

I have no idea. One of the ESPN analysts who is an ex-NFL player was talking the other day about how it is impossible that any NFL player is using steroids.

I was flabbergasted. As MLB has implemented its steroid testing policy I’ve repeatedly read that, “ultimately any testing policy will have trouble with the new steroids that are constantly coming out that cannot be detected on standard tests.”

Does the NFL have some special testing technique that insures no NFL players are using steroids ala the Balco ones that are nearly undetectable?

I doubt it.

I think the big thing is in the NFL records don’t “mean as much.” In baseball the past is put on a pedestal, and in every generation when past records have fallen the baseball public has found reason to tear down the record breakers (Maris and Aaron for example weren’t met with jubilation by all when they broke Ruth’s records.)

The hot button issue right now is steroids.

It’s not so much that steroids is cheating. If it were just cheating the fans would be “punish the guy, move on, try to get them out of the game.” It’s more of, “Our childhood idols are getting pushed by the wayside by chemically enhanced assholes.”

3

I don’t about “better than any other sport,” but they’re light-years ahead of MLB, and have been taking it seriously for much longer.

As an example, the NFL at least holds out the possibility of testing samples retroatively. There was a flap with the player’s union a few years ago because the league suspended a couple of players for taking designer steroids that weren’t specifically banned at the time they were tested. The league decided that the intent was to cheat the system, and acted accordingly.

In contrast, MLB just started dealing with the problem at all, I think, two years ago, and they were tentative with their steps even then. They deserved a harsher talking-to.

4

The key phrase, of course, is “chemically enhanced.”

Baseball is a sport where the damned record book matters to us. And I’ve seen lots of individual and career records fall during my lifetime. I remember when Aaron passed Ruth; when Rickey Henderson broke all the stolen-base records; when Nolan Ryan pitched his fifth no-hitter to pass my personal hero, Sandy Koufax. (Ditto Ryan’s 383-strikeout season, edging out Koufax’ 382.)

Some of these guys, I was rooting for; some of them (notably Ryan) I was unquestionably rooting against. Some records have fallen because players have trained and eaten better and gotten more fit; some have fallen because circumstances in the game have changed. (Others have moved well out of reach for the same reason.) But I accept all these new records as legit; new players have legitimately exceeded the statistical accomplishments of previous players.

If Barry Bonds had hit 73 in a season, and were to exceed Aaron’s 755 in a career, on account of talent, fitness, a long career, and the Camden Yards generation of smaller ‘retro’ ballparks, I’d have no problem with that. But if he did those things with the help of “cream” and “clear”, I don’t regard his accomplishments as legitimate, and I know lots of fans who share my sentiment. Ditto McGwire and “andro”.

And there are no good guys here. The Players’ Union fought drug testing, and Selig didn’t push back particularly hard. Fans liked the juiced game, until they realized how much it was juiced, and owners like what draws fans.

5

From what I’ve been able to pick up, the steroids are so far ahead of the steroid testing in terms of masking agents and non-detectable forms that much of the testing is obsolete; it’s only testing for the most basic kinds of steroids and a player would have to basically not care at all in order to test positive.

In baseball, we’ve had no testing for so long, that the players didn’t have to care about being caught. My guess is that baseball players were sloppier in their steroid use than football players, and the increased testing will push them toward taking steroids smarter, but not less.

6

The NFL’s program is much, much tougher than MLB. The National Football League conducts nearly 10,000 tests a year for steroids and performance-enhancing drugs. The league tests during the preseason, the regular season, the postseason and periodically during the offseason.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/11356106.htm

During the actual season it works like this: each week, a computer randomly selects seven players to be tested for each team in the NFL. A league-paid employee then arrives on site and notifies players they have been selected, often by leaving a sticker on their locker. Once the players have been told face-to-face they are being tested, they have four hours to produce a urine sample. MAthematically it is possible for the same player to be tested 16 times and another to slip through - but it is unlikely.

And that sample will be subject to a wide net – only the International Olympic Committee has a larger list of banned substances than the NFL. Through this season, the league tests for 60 substances that fall into three categories: 35 anabolic agents (steroids), 20 masking agents (diuretics) and five stimulants (such as Ephedrine, Methylephedrine, etc.). It’s a list so deep that players often complain they can’t buy cold medicine without fearing some type of banned derivative will be detected.

Here is an article critical of the NFL proxcess – but really it comlains that "maybe the NFL is conspiring to hide franchise players and people could slip through by XY or Z

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/11356106.htm

7

No. Imho, the issue is twofold:

  1. A better PR machine and a lot more “goodwill” among the people. Baseball players spent the better part of their free agency period alienating their fanbase and the media, while the NFL, with a few exceptions, has not. Fan support is voter support and MLB doesn’t have it, while the NFL does. Congress knows this.

  2. MLB is protected by the anti-trust exemption, which makes it quasi-responsible to Congress (in Congress’s eyes, anyways) to run their business in a manner acceptable to Congress.

