Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football
By Matt Chaney
Released in January 2009
Four Walls Publishing

This final excerpt for Spiral of Denial summarizes anti-doping strategies and failures in American football and recommends new action for immediate prevention

Book excerpt posted February 5, 2010

The Courson Plan: Doping Prevention, Injury Reduction for Football
The reality was obvious: American football was beset by muscle doping and related systemic problems at all levels by the 2000s, professional, collegiate, and secondary school. The primary evidence was increasing sizes, the documented history of anabolic drugs in football [steroids from about 1960 followed by human growth hormone, clenbuterol, GHB, IGF-1, and more], and the inability to produce a valid system of testing. Football’s widespread problem of the past was confirmed even by present-day officials, rendering illogical their claim of effective prevention, given the environment’s humongous athletes with various body frames weighing in at 250 pounds and up at all levels of play.

Urinalysis, the standard theoretical option for combating doping in football’s vast domain, was proven a failure for detection and practicality. Steroid testing, either random or scheduled, would flunk as a grade-school chemistry project, with no chance of meeting its objective because of loopholes. The null hypothesis prevailed: Conventional urinalysis could not prevent doping in football, although incessantly promoted by the sport’s athletes, coaches, organizers, doctors, employee scientists, and other associates of the game. The entire player population, preps to pros, could juice with impunity.

In addition, so-called Olympic testing was no answer for American football, despite incessant hype from officials of WADA, USADA, the USOC, and IOC. Blood testing, an elaborate, expensive, intrusive technology and protocol, was out of the question for some 15,000 school districts and about 1,000 colleges that hosted football.  And expert critics lined up globally to attack the conventional testing of Olympic athletes, detailing the insurmountable faults, and a primary engineer of the technology agreed, Dr. Don Catlin. “I don’t think we’ve done anything that really ameliorates the problem; we’ve just pushed it into different areas,” Catlin said, noting that athletes and clandestine chemists always found substances and techniques to defeat screening. Drug expert Dr. Charles E. Yesalis believed designer steroids, invisible to screening, keyed many false-negative results for dopers. “You don’t know the hot drug, nor do I,” Yesalis said in 2006. “When we find out about stuff, they’ve already gone on to the next one. Growth hormone’s use in athletics is as big a surprise as the Army Jeep. … The real secret stuff is new designer drugs.” Designer steroids were associated with notorious gurus and superstar athletes, but the drugs could reach any person through over-the-counter supplements, according to investigative reports by Amy Shipley of The Washington Post.

The NFL and NCAA, conducting a thin ploy amid the hot steroid politics of the mid-2000s, promised to begin rigid testing out of competition, which they originally claimed to do in 1990. “I’m not sure anyone has worked out the logistics yet, but they are supposed to be doing year-round testing,” said trainer Dave Binder, the University of New Mexico, in 2006. “They called it year-round in the past, but this is really it.” Anonymous NCAA football players, however, stated they knew of no testing in their programs during summer break. Regardless, off-season or out-of-competition testing had proved impractical for anti-doping in Olympic sports and cycling, primarily for excessive costs, logistical impossibilities, and privacy issues. “No-notice out-of-competition tests are easily dodged despite the rules,” wrote Robert Weiner, former White House drug policy spokesman, and Cael Pulitzer, sports policy analyst, in their co-commentary for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

A greater impracticality for prevention in football was proposed blood testing, including “bio-marking” a body’s physiology for doping signs such as fluxing levels in proteins and testosterone. Among challenges, serum analysis in America would require heavy funding, qualified personnel, and likely litigation. Moreover, experts worldwide ridiculed WADA’s purported HGH blood test, calling it questionable science. Since the 2004 Olympics, thousands of HGH tests had failed to produce one positive result.

Meanwhile, bio-identical substances, stem cell therapy, and gene transfer technology—or “gene doping” in sports parlance—promised a new wave of undetectable doping for athletes. Gene doping might have hit sports as early as 2005, a German court case revealed, when a track coach tried to purchase Repoxygen, the gene-therapy drug for boosting red blood cells in anemic patients by manufacturing extra EPO. Athletes and coaches worldwide contacted Dr. H. Lee Sweeney at Penn University, inquiring about gene transfer he employed to create “super mice” with bulging muscles and incredible performance. Scientists engineered hybrid animals such as cows with disease immunity, salmon with rapid growth, and eco-friendly pigs that produced low-phosphorus manure. “Some athletes will want to use gene doping to create super-strong muscles. Some will want to increase the supply of red blood cells so they have greater stamina,” said bio-ethicist Thomas Murray, president of The Hastings Center.

The primary process of genetic manipulation entailed the needle insertion of a plasmid composed of a virus and a gene—such as a gene for fast-twist muscle development—into a host’s particular muscle group. The virus carried the new gene through cellular walls for proper uptake. Sweeney doubted gene transfer could be detected by anti-doping in sports, but WADA claimed its scientists were making progress. A muscle biopsy would probably be the only way of finding the telltale transport virus. Sweeney planned to introduce a commercial product for dogs in 2009, gene therapy to treat muscle wasting or immobility, and he anticipated that calls from the sports world would increase. “I think the real threat is from scientists and clinicians who decide they want to make money off the athletes to make this available,” Sweeney told The London Telegraph.

More experimental substances and techniques enticed athletes and associates. “I think there’s a whole new horizon for anabolic therapies, and the potential for abuse will be exceedingly high,” said Dr. William Evans, the University of Arkansas. SARMS, or selective androgen receptor modulators, locked into steroid receptors of specific muscle groups to foster growth, and myostatin inhibitors blocked the protein that halted expansion of muscle. Prior to the Beijing Olympics, Sciencentral.com reported substances reputed to be myostatin inhibitors were sold in China, Korea, and online. Sweeney found that injecting IGF-1 into target areas stimulated specific muscles, and an injectable “HGH releaser” was on the market, Sermorelin, said to stimulate the pituitary gland for secreting more of the hormone. “MK-677,” a similar substance, stimulated production of HGH and IGF-1 in older adults. Resveratrol was another prospect for performance enhancement in athletes, as a drug said to boost endurance and lifespan in mice and rats.

So, with the undeniable failure of conventional testing, what could be done about muscle doping in American football?

The historic argument of game abolishment lingered in citizens like M.E. Davis in Missouri, angered by NFL lineman Korey Stringer’s unnecessary death of heatstroke in 2001. “It calls attention to the stupidity, callousness, inhumanity and cupidity of the ‘game’ of football and all who promote it,” Davis wrote to The Post-Dispatch. Abolishing football wasn’t widely discussed, but in the wake of BALCO’s exposure many media and policymakers believed Congress should handle the drug problem for sports. However, politicians accomplished nothing in years of wasted time, expense, and misinformation. Public patience had diminished for federal investigations into scattered individuals, even superstar athletes like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

Law agencies did make progress in combating PEDs during the 2000s, but they were incapable of tackling the problem alone. Many police personnel were juicers themselves, with hundreds exposed for purchasing, distributing, or using anabolic steroids and growth hormone. In addition, the notion of teaming law enforcement with sports organizers to share information and bust athletes was badly misguided in America, given Constitutional rights and the potential for abuse by athletic organizations with historic, ongoing complicity in doping.

The overall hypocrisy and ineptitude of traditional anti-doping policies and programs led to the increasing public call for “legalizing” synthetic performance enhancement in American sports. The argument completely aligned with the culture’s prevalent value for success through virtually any means necessary, or true American ethos, and it certainly merited discussion for leagues comprised strictly of adult athletes. In addition, pro sports like the NFL already allowed anabolic drug use for select athletes, although mostly unknown to the public. The “therapeutic use exemption” in policy sanctioned tissue-building substances for diabetes and other medical conditions, including dubious “hormone deficiency” problems that doctors legally “diagnosed’ in younger men without pituitary or testicular damage. Moreover, the simple brutality of football at the pro and college levels mandated the use of painkillers and anabolic drugs, if not stimulants, yet only athletes remained at a punitive risk for exposure.

Throwing open the barn door to PED use at the prep level was untenable, however.

Weight Restrictions Based on Player Frames, Body Mass Index
The Courson Plan for the immediate prevention and future control of muscle doping in football was rather simple by composition, largely drawn from the elements of the marketplace of ideas.  I was forever fond that the Courson Plan evolved in American fashion. The marketplace of ideas was the great Colonial vision for public debate, including the hearing of falsehoods. With rhetoric in the open, everyone could arrive at sound conclusions. The Courson Plan, as I would name it for the late doping expert Steve Courson, a former juicing NFL lineman, perfectly demonstrated the practice of democracy.

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Matt Chaney is a journalist, editor, teacher and publisher in Missouri. E-mail him at mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com. For more information about his 2009 book Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, visit the home page at www.fourwallspublishing.com.

Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football
By Matt Chaney
Four Walls Publishing 2009

The excerpt series for Spiral of Denial culminates during holy Super Bowl week with summaries and conclusions of the book released one year ago

Book excerpt posted February 2, 2010

Safety Issues and Real-World Threats
By 2008, I was impressed American football continued to get away with butchery, even killing. Like me, many former players saw through the football mythology, understood The Spectacle, the power of denial for issues that impacted the health of athletes. Popular sentiment held football as essential for American life, right?  Yeah, we older guys heard that. What amazed us in the Post-9/11 world was how America continued to pick up the medical expense for football, to pay for the harm done young players and former athletes in their retirement. There were millions of us. Didn’t America understand mere football profiteers—including the “nonprofit” NCAA and flush athletic departments—continued to pass enormous health-care costs to the public?

Clearly this country didn’t mind footing the bill for stadiums, arenas, and practice facilities, paying billions in construction and renovation along with ongoing maintenance and security. Over the 21^st century, the sport-entertainment domain would cost Americans billions just in loan interest and debt service—for capital borrowed and spent within the first decade. What the public didn’t realize, apparently, was the fact we all paid for football’s ravenous consumption of the vital talent commodity, the bodies of players—and for as long as they lived.

Society paid the lion’s share for football casualties, short-term and long-term, in health-care costs and insurance premiums. Costs compounded annually with hundreds of thousands of fresh injuries, leaving many young people with qualified disablements. Medical insurance for colleges and high schools paid some immediate coverage, but school and athletic officials often shifted costs to the injured individuals and their families. Barring death or catastrophic injury, a player assumed full health-care costs once no longer listed on a school’s game roster, whether by choice, graduation, or other medical condition. Future medical coverage and payments related to football were the individual’s burden.

Every year, the nation’s school districts collectively racked up a fortune in injury costs, and college football churned out its enormous medical expenses, incurred at the thousand or so institutions hosting their blood sport. Even major colleges liked to dodge medical expenses. “In fact, the NCAA, which reaps billions from the efforts of ‘student-athletes,’ somehow maintains its status as a nonprofit organization (with all the accompanying tax loopholes),” Wayne M. Barrett wrote for USA Today Magazine. “Yet, the NCAA doesn’t adequately insure its athletes…"

The NFL was hardly better. Barring catastrophic maiming, retirees were responsible for their medical care until death, and many couldn’t afford adequate coverage, especially among generations predating 1977 in the league. The atrocious physical condition of NFL retirees was thoroughly documented, mass orthopedic injuries, and accumulating research focused on concerns such as concussions. The disability and pension issue of NFL retirees blew up in 2006 and would continue for years, apparently, with public sentiment growing against management and the union.

“The richest sports league in America can’t take care of its own,” observed Gwen Knapp, San Francisco Chronicle, citing the case of 1970s lineman Conrad Dobler, in his 50s and facing a myriad of challenges in health and finances along with his wife, a paralysis victim. The league wasn’t any help. “The way Dobler sees it, the NFL often dumps its medical problems on an unsuspecting public, either through social services or higher insurance costs for a player’s future employer,” Knapp wrote. Dobler said, “You see how they get the money for their stadiums. … They’re always saying, ‘Hey, let’s get the public for some more.’ ” Charlie Krueger, former 49ers lineman, said, “Part of the cost of playing football is physical damage. The NFL has been able to get away with monumental monetary advantages without paying for it.”

Surely the general public understood modern football was dangerous as ever. Every American saw vicious collisions of pro and college up close and repeatedly on video, supported by hard data of sizes, speeds, and casualties. Contact death had not occurred for decades in mass-marketed, entertainment football, the 32 NFL franchises and 70 or so big-name schools—each a valued brand name of American football—but disabling injury was common in the variety of shattered bones and ripped knees, tendons, and shoulders. The tragic cases included brain traumas and crippling paralysis, with the latter much less frequent but more publicized. “The health consequences of high-impact sports is not just an issue for old timers. Increasing numbers of present-day players are reckoning with the short- and long-term consequences of concussions and cranial trauma,” wrote Dave Zirin, cultural critic on sport, for The Nation. “This is partly because there is far more research and awareness about concussive injury. But the game is changing: Players today are bigger, stronger and faster then even ten years ago.”

The reality of football destruction and death had been quashed, minimized, disinfected to the extent it rolled by out of sight save for the relative few witnesses to genuine horror. Victims of serious injury and their families endured terrible tragedy of American football. If the game indeed taught positive values to untold young athletes, it should have, because the other side was much darker than commonly portrayed.

The game outright killed 1,006 players during the 77 years through 2007, for example, including at least one girl, and led to deaths of 683 more players, including of heatstroke and cardiac arrest, according to statistics of the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. In addition, the center reported 278 catastrophic incidents classified as cervical-cord injuries, affecting the region of spinal column to brain. Many victims did not recover fully from damages in motor and neural function, and I could vouch for other types of paralysis the center didn't track. In middle age my right foot remained 90 percent “dropped” with paralysis of a nerve shredded at the knee in 1982, sustained playing college football. In the same season, the Catastrophic Injury Center logged 11 cases of cervical-cord injury.

Raw data, stark as it may be, was not the full story, though. To paraphrase the butcher Joseph Stalin, from his staff briefing on fine propaganda, the public viewed 5,000 deaths as a statistic but one victim’s personal story as tragic. Maybe that was why the media routinely reduced football deaths to the few lines of a brief report, and the game and fans demanded it that way.

When I was a newspaper sportswriter, I penned a column titled “A Player Dies Quietly in Football America,” recounting a college player’s collapse in Georgia. The local prep coach complained to my editor. He said I made it difficult to recruit kids to play, and he was correct. I liked the coach, even understood him to a point. He certainly took as much precaution for the heat as possible with his team, while also properly conditioning players for the trying task of competing. My point was the game could never be safe enough, regardless of anyone’s good intent, and I was a messenger, not a recruiter. Elsewhere, I was agape in seeing researchers, doctors, claim the game could be made “safe” through rules enforcement or technology. Impossible!

Regarding football horror stories, the Stalin rule applied: More detail on victims altered the response. Even the cold, calculated annual report of the Catastrophic Injury Center could chill the blood with its additional notes on cases nationwide. The research encompassed all types of football, pro, college, prep, sandlot, and youth leagues, with financial grants and statistics contributed by the NCAA, the National Federation of State High School Associations, and the American Football Coaches Association. The 2007 report covered football involving about 1.8 million participants, including 1.5 million at junior and senior highs and 75,000 in college football.

In 2007 there were four direct deaths in football, nine indirect deaths, and eight injuries of the cervical cord. Less impersonal details were found in the report’s case descriptions, including the following on non-fatal injuries:

"A 17-year-old high school football player was injured… while being tackled in a game. The helmet of the tackler hit the ball carrier under the facemask and drove his head back. He had a fracture of CV-5 and had surgery… At the present time recovery is incomplete. A 16-year-old… had a collision with a teammate while rushing the passer. He is quadriplegic. A 17-year-old… was hit in the head by the knee of the ball carrier. He was [5-6] and weighed 140 lbs. Recovery is incomplete. A 16-year-old… was a ball carrier fighting for extra yards when he was hit by another tackler from the front. He had surgery and recovery is incomplete. He is presently in a rehabilitation center. … A 16-year-old high school football player was injured… Contact was head-to-head with the tackler. He collapsed after the game… The injury was subdural hematoma with surgery and incomplete recovery. A 17-year-old… was involved in a number of hits during the game and it was not possible to say which hit caused the injury… diagnosed as a bleed in the brain. The player had surgery and was in rehabilitation."

The football year’s four direct fatalities involved collisions, per the definition, and death was not immediate in three cases. Indirect deaths involved various circumstances attributed to football. Case reports by the Catastrophic Injury Center included the following:

"A 14-year-old middle school football player was injured while tackling… was diagnosed with a brain injury. After two weeks in a medically induced coma he died… An 18-year-old high school senior [6-5, 275]… was being tackled at the time of the injury. Contact was made by the helmet of the tackler. Injury was diagnosed as internal, with damage to the spleen and small intestine. The athlete died [a month after injury]. A 13-year-old… was injured while being tackled from behind with a blow to the head. The injury was diagnosed as an acute subdural hematoma. … The athlete died [a day later]. A 25-year-old World Indoor Football League football player was injured… a helmet-to-helmet tackle. He was [6-1] and weighed 180 lbs. … Injury was diagnosed as a brain injury and he was dead on arrival at the hospital. … A 17-year-old collapsed at practice… and died [a week later]. He was running laps at the time and cause of death was heart related. He did not have a physical exam before the season. A 16-year-old… received blunt trauma to the knee during practice… He died of a blood clot that broke loose to the lungs, [a] “pulmonary thrombi emboli.” A 17-year-old… collapsed at practice… and died at the hospital the same day. Cause of death was diagnosed as heatstroke. The player was [6-4] and 290 lbs., and the temperature was 100 degrees. … A 19-year-old college freshman football player collapsed and died during a team workout… He was [5-11] and weighed 210 lbs. He was working with weights at the time, and cause of death was heart related."

