NFL Steroids
Killing time before the NCAA picks back up on Thursday, and lacking any semblance of a Cinderella in the phony 2007 NCAA tournament that could make for some good filler stories, ESPN.com is leading with a Page 2 essay by Chuck Klosterman on steroids in the NFL. It's a thoughtful if uninformative summary of what no one is saying.
I mean, at this point, we've got pretty solid evidence inplicating 2 of the last 8 Super Bowl teams as being entirely on steroids: the 2004 Panthers and the 2006 Steelers. Let's face it. The NFL is riddled with steroids. CERTAINLY they must be more widespread than in the MLB. As Klosterman notes, "football is more about intangible masculine warfare..." Bigger and stronger is ALWAYS better. If you want to hit another person more effectively, drugs would help. There is a bit more to hitting a baseball.
I think that the anti-steroid backlash by baseball fans has helped prevent performance enhancing drugs as well. Nobody wants to be seen as a villain. Any baseball player connected with steroids is a villain.
To answer Klosterman's implied question, I am going to think about the NFL similarly to how I think about the Tour de France. I'd much rather see guys completely drug-free, but I know that almost no one is. So I just shrug my shoulders and enjoy the entertainment.
Baseball, on the other hand, IS different. I really feel like there are guys out there who aren't on steroids, which let's me think of baseball players as innocent until suspiscion of guilt. And I can really get behind the Griffey Juniors out there who I really believe are drug-free.
I mean, at this point, we've got pretty solid evidence inplicating 2 of the last 8 Super Bowl teams as being entirely on steroids: the 2004 Panthers and the 2006 Steelers. Let's face it. The NFL is riddled with steroids. CERTAINLY they must be more widespread than in the MLB. As Klosterman notes, "football is more about intangible masculine warfare..." Bigger and stronger is ALWAYS better. If you want to hit another person more effectively, drugs would help. There is a bit more to hitting a baseball.
I think that the anti-steroid backlash by baseball fans has helped prevent performance enhancing drugs as well. Nobody wants to be seen as a villain. Any baseball player connected with steroids is a villain.
To answer Klosterman's implied question, I am going to think about the NFL similarly to how I think about the Tour de France. I'd much rather see guys completely drug-free, but I know that almost no one is. So I just shrug my shoulders and enjoy the entertainment.
Baseball, on the other hand, IS different. I really feel like there are guys out there who aren't on steroids, which let's me think of baseball players as innocent until suspiscion of guilt. And I can really get behind the Griffey Juniors out there who I really believe are drug-free.
Labels: performance enhancing drugs, steroids
posted by Prof. A at 7:35 PM
3 Comments:
This comment has been removed by the author.
I disagree. I don't think there is any evidence to suggest that steroids are more prevalant in the NFL than they are in MLB. In fact, the evidence points in the complete opposite direction.
The football players who have tested positive are the best players in the league. Merriman. Shaun Rodgers (top five DT in Madden '07, for instance). Sauerbruan. Super Bowl champions. Second-tier players /teams simply are not testing positive.
That's not true in baseball where everybody is testing/admitting guilt. Barry Bonds, yes. But also Ryan Franklin. Jason Giambi? Guilty. Jeremy Giambi? Ditto. Raffy Palmerio. The entire Mariners farm system. (Which is a gawdawful farm system).
While it seems possible that steroids would benefit NFL players more than MLB players (a point which Klosterman uses to jump to conclusions that he admits he cannot prove), it also seems true that only the best players are being found guilty. It seems equally easy and logical to argue that the others aren't taking steroids.
I think my argument incorporates steroids in bike racing -- the only sports where we are absolutely sure doping is a massive problem -- better than Klosterman's. Good riders/teams are testing positive at least as frequently as bad riders/teams. That mirrors MLB, but does not resemble the NFL.
So, anyway. I think steroids are a problem in football. That is obvious. But the difference between MLB and the NFL isn't that steroids are so widespread in football that critics cannot personalize the issue.
Klosterman suggested that "over time, we won't be able to separate Merriman from the rest of the puzzle (which MLB has so far successfully done with Bonds)."
I think Klosterman is ignoring the evidence which points to a much more fundamental point: NFL fans don't care.
On this blog, I've documented a number of non-story NFL controversies. (To read those, search "steroids" in the upper left hand corner of the blog).
NFL steroids controversies, though, like Lance Armstrong doping controversies, have zero traction in the United States. In these sports, we only care about winning. Baseball fans have a fundamentally different ethos: history means something.
I think people will find that the controversy disparity makes much more sense when viewed through that lens.
(ach. i just deleted a comment that i left which had some spelling mistakes. i fixed them and reposted. i cheated. the system caught me!)
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