8

The NFL’s propaganda machine IS second to none and it has the advantage in that most of its players are essentially anonymous. Mark McGwire’s face is readily recognizeble. The punter and linemen for the Carolina Panthers are not. Those guys are literally faceless to the public, playing behind big helmets and masks. The NFL can therefore easily afford to cast those guys aside without a second thought. Baseball can’t do the same to McGwire, Bonds or Sosa because baseball needs them a lot more than the NFL needs the Panthers’ punter.

9

An additional possible factor: The NFL’s players are already so huge that steroid abuse is less obvious. The before and after pics of Jason Giambi were quite striking. There was no way anyone could have gained that much muscle mass without chemical help, even if they’d lived at the gym. A defensive tackle who already weighs 300 pounds isn’t going to look that much bigger if he suddenly gains another 20 pounds of muscle.

Also the fact that the record for single season home runs stood for so many years and is now being broken or approached so often is also striking.

10

Not that he is one of my favorite writers by any means, the most prominent one I can find who even bothered to call out the NFL was Skip Bayless of ESPN.com
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=bayless/050429&num=0

In many respects baseball is being hurt by having an effective union that has gotten good contracts for the players, while football has had a poorly run union that has made players underpaid and easily interchangeable.

11

I was always rooting against Ryan too. Not because I didn’t like the guy, not because I didn’t like his teams, and not because I thought he was a cheater.

It came down to the fact that Nolan Ryan wasn’t really a pitcher. He went out there, grabbed a baseball, and hurled it as hard as humanly possible towards home plate. Many many times in his career (more times than anyone else) the ball went wild and was a ball. When it was a strike, he was very difficult to hit.

It wasn’t until his late 30s that Ryan put his curveball to regular use. He was a fastball-changeup exclusively guy for years.

I don’t dislike Nolan Ryan. I think he was talented at one thing, throwing really hard. His control was never very acceptable and he never showed much pitching “talent.” He lived and died by the fastball, some days he could control it, many days he could not.

The reason I disliked Ryan setting all those strikeout records is I knew people wouldn’t look at them in the appropriate context 10-20 years later. People would just marvel at the big numbers. The fact is Ryan was very good at striking people out. He was also very good at walking people. If I had one game I needed pitched for all the marbles there is a long list of pitchers I’d put in before Ryan: Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Lefty Grove, Whitey Ford, Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, and the list actually goes farther than that if I wanted to name some more.

12

According to this morning’s edition of “It’s Only a Game,” one key difference is that Tagliabue made his millions as a top Washington lawyer, and Selig made his selling used cars.

13

That’s a good cheap shot at Selig, and i’m all for cheap shots at Selig, but it doesn’t wash with the facts. If Canseco and McGwire took steriods while with the A’s in the 1980s, then the problem started on the watch of Commissioner Ueberroth or Giammatti or Vincent, not Selig. Bud Lite gets a share of the blame but certainly not all of it.

14

This is pure speculation, based on feelings rather than facts.

If baseball has gotten more grief over steroids than other sports (steroid use has long been rampant in track, and is PROBABLY rampant in many other sports), it may be because, until fairly recently, baseball players weren’t perceived as “real” athletes.

Back in the 1970’s, the average defensive lineman was a LOT smaller than today (Alan Page, the most dominant tackle in the NFL, couldn’t start for most college teams today, because he’d be deemed too small), but still, they were WAAAY bigger than the average sports fan. Bob Lilly would be an undersized tackle today, but he still seemed like a moose compared to the average fan.

So, the average sports fan never looked at pro football players and thought “that could be me out there.” Football players have always seemed larger than life, and much larger than their fans. If right guards 25 years ago averaged 265 pounds, but now average 320 pounds, that’s a huge difference, but it’s not as readily apparent.

But when I was in high school and college in the 1970’s and 1980’s, most baseball players looked like pretty regular guys. Each team might have 1 or 2 guys with big biceps and powerful physiques, but there were plenty more players who were skinny or even pot-bellied.

We fans knew that pro baseball players had skills we didn’t possess, but even so, it was easy enough to look at scrawny Mark Belanger or pudgy Wilbur Wood and think “Those are regular guys like me on the field.”

Today, there’s no way a fan can look at the players on a major league roster and think that! And there lies the problem. In football, guys who were always huge became ENORMOUS. In baseball, guys who were usually unimpressive physical specimens were now built like Mr. Olympia contestants. The difference stood out a lot more.

15

I think his point was more that Tagliabue knows how to interact with Congress in the most effective possible way, and Selig doesn’t. I mean, come on, Selig had to be told, fairly publicly, that it isn’t really possible to decline an invitation to testify. By the time the hearing started, the baseball guys were in trouble. Tagliabue didn’t make that mistake, and I’m willing to bet that before the hearing, he had managed to have friends of friends make contacts with the committee members, introduce them at dinner, have a friendly chat at a cocktail party, whatever. Selig just didn’t have the contacts or the understanding to pull that off.

In other words, I was addressing the OPs point specifically about the hearings, not about the larger issue of the public perception of drug use in either sport.