Beyond cases of direct and indirect fatalities, at least three more deaths were reported around football in 2007: a 14-year-old with a torn aorta; a 17-year-old who died in his sleep; and a teen player who died playing touch football following a team lifting session, caused by an aortic aneurysm, according to the Catastrophic Injury Center.

I saw several problems affecting the future business of football, including for the vaunted NFL, whose fans consumed anything, and I wasn’t alone. “The fact that the public may not care isn’t the issue and doesn’t change the facts and indications that the NFL is sitting on a powder keg,” observed Sal Marinello, BlogCritics.org columnist and former college football player.
 
Franchises and doctors had already been sued for abuse of pain-killing pills and shots, a well-publicized discussion for 40 years. In 2008, Patriots offensive tackle Nicholas Kaczur was charged with misdemeanor possession of oxycodone pills, part of a larger investigation, and Giants tackle Shane Olivea said he kicked a painkiller habit after intervention by loved ones. “Seeing my family [gathered] in my living room… seeing how hurt they were and the pain I had caused them was pretty humbling and gut wrenching,” Olivea told reporters. Hero quarterback Brett Favre was documented with a painkiller addiction back in the 1990s, and I thought it impossible for him to continue through the next decade without the stuff. “I don’t think anyone comes with ‘no baggage,’ ” Favre said in 2006. “And I’d be the first to say that I had my share of troubles and addictions…” The next season, Favre endured shoulder and elbow injuries in his throwing arm, saying he could “shoot up and still play.”

The plague of brain concussions was a certifiable legal nightmare for the NFL, given the union’s court defeat by the family of the late Mike Webster. The estate finally prevailed at the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, a 3-0 decision in December 2006, and collected about $2 million in retroactive disability benefits, interest, and costs. There were more Mike Websters out there. Battered bodies were evident among retirees, garishly displayed at team reunions and other public gatherings, when young and middle-aged men hobbled and jerked about on replacement parts. A few guys motored by wheelchair. “It’s an orthopedic surgeon’s dream,” union official Miki Yaras-Davis said of such a sight in 1995. “[Retirees] all have the crab-like walk, and it’s hard to believe they were once these feared gladiators. Forty-year-old players are having the same problems as 80-year-old men.” In 2002, veteran Raiders lineman Trace Armstrong met many retirees as president of the players association, “and some of these guys don’t look so good,” he said. “Young men, onetime great athletes, but they don’t move around so well.” Armstrong, himself facing retirement, had 16 surgeries by his latter 30s.

The obesity issue of players loomed for the game as a whole. There were already lawsuits, notably for NFL heatstroke fatality Korey Stringer, the enormous Vikings tackle who succumbed in training camp. Research doctors and other medical experts collectively reviewed thousands of football specimens, teens to middle-aged men, and generally concluded risks were apparent, including for cardiac disease leading to complications like enlarged heart syndrome.

Heatstroke continued to kill in football, mainly kids, tragedy unabated despite the game’s horrific record of four deaths in a week during August 2001, including Stringer. Everyone then in football vowed to forever avoid this completely preventable condition, but the promise fell broken. In 2006 five players died of heatstroke, for example, ages 11-17. For cardiac death, meanwhile, researchers corroborated alarming rates of fatalities among athletes, all ages and types.

Grotesquely large physiques of modern football were widely associated with anabolic substances and danger, not surprisingly. Eyesight and common sense constituted enough consideration for the assumption. “Evolved Reality is this: It’s starting to feel like a significant segment of the NFL is on drugs,” observed Chuck Klosterman for ESPN The Magazine.  A Chicago physician, Dr. Terry Simpson, saw evidence of malpractice in examining and treating former players of the NFL, damage left by cortisone and xylocaine injections of the past, and he expected disablement rates to increase because of muscle doping and sizes. “Steroids contribute to the overall injury patterns,” Simpson told The New York Daily News.

Active players acted oblivious to muscle drugs, befuddling outsiders as intended. Despite the evidence of a doping epidemic, players would outright deny it, and in turn the public wondered why so many would unite in a flimsy lie. Many retirees were prone to acknowledging a problem, but they didn’t say much. “The guys that we knew… were doing it, we would never say anything about them,” said Bruce Laird, former safety. “It’s just locker room stuff.” Self-acknowledged steroid user Bill Curry, who juiced decades ago as an NFL lineman, believed players and coaches were ashamed of drug abuse. “It’s hard to come clean on it if you did if for a long time. It’s easy to come clean in my little story [of brief use]. That’s like a Sunday School story,” Curry said, adding “no coach can look me in the eye and say, ‘Well, gee, I didn’t know [a player] was doing it.’ ” Curry noted monetary concerns hindered open talk. “Sadly, as in the case of most human experience, it’s going to take maybe a series of disasters that are obvious. … We don’t do anything until there’s a disaster, until everybody feels it. And when everybody feels it, then we’ll do something that’s very, very serious, but not until.”

Money was definitely the impetus for denial by many juicers past and present, along with the league and union administration, according to numerous insiders. Silence or denial was “a self-interest thing,” said former NFL linebacker David Meggyesy, who didn’t use steroids as a player but knew juicers as a union official. “Look, you go to apply for a medical claim or disability, and you can be denied this claim because you used steroids. You know how insurance companies are. For Christ’s sake, any reason you can provide them to not cover you…” In 2004, Giants center Shaun O’Hara echoed Meggyesy as he denied steroid use to inquiring media. “How can we ask someone to insure us if we’re doing something harmful to ourselves? The insurance companies would never do that,” O’Hara said.

Insurance carriers in the U.S. market struggled mightily in the 2000s, with liquid capital always subject to wipeout by global events such as terrorism, war, natural disaster, and collapsing economy. American football felt the heat too, long overdue, despite the nationalistic sport’s appeal to the insurance industry as sort of a loss leader. Football could still acquire coverage for medical and liability, but premium and deductible rates skyrocketed for sports overall during the decade of disaster, as they should have. American football was increasingly exposed and defeated in civil suits—or predisposed to settle—for its inherent hazards and casualties.

Coaches, trainers, and other personnel gambled on, despite knowing they stood legally vulnerable in potential injury situations involving athletes and even fans—especially at the prep and college levels. On the matter of concussions, for example, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suggested football’s lower levels had more to worry about, and he was correct. For sheer numbers of football participants and lack of resources, fertile litigious conditions existed over unavoidable shortcomings at school districts and colleges, such as inadequate health screening and medical support, and insiders knew it. Kids understood it. Injury “waivers” for football, signed by parents and athletes, were mostly legal ploy anywhere in America. What taxpayers didn’t get, they paid too, especially in the event of an athlete’s death or catastrophic injury, which meant a huge deductible, as high as six figures, and more costs not covered by insurance.

The insurance industry closely monitored the issue of PEDs in American football and had since the 1980s, when carriers began dropping the sport for steroid abuse and injuries reported by media. In 2007, as Texas mandated worthless $6 million random testing for prep sports, one high school required parents of football players to sign a “Steroid Dangers Acknowledgment form.”

Moving forward in the young century, the institutions of insurance, health care, and education were all cash-strapped while the legal peril grew in litigious America. Already, insurers had dropped coverage on numerous hazardous activities at schools and colleges, from rope climbing in PE class to pyramid building by cheerleaders. Football had slid by thus far, likely since it was institutionalized in schools and culture, but this was a money issue, after all. Forces were converging beyond the game’s control, even the all-powerful NFL’s, and it was anyone’s mistake to presume football could roll forward in its present form.

Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football
By Matt Chaney
Four Walls Publishing 2009

Book excerpt posted January 30, 2010

The excerpt series for Spiral of Denial culminates during holy Super Bowl week with summaries and conclusions of the book released one year ago

Teens Using Steroids? 'Not at our school,' Officials Claim
As the high schools of America were drawn into national debate on anabolic steroids, prep coaches and officials maintained that use was minimal. Politicians and media expressed outrage, proclaiming that kids mattered while denouncing pro athletes as poor role models.  Studies concluded teens used steroids, and kids said the drugs were accessible and becoming more popular, for enhancing looks as well as athletic performance. Critics called for tighter laws, steroid testing in schools, and funding for anti-steroid education. “The thing that is most scary…,” said a government health official, “is the kids do it for what society would view as very positive values, winning and success.”

That was the 1980s. Decades later, Dr. Charles E. Yesalis was amused with American acting as if the scourge were new, teen use of muscle hormones in pursuit of athletic stardom, ego fulfillment, and sex. Indeed, Yesalis helped pioneer studies on teens and steroids back in the ’80s, when he heard the same denial he was hearing in the new millennium, from schools across the country: There may be a problem elsewhere, but not here. “It’s always somebody else’s kid. It’s always somebody else’s school,” Yesalis said in 2005. For Yesalis, high-school representatives hardly differed from college and pro officials in their shirking of responsibility. “If I had $100 for every time a high school principal or coach said to me during the past 27 years, ‘Doc, it’s a problem, but not in our school,’ I’d have a Ferrari sitting in my driveway,” Yesalis told The Houston Chronicle.

