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| Still smaller than every linebacker
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Headline to a column written in the Philadelphia Daily News: "NFL seems to have better handle on steroid problem than MLB."
The keyword is "seems." According to the article, steroid use was de rigueur in the NFL back in the 80s in a way that it has never been alleged to be in baseball. Ex-lineman Brian Baldinger:
"I remember the first day of training camp, going into Player X's dorm room when the vets showed up," says Baldinger, who played 11 NFL seasons for the Cowboys, Eagles and Indianapolis Colts. "A brown bag was dumped out on the bed full of syringes and you name it. And you just kind of grabbed what you needed.
"It wasn't like it is now, with baseball players saying, 'Let's get the playing field even.' Back then, it was understood that X-amount of players, mostly linemen, that's what they did [use steroids]. It wasn't looked at as a competitive advantage."
In light of that culture the NFL, to its credit, instituted steroids testing in the 1980s. And it has had some success. According to the article, anonymous post-retirement surveys by a medical journal indicated a 20.3% rate of steroid use among respondents in the 1980s and a 12.7% rate currently. While it's not unreasonable to assume that the actual usage rate is higher simply because human nature does not easily allow people to admit bad stuff, let's just say that 12.7% is accurate.
So rates are lower, but is that any basis to claim -- as the people quoted in this article claim -- that the NFL's testing regime represents success? 12.7% of current NFL rosters equals roughly 215 players. In the past four years, however, a total of 43 players have been suspended for violating the NFL's PED policy, or about 10 a year. I'll spare you the math, but trust me when I tell you that 10 a year is somewhat less than 12.7%.
Yet despite this -- and despite the fact that the no one has ever provided any data suggesting that as many as 12.7% of baseball players are using PEDs at any given time in the testing era -- football is held up as having its PED house in better order than baseball. And that's before you apply the same "look how big those dudes are" logic to football that is so often applied to baseball.
I won't claim that baseball's testing regime is perfect -- it's actually less comprehensive on paper than the NFL's -- but I find it incredible that the NFL is given a virtual free pass when it comes to steroids while baseball's drug problems are continually dragged out for public ridicule and abuse.
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I would like to know that answer to this question myself. Especially in light of how NFL players often act.
It helps that the NFL commentariat isn't bent on turning people off from the game as it's currently played.
Because middle-aged media members don't look back on football with stars in their nostalgic eyes, as they do baseball.
Also in baseball, numbers are sacred, in football, not so much. I know the career passing leader in yards, but don't know the number, or the career TD passes, or career rushing TD, or career total TDs. I don't know any of these numbers. But I knew 60 and 61 and 714 and 755. I know Ted Williams batted .406 and Cy Young won 511 games. I knew 2,130 and 2,131. I know 191 RBIs is a lot. Then all of a sudden the numbers don't get one-upped, they get smashed to hell. 60 home runs in a season is a record for what, 30+ years and then in the span of 4 years it's dropped to 7th all time!?!? That's a pretty significant impact.
It's just not as big of an impact on the football game most people like to watch.
Your right Splint
I think that's weak. There was a confluence of factors that led to the crazy offense of the late '90s/early '00s, and I think the evidence points to PEDs having relatively little impact. From '92 to '93, there was a dramatic jump in offense that presaged the decade to come. Does it seem likely that everybody got together in that off-season and decided to start 'roiding all at once? If so, you've got quite the imagination.
Most likely, the ball was made livelier between those two seasons to sexy up the game for casual fans. Then, four teams were added in the span of five years, diluting the talent pool substantially. Couple those developments with the tiny new retro parks being built, and you can see why offense went through the roof.
I'm not saying that PEDs didn't contribute. I'm saying that they don't even need to have been around for a significant increase in run-scoring to have occurred. There's no definitive proof that steroids or any other substance could really have had such a dramatic, across-the-board impact. So until such proof exists, you'd do well to look elsewhere when placing blame.
As an aside, records are there to be broken. It may not seem fair to you, but many records are broken and re-broken in flurries over the course of a few seasons. This is because little tweaks at the margins can have significant repurcussions for how the game is played. Is it fair that Cy Young got to wrack up win totals in an era where nobody hit home runs? Is it fair that Babe Ruth came along, decided to swing from his heals, and shattered nearly every offensive record in the span of a few years? Is it fair that many records were set with some of the best players in the country forbidden from participating in major league baseball?
All that aside, numbers are sacred in baseball and always have been, not so much in football. Anything even perceived at affecting the numbers, such as PEDs, is seen as evil. Doesn't matter if there is actually a statistical correlation behind it.
I guess there's no denying that, but it's stupid.
I think Will Carroll of BP reported that NFL players are only tested once during the pre-season and that "surprise" test during the season aren't performed on all players.
Also, aren't a lot of those positive NFL test for drugs other than steroids? It seems that a lot of them are for weight loss products (ephedrine based drugs).
The answer is rather simple: Because 99% of NFL players are freakishly big and strong, so the difference between being that way naturally or chemically is a gradation that most folks can't fathom. Versus baseball players, many of whom are big and strong, but most of whom resemble folks like you and me.
Isn't it obvious? The NFL VOLUNTARILY instituted a testing program and has been doing the best they can to keep up with steroid technology. Baseball looked the other way much more recently (and because home runs sell) and STILL would be looking the other way if public outcry hadn't forced them to finally admit there was a problem.
Keeping up with the designer steroids is always a losing battle because the tests can't be developed until the new drugs are discovered. So, it's no surprise that there are still a lot of people doing it. But the point is that the NFL does everything it can to catch the cheaters and harshly punishes them when they are caught.
I second this. This whole discussion is weak. MLB hasn't even banned as much as the NFL. How often are NFL players banned for over the counter legal stuff? Often. DHEA is still legal in MLB but the NFL and others banned it. Gee, I wonder why people are still focusing on MLB?
The article presents pretty good evidence that there remains considerable PED use in the NFL. So are you saying that it's more important for the leagues to appear to care about PEDs, or is it more important for PEDs to be gone? Because even if the NFL is doing the former, it's not doing the latter.
One more thing. As Wooden said, big guys tend to end up being football players. The fact that every linebacker is bigger than Barry Big Head is irrelevant. They were way bigger to begin with. They didn't double their cap size over a 2 year period.
If you go apples to apples, the average size of NFL players has increased dramatically since the 1980s. So no, they weren't way bigger to begin with. They've gotten tremendously bigger in the past decade or two. Natural?
Absolutely not natural. I've railing about this to anyone who would listen to me (obviously not that many people) for quite some time. Very few humans can be 6ft tall, 250lbs, with a 32inch waist. Now every NFL team has 6-10 guys like that.
Rodney Harrison, admitted HGH user, even suspended by the NFL, just got a studio job from NBC on their pregame show. Do you think there is any chance in hell Andy Pettite or Jason Giambi get a cushy gig like that when they hang them up? Football players are supposed to take performance enhancing drugs for the good of the team, but baseball players are selfish jerks for doing the same.