Steroids Prescribed to NFL Players

[nickgutierrez]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/29/60II/main683747.shtml

So, where's the outrage?

Three members of a Super Bowl team get steroid prescriptions filled before the big game, and it's hardly even worth a mention in the national media? If this were three members of a World Series team, before a Game 7, what do you think the reaction would have been?

You know, forget that. Where's that great NFL steroid testing program we've all been told about? Why weren't these guys caught? This wasn't even some massively complex designer steroid, it wasn't HGH, it wasn't any number of things like creatine that are legal and don't pop on a test.

Why are steroids an issue in baseball, and not in football?

[THUNDER HANDS]

1. because

records and statistics are more important in baseball than they are in football. If you cheat to win a game, that's one thing - it's the American way. If you cheat to break a long-dead hero's records, well, that's blasphemy.

[nickgutierrez]

3. But...

...doesn't that give the lie to all these sports journalism-types that are constantly trying to preach team accomplishment over the individual? I mean, if individual records are so important that they merit an additional level of criticism, certainly a reasonably significant team accomplishment - like, let's say, playing in the Super Bowl - should merit some similar sort of enhancement?

[erpowers]

2. Race

I know a larger number of people hate it when fans like me go in this direction, but I think a large amount of things in sports deals with race. All three of the guys who recieved the steroids were white. I think that if they had been black people would be knocking down the door pushing for changes in the steroid laws in the NFL. Before people here get all angry lets take a look at how race has been a factor in the way issues in sports are discussed. Yesterday I just finished reading the book "Crashing the Borders". I think this book is a great read for anyone who even watches a small amount of basketball. However, the author pointed out many things about people reaction to the fight that broke out at The Palace at Auburns Hills a few years ago. When black guys got in a fight everyone got outraged and complained about how bad the culture in basketball was. However sports magazines and fans for some reason seem to feel that in a sport like Hockey where players get in fights every night getting in a fight was a sign of manhood and having honor. I am serious the author printed a quote for a sports magazine that pretty much so praised Hockey players for getting into fights. Now whats the difference between basketball and Hockey? The former is dominated by blacks and the latter is dominated by whites.

Here is another example, I am not the biggest fan of LeBron James, but when he went from high school to the pros there was a hugh contraversy about whether he should go to college or the pros. Many people pushed the idea that he, James, needed to get an education. James happened to be eighteen when he turned pro; however about a year or two ago a kid named Sidney Crosby, at the age of seventeen turned pro in hockey, a sport where he could get his butt kicked every night or he could kick someone else's butt every night, and noone spoke about how much Crosby needed to get an education. Nobody asked the questions of what it he gets maniuplated or gets used by women like they often make when guys to to skip college basketball for the NBA.

Finally, lets look at MLB. For years people were aware that baseball players were using performance enhancers, but for some reason noone seemed to care. Yes, I will use the Mark McGuire example, but I will also point to two other white/white looking players. During the home run derby of 1998 just about everybody know to some degree that McGuire was using something. There was even one person who wrote a letter to People Magazine criticizing them for putting McGuire on their cover when it was all but know that McGuire had used some type of preformance enhancer. I know that nothing happened to Sammy Sosa, but I contend that was because Sosa was not leading the derby race. Beyond McGuire, two other sports stars, Jose Canceso and Ken Camineti, who had won MVP awards came out around that time and admitted that they had only gotten those awards through the use of steroids. Yet baseball still did not do any type of investigation into steroid use. However, years later when Barry Bonds broke the record of McGuire baseball felt the need to investigate. Look, I am not a racist, but when leagues only seem to investigate things when blacks break the rules it makes me wonder. I would love if it I did not have to bring up race, but it seems necessary at some times. Maybe I am wrong but, I think it has to do with race.