Among thousands of football programs nationwide, perhaps there existed an American high school with never a juicing football player—improbable concept, said one expert—but apparently a significant portion had users. Nurturing circumstances for a national problem in prep football included a parental mindset for winning and performance enhancement, coaches who looked the other way, the lack of any impact prevention, and the accessibility of anabolic substances from steroids to human growth hormone and supplements. Moreover, the football ideology of “bigger, stronger” ruled in continuum, predating steroids, the dangerous size obsession implanted for players at the prep level.

At least one prep coach considered gene doping by 2008. Media stories were fanning interest for genetic therapy’s possible applications in athletics, and a prominent researcher, Dr. H. Lee Sweeney, the University of Pennsylvania, reported contact from a football coach at a high school. The coach wanted his players to try gene doping, the reputed cutting edge for muscle building, even if some experiments killed humans and lab animals. The coach “wanted to know if we could make enough serum to inject his whole football team,” Sweeney told Discover Magazine. “He wanted them to be bigger and stronger and come back from injuries faster, and he thought those were good things.” Sweeney declined, informing the coach his proposition was illegal and potentially dangerous.

Teens were familiar with anabolic steroids and more performance-enhancing drugs. Studies had long found steroid use at high schools, and news media disseminated reports of police busts and other information. After the BALCO story broke in 2003, authorities, media, and common citizens were increasingly vigilant about steroids.  High schoolers were using for football, wrestling, baseball, and track and field. Some football programs hosted multiple teen juicers down to junior varsity, according to school confirmations and witness allegations. A former cheerleader recounted purchasing steroids from football players at her high school, telling media she sought toned abdominal muscles at 17.

News of juicing preps generated from Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, Utah, California, and more states. The teen athletes mostly used steroids, but also growth hormone, experts said. In some instances football coaches and parents were identified as illicit sources of the drugs. In other cases, no reported links to teens, criminal charges for steroids and HGH were filed against coaches, teachers, and a district board president.

Parents regularly pestered pediatrician Dr. Bernie Griesemer in Missouri, seeking HGH prescriptions for their athletic offspring, and he was publicized as a critic of such doping. “Everybody thinks they are going to retire on their children’s sports incomes,” Griesemer told The New York Daily News. In Dallas, athletic trainer Ken Locker knew of an 18-year-old football player who tested positive for steroids as a college freshman. “The parents admitted giving it to him,” Locker told The Morning News. “They wanted him to get a scholarship.” Only one prep football player in 17 would play in the NCAA, but many parents sought scholarships for their sons. One study found about 10 percent of parents polled knew of PED use by a prep athlete.

Often the pushy parents knew little about anabolic substances, never understanding they might channel children to drug use, said psychologist Dr. Robin Kowalski, Clemson University. “I’m not sure how many parents really sit down and think. Parents know there are some kids that use [steroids], but it’s certainly not their kids.” Football coach George Gatto, Bristol, Pennsylvania, said, “The expectations of parents are sometimes false. We would all like to think that our kids are going to play for Penn State or Michigan, but the reality is that it’s only a small of amount of kids who can play at that level.”

Prep players grasped their limits for advancing in football, measuring themselves against predator physiques they observed roaming college fields. “When colleges are coming around, everyone just wants to get bigger and better, especially now,” said Lucas Cox, senior running back at Red Land High in Pennsylvania, who continued, “You see linemen in college that are over 300 pounds and you see linebackers that are 280 pounds. So everyone tries to get as jacked as they can.” Kevin Perez, 275-pound lineman, was a blue-chip recruit at Miami Killian in Florida. “Looking at the college rosters forces you to gain weight,” Perez said. “You go to the camps and see how big everybody is. I realized a 250-pounder wouldn’t get recruited by a top Division I school.” A coach acknowledged football’s unreal standards, higher up the ladder. “Colleges like linemen that are 6-6, 300 pounds,” said Derek Long, Westlake High in Texas. “They like running backs that run a 4.4 or 4.3 [40]. Not all of us have those physical attributes.

Some prep players attempted to eat their way into college football, but the necessary body package combined size, strength, and athleticism. Drugs offered little help for poor natural specimens, but good athletes could capitalize. “If a coach or someone offers them to you, there’s a real temptation to do it to take yourself to the next level,” Brad Artis, Canal Winchester running back, told The Eagle-Gazette in Lancaster, Ohio. “You see how fast and strong people get by doing it.” Don Matheney, defensive lineman, said he did not use steroids but understood the forces at work, and the physiques of high school were intimidating enough. “I don’t know if it’s as much the guys on TV as it is seeing the guys you’re competing against,” he said. “You feel a little threatened, so some players take things to get an edge.

Prep players with insight about PEDs understood that testing was no protection, just a false hope for prevention in the vast population of school athletes. Urinalysis could not prevent doping anywhere in football, although incessantly promoted by the sport’s doctors, employee scientists, and other associates of the game. All players, preps to pros, could juice with impunity through undetectable steroids, HGH, and more tissue-building substances. Even the NFL, easily the game’s most controlled and resourceful environment for battling doping, could not prevent systemic use among its 1,700 athletes and personnel such as coaches.

Invalid urinalysis, random or scheduled, was exploited through huge loopholes. The technology was limited for detecting substances, and the relative few players subject to testing understood calendar gaps of the process for employing patent steroids. “Fear” of testing was marginal among users, trumped heavily by their confidence and motive for evading detection. The technology was utterly useless at the college and prep levels for its detection faults, lack of funding, and logistical barriers. In 50 states and the District of Columbia, college football had thousands of players at about 1,000 institutions while 1.5 million comprised prep football, scattered among more than 15,000 districts. The average cost of a steroid test was about $100, and a positive result could lead to court litigation, given the cultural factor of sports-minded parents bent on winning.

"Clean" prep football was impossible, and some former players urged parents to heed threats of youth sports from steroids to injuries. Kansas City columnist Jason Whitlock, a large man and former college player, suggested other endeavors for kids. “I wouldn’t criticize any parent who directs a child to stay away from organized sports,” Whitlock wrote for The Star. Former NFL lineman Brent Boyd testified about concussions before Congress in 2007. Suffering from vertigo linked to multiple head traumas in football, Boyd, 50, was reclusive and depressed, confining himself inside on a couch, “hiding from the world,” reported The New York Daily News. “Right now…,” Boyd said, “I would tell any parent don’t let your kid play football.”

Matt Chaney is a journalist, editor, teacher and publisher in Missouri. E-mail him at mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com. For more information about his 2009 book Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, visit the home page at www.fourwallspublishing.com.

Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football
By Matt Chaney
Four Walls Publishing 2009

Book excerpt posted January 28, 2010

The excerpt series for Spiral of Denial culminates during holy Super Bowl week with summaries and conclusions of the book released one year ago

Legion of Critics Blasts Official Apathy for Increasing Body Sizes
There existed no evidence of systemic muscle doping in American football—so said insiders, media, and fans. That was the basic public excuse during the problem’s first 50 years. Approaching 2010, America continued to avoid potentially painful reform over drugs in football, preferring instead to gorge on the nationalistic blood sport as it stood.
 
The smoking-gun evidence, meanwhile, remained right in the face of America, had for decades, at least since the 1980s when juiced specimens abounded. Unnaturally large sizes of players were obvious at every level of football, viewed on television or in-person at the stadium. As former NFL lineman Steve Courson maintained publicly, he once toted around bagfuls of steroids in Pittsburgh, but no one had to peek inside for grasping reality. People need only see his build and that of others in football to understand the picture. “One of the reasons I was always open with my steroid use was because it was so apparent with my physique, and I thought it foolish to try to hide something so obvious, legal and tacitly condoned,” Courson wrote to a former teammate during summer 2005, in correspondence never delivered. "Currently, as of recent events, the media has decided to report this more openly and accurately. Part of that locally I believe is related to Mike Webster’s death. BALCO had a lot to do with the change in reporting. After two trips to Washington I am definitely disheartened, but not surprised by the incredible (myth, image, fantasy, lie or synonym thereof) that NFL management continues to spin on this situation. It has reinforced my views as a person."

Many voices backed Courson about increasing sizes and juice in football, led by athletes active and retired from multiple sports, along with coaches, weightlifters, trainers, sports organizers, medical experts, media, politicians, adult fans, and schoolchildren. “When you talk about the NFL, what’s the first thing you say? Guys who played in the 1970s would be a joke on the football field today,” said Curt Schilling, baseball pitcher.  Hard data founded the argument, weight statistics and comparisons spanning football during the age of pharmaceutical and bio-identical drugs. Among numbers, the starting offensive line of the 1958 NFL champion Colts averaged about 240 pounds while O-line starters for the 2007 Giants, Super Bowl champions, averaged about 6-5 in height and 314 on scales.

