By ALLEN BARRA
The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com
October 4, 2008
Suppose they gave a drug scandal and nobody came.
On Sept. 21, the San Diego Union-Tribune published a blockbuster report listing 185 NFL players who had used performance-enhancing drugs -- men at every position from every team over the past three decades. (George Mitchell's headline-grabbing 2007 report on such drug use in baseball listed 100 fewer players in that sport.) Charles Yesalis, professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and one of the country's leading anabolic steroids experts, believes that "we're just touching the tip of the iceberg."
Martin Kozlowski
As it turns out, the tip may be all we see for a while. Though the Union-Tribune's study was called by many "the Mitchell report of pro football," there have been no suspensions, few newspaper headlines, and no threats of congressional hearings. Not yet, anyway. Less than two weeks after the newspaper published its findings, the NFL's sweeping drug problem seems like a scandal that never happened.
How is this possible in a sport that claims to be the most popular in America? No single reason seems to provide a sufficient answer, but several of the dots, when connected, start to form a picture.
First, there's the matter of statistics. The argument goes that baseball fans take stats very seriously and thus are spurred to action when performance-enhancing drugs taint the record books, while football fans are much less concerned about steroids and other such substances given that football has no identifiable statistical benchmarks such as Hank Aaron's 755 career home runs or Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. Only a few players on a team of 22 starters in football really have any stats.
Prof. Yesalis believes the statistical argument to be largely a creation of the media: "I think it's sportswriters who care about records being broken. I don't think the average fans really care all that much. They view sports mostly as entertainment." But Bob Costas disagrees. "I don't know about the average fan, but judging from the reaction to Barry Bonds's surpassing Aaron's home run record, a great many fans do care, and if they don't think the competition is legitimate, they're liable to seek their entertainment elsewhere."
Whether or not most fans care, the fact is that it's only when players like Bonds achieve certain statistical milestones that the question of performance-enhancing drugs comes into focus; what statistics do we have for offensive linemen in football?
For that matter, who notices offensive or defensive linemen at all? While experts have long acknowledged that linemen (whose average weight has increased by nearly 90 pounds over the past quarter century) are the primary users of bulk-up substances, most fans never get to see the faces of the players down in the trenches. Defensive linemen might not even get their names mentioned more than once or twice a game when they make a spectacular play like a quarterback sack, and offensive linemen almost never get their names announced on TV.
Every baseball fan knew Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, and other star players who testified in congressional hearings, but if even the best-known linemen were to sit in front of the microphone, their staunchest fans might be getting a good look at their faces for the first time.
Why haven't football players been called to testify in hearings on steroids use in professional sports? For one thing, timing. Revelations of the extent of the NFL's problems with performance-enhancing drugs have surfaced during an economic crisis that makes last December, when the Mitchell Report was released, seem idyllic in comparison. Congress dare not be concerned with distractions concerning millionaire athletes.
For another, pro football isn't under threat of losing its exemption from antitrust laws as was Major League Baseball, which made its pitch to Congress in an effort to prove it was trying to deal with the problem. (Sen. Arlen Specter threatened to yank the NFL's antitrust free pass in 2006, but only in connection with the league's negotiation of exclusive TV packages. Drugs were never mentioned.)
The reason the NFL's antitrust exemption isn't on the line isn't clear either, but as Stephen Ross, chairman of Penn State's Sports Law Institute, puts it: "Congress only cares if the people they talk to care. Their constituents aren't complaining, so they aren't either."
That there is so comparatively little public outrage over drugs in the NFL may simply be because the league has done such a superb public-relations job. The earliest documented use of steroids in pro football dates back to 1962, when the San Diego Chargers' strength coach, Alvin Roy, was handing out steroid pills. It took the league 21 years to ban anabolic steroids, and in 1989 Commissioner Pete Rozelle helped implement the first game suspensions for positive steroid tests. But the NFL was still well ahead of baseball's pace; MLB would not adopt such regulations until 2004. Under Rozelle, the NFL's proactive stance bought it a great deal of good will while MLB continued to struggle with its image.
What no one knew then was that much of this good will was based on false perceptions. An example was reported by Mike Freeman in his 2003 book, "Bloody Sundays: Inside the Dazzling, Rough-and-Tumble World of the NFL" (HarperCollins). At a 1999 meeting of the NFL players union in Hawaii, union officials somehow forgot that the proceedings were being videotaped by a Florida company that they themselves had hired. With the cameras rolling, a union official told the session that 16 players had failed their drug tests that year but weren't punished because of a "secret agreement" between the league and the union not to enforce existing drug rules until a new policy, which was in the works, could be established. Apparently neither side wanted any bad publicity while the new agreement was being finalized.
How many other secret agreements has the league had with its players over the years not to enforce its own policies?
Enough, apparently, to create a major scandal, whether anyone outside pro football chooses to recognize it or not.
Mr. Barra writes about sports for the Journal.
Write to Allen Barra at allen.barra@wsj.com
Links:
Players of substance-http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/nfl/20080921-9999-1s21nflmai.html
Why less outrage over drugs in the NFL?-http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/nfl/20080921-9999-1s21nflmlbs.html
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