Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football
By Matt Chaney

Book excerpt posted July 9, 2009

Leaving New York City early one morning, I broke for home by car, escaping the great metro as it slept. Flying through Brooklyn's southern outskirts before dawn, the lights of Manhattan distant, I hauled ass on the Shore Belt, gunning for turnpikes in Jersey and Pennsylvania. And there alone in the darkness, Brooklyn, I had to pause, think about Lyle Alzado.

Brooklyn was Alzado's home turf dearly beloved, he swore passionately in interviews, though mostly left behind by the time he died in 1992. I shot along the parkway at 70, 80 mph, peeking up shadowy streets and alleys, considering the high-rises and row buildings, homes and businesses modest, cramped, competitive. Brooklyn teemed with football legends, including native icons Lombardi and Paterno, but I was trying to sense something of a gridiron antihero, circa pharmaceutical era, or spirit of the boy who became Alzado, jungle physique, nutty athlete, Hollywood wild man, and, finally, tragic symbol for us all.

I was not short on stories to begin; the man was no media star by accident. During a lengthy pro-football career he parlayed into endorsements and acting, Alzado provided storylines constantly, telling good ones at least, often becoming big copy himself. The hulking Alzado talked a lot about Brooklyn, and media devoured, if not wholly bought, his themes of love, hate, toughness, redemption, all set amid this grizzled flatland of lore. “The way I grew up is the way I grew up. That part of it's the truth,” Alzado said  as a Raider, adding, “I play off it a little bit.”

“Alzado was an unbelievable character in every sense. ...,” recalled C.W. Nevius, a San Francisco writer. “It seemed no one knew where the hype ended and the man began.” Alzado's street theatre played well in the NFL, where he hyped games with the feigned viciousness of a TV wrestler. Contorting his face into rage, eyes glowering, veins popping, Alzado spewed vile comments about the opponent of the moment, the whipping he would inflict. During Super Bowl week 1984 in Tampa, Alzado berated Washington's massive offensive linemen, reducing them to wimps in his stories, talking how he'd dominate. The attendant cluster of sportswriters scribbled furiously, recording Alzado's pseudo war declarations, and suddenly he lost his poker face, laughing uproariously. “All these outrageous things I say, like no one can kick my butt,” he said. “Do you actually believe that?”

Alzado did grow up a scrapping son among six siblings, of a mother abandoned by their father, herself fighting to sustain the family in the notorious Brownsville section of Brooklyn, which later produced the boxer Mike Tyson. Alzado had come up a promising ring fighter too, known around the city, and he likewise employed fists for survival on Brooklyn streets, among weapons. Tyson could relate: “I couldn't understand how a white guy could be from my neighborhood,” the heavyweight champ said in 1990, “but then I met him.”

Alzado starred in football at Lawrence High on Long Island, growing to 6-foot-3 with good speed, but weighing only 190. College recruiters didn't flock around Alzado, and the teen's only decent scholarship offer fell through because of a growing rap sheet with New York police, he would recount. Next he was rejected by a junior college in Texas and landed in South Dakota, small-time college football at Yankton College. Alzado threw punches at his first practice, brawling with new teammates.

Alzado was a tough young guy, but one requiring chemical aid for his football dream, and he began using Dianabol in 1967 at Yankton—NCAA Division II—a time and place where “no one had ever heard of a steroid,” a former teammate would recall. Alzado did not cease anabolics for 24 years, until facing mortality. “He had his mind set on playing professional football, he focused on it, and he accomplished it,” Bill Bobzin, Alzado's old coach at Yankton, said in 1992. “He earned everything he achieved.” The old teammate, Roger Heirigs, said Alzado “definitely bulked up, but he lived in the weight room.”

A big, ripped, athletic lineman in pro football, Alzado's laurels included All-Pro, twice, AFC Defensive Player of the Year in 1977 for Denver, and a Super Bowl title with the Raiders in Los Angeles. His overall career, for D-line statistics and winning with three clubs, amounted to borderline Hall of Fame.

For major saleable persona, pop-culture celebrity on and off the field, Alzado played his violent-lunatic shtick to the hilt, not always acting, of course, with dark moods and physical outbursts problematic in his life. Alzado rode the caricature of juiced psycho into TV commercials and poorly scripted movies and shows, but he was gone at age 43, leaving heavy debt and having believed his perpetual abuse of muscle drugs caused his fatal brain cancer, without clinical evidence and to the rebuke of scientists.