Evidence suggested a concentrated wave of huge physiques first hit the NFL during the 1970s, and by the late 1990s the league had 200 players weighing 300 pounds or more. That number doubled the next decade, approaching the year 2010, with about 350 players of at least 300 pounds on game rosters and more than 500 in training camps. An additional 100 players hovered near the 300-pound mark. A Scripps Howard review found the average NFL body weights had increased 10 percent since 1985, before the start of steroid testing, to a 2006 average of 248 pounds. The average for offensive tackles jumped from 281 pounds to 318. “When I played, a 300-pounder was a freak,” said Art Kehoe, Dolphins associate head coach and former NFL lineman. “Today, if you don’t weigh 300 pounds, you are a freak.”

For major-college football, 300-pounders were the majority among starting offensive linemen in 2008, and the size was consistent on rosters across Division II of the NCAA. At the prep level, top-recruited offensive linemen typically hit 300 on the scales—the online rating service Superprep.com often listed a dozen or more players at that weight among its top 40 prospects nationally.

Obesity contributed, particularly in teen players, but numerous witnesses and qualified observers said the 2000s football environment—still stuck on “bigger, stronger”—remained mostly about performance-enhancing drugs. Dr. Yesalis, the epidemiologist, strength coach, and weightlifter, repeatedly remarked God had not “changed the recipe” for humans, always citing additional material evidence of an embedded epidemic. Testing was invalid and football’s documented timeline of muscle doping continually hardened. Organizers now acknowledged they were wrong about the 1980s, for example. Yes, they conceded in official consensus, the problem was in fact widespread during that decade. Confirmed history alone rendered anyone’s claim of cleanup as illogical, given time’s unfettered progression in performance that constantly placed current players as the largest and most athletic ever.

Nonetheless, the football institution denied a problem, as the vast majority of active athletes, coaches, and organizers stayed with dubious excuses. They said gigantic physiques were due primarily to strength training and eating. “Fat” athletes had taken over the game, shoving aside muscled juicers, according to a 2005 company line voiced by NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, testifying under oath for the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform. “I think it’s nonsense…,” Tagliabue said of allegations about PEDs and sizes. “Today we have a young man who’s 6-feet-6 and 268 pounds playing quarterback. Are we to conclude that he’s using steroids? I don’t like to smear people in that fashion.”

Focusing on 300-pounders, Tagliabue contended drugs made “athletes lean and sculpted”—like that quarterback he failed to fully describe as such—and declared “high body fat” beset the league’s largest players. The 300-pounders “tend to be the antithesis of the sculpted, lean athlete,” Tagliabue testified. The commissioner maintained contemporary players simply lifted much harder and ate much more than erstwhile specimens—who trained rigorously, consumed massive calories, and abused anabolic steroids but were significantly smaller than present-day behemoths. Players union director Gene Upshaw backed Tagliabue at the hearing. Upshaw likewise dismissed muscle doping as the key factor for sizes, saying random urinalysis was a certain preventive of that scenario. If anything, Upshaw said, colleges and high schools produced unhealthy football players. “They come to us the size that we get them,” he testified.

Five months later, however, a 300-pound NFL player dropped dead at the age of 23: Thomas Herrion, 49ers lineman, whose autopsy showed an enlarged heart and artery blockage. In addition, publicized studies found systemic hazards in league body weights. Within this context, management spoke differently than when testifying for Congress. Here the NFL contended that fat or unhealthiness was not the primary reason for player weights alarmingly in excess of healthy standards set by the universal Body Mass Index. Now officials contended the NFL primarily featured muscled specimens with low body fat, so the league could argue BMI standards were an invalid application for its athletes.

League medical liaison Dr. Elliot Pellman said the question of obesity among players still had to be answered by research. The league was commissioning its own studies. “There’s a 1-in-200,000 chance that an individual the age of Mr. Herrion will suffer a sudden death,” Pellman said. “It happens, and no one knows why it happens.” Pellman said obesity was a cultural problem, not football’s. Officials dismissed a study, based on the BMI, concluding that virtually all NFL players were overweight or obese. Bears nutritionist Julie Burns said NFL players were abnormally muscular humans. Tagliabue said, “We have athletes that are fitter than most people in society, bigger than most people in society, and doing things that are different and more demanding than many people in society.” PEDs, meanwhile, did not apply.

“Huh?” remarked Sam Donnellon, Philadelphia Daily News, on mixed messages from the league. Basically, official football answers on increasing sizes followed that “fat” athletes were the foremost reason, not drugs; however, if criticism focused on obesity, not doping, then the players were portrayed as muscular and healthy, possessing uncommon physiology. NFL and NCAA rhetoric alike reasoned that modern players gained incredible mass without stuff like steroids, HGH, IGF-1, clenbuterol, and GHB. The necessary presumption held that substances readily available and potent were undesirable, obsolete for modern players.

Impossible, critics responded collectively, a growing legion of insider witnesses and close observers of football, including media, athletes, coaches, and doctors. They rejected official word on drugs from painkillers to amphetamines, anabolic steroids, and HGH. “Can it really be true that the NFL, with more than 300 players who weigh more than 300 pounds each, really has no drug problem?” dismissed Dave Perkins, Toronto Star columnist. “Where’s the proof—other than the NFL saying it has no drug problem?” Anti-steroid trainer Sal Marinello always chortled at football drug rhetoric, contending the NFL and colleges were an historic haven for widespread PEDs. The strength guru and former college football player wrote for BlogCritics.org that “off-the-field training, nutrition and legal modes of supplementation cannot be given credit for the ever-growing NCAA and NFL players.” News writer John Eisenberg, Baltimore Sun, wrote, “A wise doctor who knows about steroids once told me to trust my eyes above all when trying to detect abuse because, as he put it, lifting weights can only do so much. Well, my eyes are telling me that college football, like the pros, has more than its share of juicers.”

Dave DePew, personal trainer and nutritionist, told The San Diego Union-Tribune he was turned off by pro athletes and PEDs, through with consulting for them. “Steroids will definitely help you, and I think most athletes know that,” DePew said. “The unfortunate reality is that most of these athletes will take advantage if they know they’re not going to get caught.” Player agent David Caravantes said pro football wanted “guys who look like Tarzan and don’t play like Jane.” The late Lyle Alzado contended the NFL could have few genetic wonders packing extraordinary muscle at any size without dope, perhaps a percentile among a thousand bodies. Charles Yesalis extended Alzado’s observation to include absurd sizes in college and prep football, and many agreed, such as David Meggyesy, 1960s NFL linebacker and retired union official. “I think [doping has] escalated even more, and the pressure on kids playing football, it’s there,” Meggyesy said. “If the steroids are there, they’re going to do it.”

“You can see all the signs,” said Bill Curry, a coach and former NFL center, in 2008. “You gain 40 pounds over the summer, there’s something wrong with that. All of a sudden you can’t get your headgear on, and your jaws are doubling in size, and I’m callin’ ya in and we’re gonna do a test.” Curry used anabolic steroids to make the NFL in 1965. In his day he saw 300-pounder players genuinely fat, but none could compete. “We just murdered ’em,” said Curry, who peaked in weight at about 245. “You could keep them on the ground all day; that’s where they wanted to be anyhow. They didn’t want to run to the ball.”

Fat was a factor for the largest modern players, Curry said, but he still saw drug use for their sustained speed and athleticism. More big bodies of the NFL astounded Curry, the many hundreds ranging from 250 to 300 pounds with tremendous strength, speed, agility, and minimal body fat. Summing up, Curry said, “Now you got guys that are cut-up 300 pounds, and then you got [athletes] that are 400 pounds who are obese, and they’re out there in the heat and cold, and they’re gonna die. When I watch an NFL game now, I find myself—I would love to just enjoy the football, but I start worrying about [jersey] number 76. He’s gonna die. Soon. He might die in this game, while I’m watching him. I know what he’s been doing, and it breaks my heart.”

“People want to see gladiators, and you just don’t get that way by eating your fruits and vegetables,” said Linden King, former Raiders linebacker and self-confirmed steroid user of the 1970s and ’80s. Former NFL safety Bruce Laird, who retired in 1982, said there was “no question” drugs impacted contemporary sizes of players, whom he believed faced health risks in the present and future. “You know those guys aren’t doing it on peanut butter, and beer, and whatever,” said Laird, a leader in the retirees’ cause for improved disability and pension benefits.
 
Former defensive tackle Charlie Krueger said he saw anabolic steroids sweeping the NFL as he left in the early 1970s. Krueger was convinced muscle doping drove modern football, especially for requirements in size, strength, and athletic ability. “There are many large, large people in [pro] football, college football, and some in high school football,” he said in 2008. “And they must be [juicing]. … I’m glad I was gone before this stuff invaded because you would be forced to use it or lose your job.”

In the debate over Herrion and health, one team official was pragmatic. "Is it good or bad that the league is so big? It doesn't matter, because the players are not going to get smaller," said Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi. "If anything, they are going to get bigger. Colleges are loaded with 300-pound linemen." One coach conceded PEDs were at least a factor. "I think part of this size thing happened because of steroids, the need to be bigger and stronger to compete with guys on the stuff," said Joe Bugel, Redskins line coach." 

