It seems almost every other day, the sports world gives me another reason to agree with Mr. Hand, the uptight history teacher in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Convinced everyone is on dope.
Houston Texans linebacker and NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year Brian Cushing was suspended four games for testing positive for a banned substance, hCG, a fertility drug often used as a steroids masking agent.
Dr. Anthony Galea ? best-known for administering platelet-rich plasma therapy to Tiger Woods and Steelers Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu ? is facing charges in Canada and under FBI investigation for smuggling and illegally distributing human growth hormone.
Now, Floyd Landis comes clean by revealing that he took a variety of performance-enhancing drugs and treatments, four years after the cyclist vehemently denied doping when stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title for failing drug tests.
It would be one thing if these were isolated incidents, but some of the biggest names in sports have been associated with steroids, from Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire to Marion Jones and Alex Rodriguez.
It’s enough to make me believe that every elite athlete is using something.
Aloha, Mr. Hand.
Instead of treating everyone as if they are innocent until proven guilty, I operate under a different assumption. It’s my version of willful suspension of disbelief, in order to ensure there is a level playing field: Everyone in pro sports is guilty, until proven innocent.
How can they prove their innocence?
Agree to random blood testing.
It’s the most fool-proof way to catch the cheaters, who are always a step ahead of the testers because substances such as HGH can’t be detected in a urine test. If pro athletes want to claim they are clean, the burden is on them to prove it. But performance-enhancing drugs are the most taboo topic in sports ? from preps to pros ? and testing is the most contentious.
Boxer Floyd Mayweather might be a pioneer on that front, after demanding that Manny Pacquiao agree to random Olympic-style drug testing before their proposed bout. When Pacquiao refused to submit to blood testing within a 14-day window of the fight, it was called off.
As a result, suspicions arose that Pacquiao was cheating.
And cheaters rarely come clean, even when caught.
That’s what made the revelation by Landis so remarkable.
“No one gave me something and said: ‘Don’t ask what this is, just take it,'” Landis told ESPN.com. “I would never have done that. The things I took, I knew what they were, and I spent time researching what the risks were, and the decisions I made were mine.”
Of course, Landis came clean only after spending $2 million in a failed bid to overturn his eight-year ban and titling his book, Positively False.
Cushing appears to be following a similar approach, going so far as to say he feared a tumor in his body produced the positive test for hCG – a notion dismissed by doctors.
When The Washington Post reported that an unidentified NFL player named in an affidavit in the Galea case was a member of the Washington Redskins, at least one teammate didn’t want that player to be identified.
“I hope the details don’t come out,” defensive end Phillip Daniels told The Post. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to have to look at my partner and say: ‘You were doing that illegally all this time?’ I hope they just tear the papers up and just go to him privately and do it that way.”
A better solution would be for elite athletes to agree to provide random blood samples as proof that they aren’t cheating instead of hiding behind collective bargaining agreements that prevent such testing, or the notion that they were unsuspecting victims when caught.
Until blood testing becomes as prevalent as the use of performance-enhancing drugs, athletes will abide by an unwritten “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that makes them all appear to be guilty ? of cheating, or turning a blind eye toward it.
And, unless we demand such standards, we’re the dopes.