Dying in Oregon, far removed from the glitz and glamour he craved in youth, Alzado was buried in a private ceremony. By then, most football brethren had isolated him too, effectively washing their hands of his admitted, detailed doping to play the game. Formerly close associates from college through the NFL stayed mum about Alzado's abuse—and, for many, their own—and sportswriters readily forgot his allegation of continued widespread doping in football.

Everyone ignored a critical historical fact about Alzado, when he beat the NFL's heralded new “random urinalysis” for steroids in 1990, utilizing undetectable anabolics including growth hormone, courtesy of a personal drug guru and a handy pharmacist.

My car rolled out of Brooklyn, crossing the Verrazano Narrows to Staten Island, and I glanced back northward at Manhattan, the famed bright lights, once seductive for young Alzado, a kid reared across East River without much, beyond a full heaping of willpower. “In my mind and heart, I believe I can do those things,” Alzado had remarked of lofty goals. “In my soul, I don't know. It's what I dream. It's what I think. Nobody can take that away from me.” Crossing that New York bridge at 40-something myself, past the age of Alzado at death, I was relieved to be in my common car bound for home, Missouri, and wife and children who loved me. I never would have been Alzado, but I might've been like him.

“Football is exalted and consumed on a grand scale, apparently without reservation,” Gwen Knapp wrote for the San Francisco Examiner in 1997. “But adoring the game doesn't preclude loathing its consequences. The NFL, for those who really know it, should be a guilty pleasure.

“And unlike eating red meat or smoking, the sport doesn't threaten the consumer's health at all. The risks belong entirely to someone else. To someone paid handsomely for absorbing hits, to someone with Reebok and Nike fighting at his feet. ... Lyle Alzado went to his grave prematurely, insisting that steroids had brought on his brain tumor. He played some great football, for himself, for the Raiders, for us. If he thought, in the end, that he had made a bad bargain, what are we to think?”

References

Alzado Dies. (1992, May 14). Former All-Pro Lyle Alzado dies, claimed steroids killed him. The Associated Press [Online].

Alzado Funeral. (1992, May 15). With Alzado funeral. The Associated Press [Online].

Alzado, L. (1991, July 3). Television interview with host Roy Firestone [transcript].  ESPN.

Alzado, L. (1991, July 8). 'I'm sick and I'm scared.' Sports Illustrated, p. 20.

Alzado, L., & Edwards, W. (1991, July 29). Fourth down and long. People, p. 52.

Alzado Says. (1991, June 27). Alzado says brain cancer caused by steroids. The Associated Press [Online].
Baum, B. (1992, May 16). Alzado buried in private ceremony. The Associated Press [Online].
Bowles, J. (1991, June 29). Former NFL drug czar supports Alzado's claims. The Associated Press [Online].

Denlinger, K. (1992, May 15). Alzado dies at 43. Washington Post, p. C1.

Denlinger, K. (1984, January 18). The ultimate Raider opens fire. Washington Post, p. D1.

Doctor Pleads. (1992, June 2). Doctor pleads guilty to trafficking in steroids. The Associated Press [Online].

Hasen, J. (1984, September 27). Alzado defends role in 'violent game.' United Press International [Online].

Huizenga, R. (1994). 'You're okay, it's just a bruise.' New York, NY: St. Martin's Press.

Kelley, S. (1991, July 10). Call this chapter of Alzado story sad. Seattle Times, p. H1.

King, P. (1990, July 9). ‘We can clean it up.’  Sports Illustrated, p. 34.

Knapp, G. (1997, September 16). Football is a guilty pleasure. San Francisco Examiner [Online].

Mihoces, G. (1992, May 15). Alzado dies of cancer. USA Today, p. 2C.

Moore, T. (1991, July 28). Another Alzado perspective. Atlanta Journal and Constitution, p. E3.

Nadel, J. (1985, August 1). Alzado has image of tough guy with loose screws. The Associated Press [Online].

Nevius, C.W. (1992, May 16). Alzado stayed in character to the end. San Francisco Chronicle, p. D1.

Raffo, D. (1990, March 14). NFL expands drug testing. United Press International [Online].

Tagliabue Congress. (1990, March 23). Tagliabue tells Congress testing will help rid steroid use. The Associated Press [Online].

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