What's wrong with this picture?
Major League Baseball has Barry Bonds, BALCO, Sosa, McGwire, Canseco, Palmeiro, nationally televised congressional hearings, etc., etc., and miles of newspaper print about baseball's steroid problem.
Professional cycling kicked 13 riders off the Tour de France on the eve of the race, including three of the favorites, and then watched as tour champion Floyd Landis flunked a drug test. Lance Armstrong, cycling's greatest name, has been dogged by drug accusations for years.
Track and field has operated for years under a cloud of suspicion as world record holders and Olympic champions have been suspended or investigated for steroid use, including Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, Linford Christie, Calvin and Alvin Harrison, Antonio Pettigrew, C.J. Hunter, Jerome Young, Michelle Collins, Tim Montgomery.
And the NFL? Uh, business as usual.
Pardon the cynicism, but are we supposed to believe that a large percentage of football players aren't using steroids?
No other sport relies more on size and strength than football players, and yet the NFL has been virtually scandal free. The league was ahead of other leagues in implementing a testing program for steroids (in 1987, 15 years ahead of baseball), but somehow less than one percent of the tests have been positive.
Do you believe that more baseball players take steroids than football players?
Many writers and observers around the country are wondering the same thing during this Summer of Steroids.
NFL players might pass drug tests, legitimately or illegitimately, but not the eyeball test. Players are bigger and faster than ever. There are running backs and quarterbacks who weigh 250 pounds or more. Do you know what you would have called Daunte Culpepper and Ben Roethlisberger in the '60s and '70s? Offensive linemen.
According to ESPN, 25 years ago there was one player in the NFL who weighed more than 300 pounds; in 2005, there were 403 of them in fall camp. The size increase far outstrips the increase in size in the general population. Former player Steve Courson once said, "When you look at the size of players today, diet and training haven't changed. That would lead me to believe it's out there."
Yet last year Commissioner Paul Tagliabue told Congress with a straight face, "We don't feel there is a rampant effort to cheat."
Do you buy it? All the other major sports are dealing with major steroid issues, but not the NFL.
Lyle Alzado, the former defensive end, blamed his poor health on steroid use and died of a rare form of brain cancer in 1992 at the age of 43. John Matuszak, another monster-sized defensive lineman, died of heart failure in 1989 at 38, which some observers blame on steroid use. In the '60s, before steroids were illegal, the San Diego Chargers had cereal bowls filled with Dianabol in the training room.
Are we supposed to believe the situation has improved since then?
Courson, who also blamed his health problems on steroids before he died in an accident, said NFL drug tests have "ocean-sized holes large enough to sail the Atlantic and Pacific fleets."
Jim Haslett, a former NFL player and coach, said steroid use was "rampant" in the NFL 25 years ago. He said half of all NFL players and all linemen used steroids in the 1980s.
Last year Dr. James Shortt told "60 Minutes" that he provided steroids and human growth hormone to about 2 dozen NFL players, some just weeks before they played in the 2004 Super Bowl. Such a revelation in baseball or track would have resulted in a scandal, but this barely made a ripple in the news.
The NFL's penalties for steroid use aren't much of a deterrent — four games for a first offense, compared to two years for track and field and 50 games for baseball. Like other leagues, the NFL does not test for human growth hormone.
By putting players who are unnaturally big and fast on a synthetic surface, you essentially shrink the field and rev up the collisions. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the 2003 NFL injury rate was almost eight times higher than for any other professional sports league. According to an exhaustive study by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review published earlier this year, more than half the league's players are hurt each year.
It's difficult to believe that the NFL doesn't have a bigger problem with steroids than is believed or acknowledged. If so, let's hope they wake up to the problem faster than baseball did.
E-mail: drob@desnews.com