Overall, valid scientific study on muscle doping was lacking, but a wealth of research supported increased health risks of football because of large bodies. Public debate on football brutality, the game’s traditional issue, reemerged during the 2000s through concerns funneling back to physiques, including orthopedic injury, brain concussion, and physiological malady linked to excessive weight. Media examined topics like obesity and sudden cardiac death of young athletes, along with NFL retirees’ body maiming, painkiller addiction, cortisone damage, and more disabling setbacks. The issue of healthcare topped the personal agenda of practically every American, and many NFL retirees banded together in complaints against the union administration of the fund for pensions and disability. Press analysis of health issues in football—including size statistics compiled by Scripps Howard, Newsday, and The Palm Beach Post—stimulated public discussion of medical information and witness opinion, so much that politicians dove in to stage a hearing on the disability issue in pro football.

Medical personnel said public focus on increasing sizes was overdue. “Football players have gotten so huge that it has become dangerous from a health standpoint,” said Dr. David Bindleglass, orthopedic surgeon and former college player. “No one in the world loves the game of football more than I do, but it concerns me that players seem to get bigger and bigger, and intrinsically, there has to be some natural limit to it. … Rationally, you have to look at this and wonder where it’s going.” Cardiac surgeon Dr. Arthur “Archie” Roberts was an All-American quarterback at Columbia who later played three years in the NFL. “There’s no question that the super-sizing that’s occurred in the NFL, college and high school [levels] the last 30 years has tipped the scales in a negative way,” Roberts said. “It means there is a serious alert for a health imbalance.”

Dr. Joyce Harp, the University of North Carolina, led a study team that concluded more than one in four NFL players in 2003 qualified for class 2 obesity on the BMI, according to height and weight. About three percent of players approached 400 pounds, ranking them class 3 obese. The NFL labeled the conclusions invalid because its players were unique specimens of the human race, but no independent scientists objected to the research. Harp remarked, “I don’t know what’s going on in the minds of trainers, coaches or other people who drive what happens in the NFL, but clearly there’s something going on when they have these guys getting so big.”

A veteran player indicated something was up about steroids, if not injuries, while airing gripes at the league in 2008. Redskins cornerback Fred Smoot was mad about player fines over uniform attire. “I think they’re worried about all the wrong [stuff],” Fred Smoot told Dan Steinberg of washingtonpost.com. “If you really want to do something, stop everybody from using steroids that’s using steroids, instead of worrying about how the hell I’m dressed when I walk out there and play. You know what I’m saying? Worry about stuff that count, like people getting paralyzed.”

In the controversy over NFL disabilities, opposing parties avoided mention of anabolic steroids and growth hormone. Despite the contemptuous discussion and allegations—sordid details like debilitating injuries, painkillers, amphetamines, dangerous weights, fraud, and personal bankruptcy—the topic of muscle doping slid by quietly. “That has not been part of the argument. No one’s really brought that up,” said Ron Mix, Hall of Fame lineman and an attorney in worker’s compensation. “I got a feeling that’s part of the equation. … Just increased size by itself is an extra strain on the entire system, the skeletal system, the joints, and also the various organs. I mean, you have to be clinically overweight just to play [NFL] football now. That’s a requirement. Just about every position, the guys weigh far more than what physicians say is the ideal weight for them.”

Meggyesy said muscle doping was bound by silence in the league, “but there’s a whole range of issues around injuries, and the elephants in the living room are performance-enhancing steroids.” The retired player had a monetary interest for denying doping, such as healthcare and disability coverage, Meggyesy said, while management would not admit anything that left the league vulnerable. “It comes back to liability,” he said. “It all comes back to who is responsible.”

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Note: The author files many items beyond works cited for this summary passage of book

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Donnellon, S. (2005, August 23). What’s so wrong if the NFL got smaller? Philadelphia Daily News [Online].

Eisenberg, J. (2006, November 18). NCAA, fans stay blind to steroids in football. Baltimore Sun [Online].

Farmer, S., & Wharton, D. (2002, January 29). Weight matters. Los Angeles Times, p. 4—1.

Farmer, S., & Wharton, D. (2007, February 9). Bullet proof. Los Angeles Times [Online].

Farrey, T. (2000, December 7). Mouse beats cat in NCAA testing. ESPN.com [Online].

Farrey, T. (2006, September 11). The guru of Growth. ESPN The Magazine, p. 158.

Farrey, T. (2007, January 29). The case for HGH. ESPN The Magazine, p. 48.

Gold, A. (2006, August 29). It’s just a fantasy.  850/620 The Buzz [Online].

Goldberg, K. (2007, August 30). Prep football players bigger than ever. Times Herald-Record [Online].
Growth Chart. (2005, September 11). Off the growth chart. Lexington Herald-Leader [Online].

Hofmann, R. (2002, June 23). Testing won’t shrink players. Philadelphia Daily News, p. Sports-1.

Hofmann, R. (2005, August 25). Weight limits the NFL can live with. Philadelphia Daily News [in Centre Daily, Online].

Krueger, C. (2008, June 11). Telephone interview with author.

Large, Retired. (2008, November 11). Football players: Staying active may lower health risks for large, retired athletes. Science Daily [Oline].Lewis, M.C., & Carlisle, N. (2007, November 18). Broken college system lets drug cheats slip through the cracks. Salt Lake Tribune [Online].

Maske, M. (2006, September 7). Redskins’ Jansen says use of HGH is rising. Washington Post, p. E1.

Mueller, F.O., & Colgate, B. (2008, February). Annual survey of football injury research. Chapel Hill, NC: National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research.

Pell, D. (2005, April 27). Pumping up the NFL’s steroid policies. davenetics.com [Online].

Perkins, D. (2005, August 23). NFL drug pitch a scam. Toronto Star [Online].

Quinn, T.J. (2006, June 11). A brave new world. New York Daily News [Online].

Quinn, T.J. (2006, November 19). NFL testers step up fight. New York Daily News [Online].

Quinn, T.J., & O’Keeffe, M. (2006, November 12). League may have credibility gap: NFL drug agents insist steroid testing can be exploited. New York Daily News [Online].

Quinn, T.J., & O’Keeffe, M. (2007, April 15). NFL runs reverse on p-men. New York Daily News [Online].

Quinn, T.J., O’Keeffe, M., & Red, C. (2007, February 28). Dozens tied to ’roid sting. New York Daily News [Online].

Robertson, L. (2006, January 1). NFL faces weighty issues with super-sized players. Knight Ridder Newspapers [Online].

Rosenthal, K. (2006, March 12). Schilling not surprised by steroid scandal. The Sporting News [Online].

Shipley, A. (2005, October 30). Latest steroid batch slips under the radar. Washington Post [in Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Online].

Shipley, A. (2005, November 30). Steroids detected in dietary tablets. Washington Post, p. E1.

Steinbrenner Says. (2008, February 18). Hank Steinbrenner says football has bigger steroid problem than baseball. The Associated Press [Online].

Stilger, V.G., & Yesalis, C.E. (1999, April). Abstract: Anabolic-androgenic steroid use among high school football players. Journal of Community Health, p. 131.

Straub, B. (2006, January 31). Number of 300-pounders increasing on prep teams. Scripps Howard News Service [Online].

Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection, U.S. House of Representatives. (2008, February 27). Drugs in sports: Compromising the health of athletes and undermining the integrity of competition. Webcast [Online].

Telander, R. (2006, January 15). Steroid debate can be tackled another day. Chicago Sun-Times, p. 3.

Uryasz, F. (2006, February 15). Interview with author. Kansas City, MO.

U.S. GAO. (2005, November 3). Anabolic steroids are easily purchased without a prescription and present significant challenges to law enforcement officials. GAO report to Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Victory, J. (2005, October 18). Undetectable steroids easy to get online. ABC News [Online].

Walker, C. (2006, December 10). NCAA tests so few athletes, schools are left to fill gap. Baltimore Sun [Online].

Weir, T. (2004, December 8). Do the fans care? USA Today [Online].

Whitlock, J. (2002, May 30). Steroids have ruined athletics. Kansas City Star, p. D1.

Wilbon, M. (2007, September 5). It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Washington Post, p. H5.

Wodraska, L. (2007, August 12). So many reasons to love football. Salt Lake Tribune [Online].

Yanda, S. (2007, October 4). Olympic star’s steroid use causes doubt regarding collegiate athletic ethics. Marquette Tribune [Online].

Yeransian, L. (2006, January 14). HGH threat: Works like steroids but undetectable. ABC News [Online].

Yesalis, C.E. (2005, March 10). Statement of Charles E. Yesalis. In Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives. Steroid in sports: Cheating the system and gambling your health (H. Hrg.  No. 109-65). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Yesalis, C.E. (2005, April 19). Letter correspondence to Marsha Blackburn. In Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives. (2005, March 10). Steroid in sports: Cheating the system and gambling your health (H. Hrg.  No. 109-65). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Yesalis, C.E. (2006, February 17). Telephone interview with author.

Yesalis, C.E. (2006, September 12). Telephone interview with author.

Yesalis, Charles. (2006, June 22). Interview with Charles Yesalis. Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star [Online].

Matt Chaney is a journalist, editor, teacher and publisher in Missouri. E-mail him at mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com. For more information about his 2009 book Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, visit the home page at www.fourwallspublishing.com.

Doping Corner

St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Hyatt Regency Hotel

2^nd floor hallway leading to service corridor off grand ballroom

Transcript posted by Matt Chaney, Friday, January 22, 2010 

Transcript begins at McGwire’s brief opening statement before about two dozen reporters, minutes after he received a standing ovation in the hotel's grand ballroom from about 2,500 fans attending the Cardinals' Winter Warm-Up weekend benefit. McGwire answers questions a little longer than five minutes before exiting back into the service corridor. Due to McGwire's excessive use of "uh" and other syllables for halting language, all audible speech on available recordings is transcribed below.

McGwire: … It’s awesome to be back. Uh, I mean it’s… Visiting the ballpark, uh, was phenomenal. It’s the first time I’ve seen it. Um. It’s, it’s just going to be a joy to go to the ballpark every day to work. Uh, but most importantly I’m just glad they got the [Highway] 64-40 [construction] finished, um, the freeway. That’s the only reason I’m coming back, is because they finally fixed it, and I’d told my wife, as soon as they fixed it, maybe, I’ll get lucky enough to get hired again. So. But, anyways, it’s, it’s, it’s a pleasure to be back, so, um, I’m excited to put the uniform back on.

Media: What did you feel as you got that ovation?

McGwire: Ah, just, ah—I can’t, I can’t describe it. It’s pretty awesome. Pretty cool. I mean it’s just, my stomach is just, my heart’s beating fast. It’s just, ah, ah… Ya know, the thing is you don’t know what to expect, but it, it was really cool. And, um, that’s why I’ve always said, Best fans in baseball [St. Louis].

Media: Mark, do you feel the weight of your shoulders is off the world now, since your announcement?

McGwire: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It took some time to a, to a, process it. Like on Monday night, I couldn’t, I couldn’t answer Bob [Costas live on MLB Network television] on that question, because I’ve never been in that situation before. But, uh, now that I’ve had some days to really think about it, and reflect, and to feel that, uh, it’s been lifted off. I had a chance to get this off my chest. Uh, uh, like I said, I, I wish I coulda done this, ya know, five years ago. Uh, we wouldn’t be having this press conference right now. But, uh, I feel a lot better about it inside.

Media: Do you think you looked honest, in the Costas interview? [McGwire signals for repeat of question.] Do you believe you looked honest, in the Costas interview?

McGwire: Dead honest. That is me. That’s my heart. That is, that is, uhh, something that’s uh—that’s just me. Uh, it’s honest.

Media: Do you think [your] coming out like this is gonna change the stain on baseball? It will change obviously the way they look at you—but as far as baseball’s concerned?

McGwire: [Clears throat] Well, baseball’s done a fantastic job, uh, uh, doing uh, uh, doing—cracking down on the, the uh, with the… drug policy. Uh, doing the things they’re doing, and they’re, from what I’ve heard, they’re improving, improving it. Um… so, it’s, they’ve done, done a fantastic job. The players association, Bud Selig.

Media: Mark, Jose Canseco said that you weren’t telling the truth when you didn’t know what drugs you used. And he named Winstrol, Deca and standard testosterone. Are you familiar with those?

McGwire: Ah, those names, yeah. I’m, I’m familiar with ’em, but, ah, like, like I said, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna… ah… I’m not gonna go down that road with, uh, with Jose. And, uh, ya know, I [chuckles]… this, this is just me. And, uh… uh…

Media: What about your brother and the FBI though, Mark? What do they—the FBI and your brother both say you used, ya know. And used for performance, and strength?

McGwire: Well, uh, well, my, my brother does know. Uh, I don’t know about what to say about the FBI, so…

Media: Mark, what’s your response to the comments today by Jack Clark, that you should be banned from baseball and he won’t even shake your hand?

McGwire: Nah… Well, I, I heard he said something. I don’t know what he said, but, ya know, like anybody else, hey, listen: Uh, they got their own opinions. Um, I was being as honest, as honest as I am, uh, from the heart. Ah, I got it off my chest, and, uh, it’s, it’s something we can just all move on from.

Media: Mark, you said you used HGH once or twice. Why did you only use it once or twice?

McGwire: Well that, ya know, again… Uh, uh, with Jose, I’m not gonna go down that road. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna… I, I’ll take the high road with the Jose stuff, because, uh, that’s just the way I am.

Media: Mark, to everybody in there [grand ballroom], kids, you said, Don’t ever go down the road, the road of, uh, steroids. Why did you go down that road?

McGwire: Good question… Everybody makes mistakes in their lives. And it’s the biggest regret of my life.

Media: Why did you continue to do it, year after year?

McGwire: [Pause] I think I answered the other night. It’s the biggest regret of my life.

Media: Mark, when you decided that you were gonna make this admission, you knew it would be a huge news story. But, uh [repeating for McGwire], you knew that it would be a huge news story. The reaction and, uh, the news that it’s made: Is it what you expected, is it beyond, or?

McGwire: I, I didn’t—ya mean as far as on a national level? Or are ya just talking about just in the [ballroom] there.

Media: National.

McGwire: National level, I didn’t know what to expect. Um… but, obviously, it’s been big news, and, uh, ya know, me coming forward and, and doing what I did, on my own… And, uh, coming clean… I, I just, I [clicks tongue]… I don’t know what else to say. It’s just, it’s—that was from my heart.

Media: Mark, what is the legacy of the Bash Brothers [in Oakland]. What is the legacy of the Bash Brothers now that you have made this admission, and so has Jose?

McGwire: Uh, we were teammates. And we, we played on the team. That was about it. We were teammates and, uh… that was really about it.

Media: So what should people think about your respective accomplishments, now that you’ve made these admissions?

McGwire: That is up to them to make their, uh, their opinion. Umm… that’s, that’s up to them.

Media: Why would he [Canseco] still make stuff up, though?

McGwire: What’s that?

Media: Why would he still make stuff up?

McGwire: Ah, you’re gonna have to ask him.

Media: Mark, you really didn’t tell Tony [La Russa] that you used steroids?

McGwire: Absolutely. Tony had, Tony… Tony La Russa—I kept this to myself. I... Ya know what? I, I spoke from my heart. And I spoke honestly the other night [with Costas]. And, listen: That’s me. And I hope you all can accept this. And let’s all move on from this. Baseball, baseball [speaking over media questions]… Baseball is great right now. Baseball’s better. And let’s just all move on.

Media: One more thing, Mark…

Brian Bartow, director, Cardinals media relations: Thank you. Thank you.

Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football
By Matt Chaney
Four Walls Publishing 2009

Book excerpt posted January 11, 2010

The excerpt series for Spiral of Denial culminates in the weeks before Super Bowl 2010 with summaries and conclusions of the book released one year ago

Forget It: Fans, Most Media Don't Care
Football fans and media were incapable of facilitating change in the game. Americans would not protest or fall disinterested in football, unless drugs were removed and mere mortals made to compete. Fans and media were enticed by winning at all costs and drugged-up supermen to stage the play, spill blood. Americans wanted their football, revered cultural tradition, regardless the costs. “You’re talking about some powerful forces,” ex-49ers lineman Charlie Krueger said in 1989, speaking of football injuries and the abuse of pharmaceuticals. “The only people who can change this is the fan, and the fan doesn’t give a damn. The fans don’t care, as long as they get their game. The owners put out a product, and the people want that product.” In decades following Krueger’s comment, market demand for the NFL only ramped up.
            During the 2000s, several popular sports enjoyed retail immunity for issues such as drugs, injuries, and thuggish behavior by athletes, including abuse against women and children. The American public hardly blinked over a succession of sports stars exposed for performance-enhancing drugs, other than to devour the sensational details. By the end of President George W. Bush's second term, a wealth of press coverage established that athletes relied on anabolic steroids, growth hormone, insulin, blood-boosting EPO, amphetamine and cousins, painkillers, and more to compete in football, baseball, track and field, cycling, and other sports. So-called isolated doping was rendered impossible, not only for sport but for the culture at-large. 

Genuine outrage against doping athletes was not discernible. Grandstanding by politicians did not count nor did the booing of Barry Bonds. The mass popularity of sports continued to be measured in huge revenue and audience numbers. “Fan sensibilities have not been offended as much as they’ve been anesthetized,” wrote William C. Rhoden, New York Times.

Sports columnists critiqued public apathy over sports doping. Veteran sportswriter Art Spander did not detect “the slightest bit of interest” among fans. Another long-time scribe, Jim Donaldson, Providence Journal, wrote, “Foremost among the things I’ve learned in more than 30 years of covering sports is that when values are in competition with winning, values almost always lose.”

“If there was ever any doubt that athletes are made of Teflon, as long as they perform, the last few years have proved the point,” wrote Gwen Knapp, San Francisco Chronicle. “They can be charged with rape, exposed as dopers or accused of beating their wives by their own children over 911 calls, and their fans will rally behind them. Often, the adoration just grows stronger, because their heroes have been victimized by the media, or vindictive spouses, or calculating bimbos, or the French.”

“Baseball fans don’t care whether Bonds did or did not use steroids. They don’t care,” stressed Bob Kravitz, Indianapolis Star. “The things the media care about, the things Congress professes to care about, are of no concern to the multitudes who pay to watch Bonds hit baseballs.”

Football, observers noted, had it easier than baseball and individuals such as Bonds and Mark McGwire. “I’m not saying it’s wrong for baseball to come under attack,” said Mark Fainaru-Wada, investigative reporter and co-author of Game of Shadows. “I think the question is whether football’s gotten the attention it’s deserved.” Hank Steinbrenner, Yankees senior vice president, did not understand how football escaped doping scrutiny that dogged baseball. “I don’t like baseball being singled out,” Steinbrenner said. “Everybody that knows sport knows football is tailor-made for performance-enhancing drugs. I don’t know how they managed to skate by. It irritates me. Don’t tell me it’s not more prevalent. The number in football is at least twice as many. Look at the speed and size of those players.” Football fans did notice the game’s increasing sizes, but only to marvel. They preferred not to see anything amiss. “Steroid scandals? After the 2004 Carolina Panthers went to the Super Bowl, it was revealed that several of their players had taken steroids,” wrote Bruce Arthur, of The National Post in Canada. “But that became nothing more than a blip.”

“Nothing in sports seduces Americans the way the National Football League does,” wrote Michael Wilbon, Washington Post, continuing:

The games have become a national sporting prescription, able to divert attention from just about everything that ails athletic competition, from Barry Bonds to Tim Donaghy to Michael Vick. … If it seems as if the NFL is bigger, better, smarter and more relevant, that’s only because it is. People don’t want to hear, particularly, that a Rodney Harrison has been suspended for HGH, or that an assistant coach, Wade Wilson, has been suspended. If a baseball player uses a performance-enhancing substance, he’s a bum and a national disgrace; if a pro football player does it, he’s just trying to, you know, get an edge, be all that he can be.

“It’s a gladiator sport,” said Todd Boyd, sport sociologist at USC. “People may

give a certain amount of slack to football players because there’s this unspoken sense that, in order to play the game well, you need an edge. That’s what people want in a football player. Someone who’s crazy and mean.” Football players were “99.4 percent disposable,” surmised Adam Gold, blogger. “Other than the true superstar players and the guys that hang around for an extended period of time, the players are interchangeable and completely expendable.” Jim Souhan, Minneapolis Star Tribune, observed that “football combines two of the most powerful and popular aspects of modern American life: violence and TV.”  Some football fans were not concerned enough to act against doping.  Dave Pell, self-described “NFL addict,” wrote in an online post:

I don’t want to sound preachy here. But this is a game that is all about rage and violence. We are all sitting in front of the tube waiting for that perfect crushing and violent blow. And if we don’t get it there, we flip on the Playstation and direct animated versions of our favorite players to crash into each other.

Should players take steroids? Of course not. But pretending that the biggest health problem facing NFL players is roids is like holding hearings on the sport of boxing to determine if the corner stools are ergonomically correct.

            Most fans wanted “good” football stories, the happy stuff, and media accommodated, following the Golden Press rule for making fans part of benign, trivial coverage. In turn, most media relished football and avoided stories about steroids and HGH. “Tailgating, and all the fanfare that goes with it, is one of the reasons I love college football,” wrote Lya Wodraska, the Salt Lake Tribune. “But enough about my thoughts; we at The Tribune want to know what yours are.” Wodraska continued:

How is it that one sport can have so many reasons for loving it? Is it the tailgating? All the hoopla that surrounds the sport like the school band, the raucous student sections or the pranks pulled before big rivalry games? Don’t forget that glorious run of bowl games at the end of the year. … There are personal elements, too, like family allegiances and that old college sweatshirt that is faded, stained and threadbare but that you just can’t bear to throw away. Doing so would seem like tossing away all those memories of post-game frat parties or countless Saturdays spent yelling at the TV.

            Writing of the 2007 college team at Utah—where 1970s school officials distributed steroids to athletes and where contemporary teams competed in big-time college football, amid a wealth of evidence for systemic doping—Wodraska asserted that playing football for the Utes was “a refreshing ideal in today’s talk of steroids and contract holdouts, isn’t it?”

Some sportswriters were different, critics in media who saw social ramifications for over-indulgence in football mythology, but fans fired back. When the Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock called steroid users “victims” of drug-sodden sport systems, reader Craig Davis responded in a letter to the editor. “As it is plainly evident, a person is a victim only when acted upon by a force outside of his control…,” Davis wrote. “We don’t care about cheating drug users. Steroid users choose to use, and as such, we have no sympathy whatsoever for them.”

Whitlock, former college football player, had writer allies in empathy for juicing athletes—and in criticism for ostrich fans and media. “We live in a culture that artificially manufactures superheroes, while at the same time wants to be told quick morality tales. It has an insatiable appetite for both,” wrote author Laura Robinson, former Canadian rowing and cycling champion, for The Ottawa Citizen. Fans “must watch because they need men, who, thanks to performance-enhancing drugs are nearly as artificial as someone who comes from the planet of Krypton, to perform modern parables.” Fans demanded “their heroes,” said author David Wallechinsky. “They don’t want a drug scandal. They want to look the other way.”

References

Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football
By Matt Chaney
Four Walls Publishing 2009

Book excerpt posted January 4, 2010

The excerpt series for Spiral of Denial culminates in the weeks before Super Bowl 2010 with summaries and conclusions of the book released one year ago.

The Spectacle

"Football has been so enshrined as a spectator sport, both in college and professionally, that it would be impossible for revisionists to alter it without protests of an almost revolutionary character."
James A. Michener, author, 1976

On occasion when I was a football player, the game's brutality startled me, jerked me awake from the fantasy. During a game in high school, 1976, I witnessed a crushing hit on a kid running the football, an opponent. My teammates drilled him high and low, and the cluster of them went down with his blood-curdling screams. He lay shuddering, holding a leg perfectly still for a compound fracture near the foot. Two white bone shards protruded from his sock slit in ribbons, bloody prongs of fibula and tibia, lower-leg bones, snapped off near their union at the ankle and jabbed through skin.

I was shocked, nauseous instantly.

Then I heard cheering from the stands. Some fans applauded our first-degree assault on a 17-year-old, and my concern began to subside. The moaning kid was carted away to an ambulance, out of sight, and a referee blew his whistle. Play resumed immediately. “Huddle up!” yelled our defensive captain. The shared football fantasy rolled on, for it was strong, resilient enough to easily obscure the life-altering injury for one teen in this game. More seriously injured kids could follow too, and the game would continue until no precious time was left on the clock.

My concern was gone, and a couple series later I sacked the quarterback, ramming into his head as he stumbled, trying to flee another pass rusher. Adrenal sensations shot up my spine and through my head—my first “head rush” on a football field—intense feelings of pleasure, as though floating. My high was narcotic-free, “a natural,” a feeling of reigning over my immediate world, that football field. I knew I couldn’t be stopped. I was tingling, hardly able to wait for the next snap of the football. The experience was power.  Never before had I felt like this, doing anything, anywhere.

The quarterback got up slowly, and my teammates slapped me joyfully. We were awash in victory frenzy, so sweet. The opposing players were mostly older and bigger. They were supposed to beat us, to deny us our crack at the conference championship, but we were flat kicking their asses. We were pounding them. And, for the first time, I heard fans cheering for me, real fans, other than my mom or some goofy girl. Fans adored my play. I wanted more of this entire scene, the physical, mental, and emotional, much more.

Six years later, I was a guided missile in college football, highly aggressive and zeroing in on everyone with my facemask. I meant to knock people unconscious including myself, if necessary to finish a kill. Seeking and destroying opponents was very gratifying for me, exhilarating, as a young man insecure about buckling down to live real manhood, to be truly responsible and productive in my life.

But I couldn’t shake troubling doubt over football, particularly when a severe knee injury ended my 1982 season abruptly, right before the homecoming game. Then I had nine days in a hospital to think about my football reality. I understood the fans for craving some ass-kicking out there. We players wanted that. But I also had to wonder, question, whether I was crazy along with society over this fucking game. I was flat on my back in a hospital bed, my right leg encased in blood-soaked plaster, the first of several casts I would wear for 23 weeks. Just days ago I was Big Man On Campus and on the brink of becoming Football Hero. Now I was headed home to my parents, for a long while, and my mother would have to bathe me again.

            That hospital bed reduced me to sniffling in regret, overcome with self-pity. A sad pastime was watching bloody fluid drip from out the cast, through long tubes sewed-up in my surgical wound—a week after surgery, that tubing was embedded in mending tissue, but apologetic nurses had to yank it out. I sat up yelping, an energy reflex to searing pain.

The nurses also stuck me with needles, constantly. But, what the hell. By then I could recall using needles to inject myself with anabolic steroids.

Jesus, why did I play football?

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