NFL's Next PR Step is 'Independent' Testing

Doping Corner
An established neighborhood of sports
By Matt Chaney

Time again for the National Football League to "upgrade" its anti-doping program--or, in straight language, to modernize its public-relations smokescreen about drugs--by announcing "independent" testing.

Like any sport, the NFL cannot stop performance-enhancing drug use by athletes. Testing fails abysmally overall, from conventional urinalysis to the elaborate blood-profiling systems of pro cycling and Olympic sport. Undetectable substances such as low-dose testosterone, designer steroids, HGH, insulin, EPO, more bio-similars and gene drugs continue to stymie prevention efforts, along with insurmountable shortfall in funding and resources.

Regardless, the NFL always succeeds in the rhetoric of denial, official BS that helps the public ignore rampant drug use and hopeless prevention policy. Image preservation is the realistic goal, after all, and quite effective, since fans just want their football.

A lineage of feel-good lingo, key catchwords, has sustained sports through decades of drug-infested games.

Olympic officials touted mere "steroid testing" at the 1976 Olympics. The world heard anabolic steroids were wiped out, although, never mind, the urinalysis was scheduled, requiring stupidity for an athlete to test positive. Drugs weren't deterred at Montreal, but testing sure sounded good.

Doping scandal battered several sports during the 1980s, and "random urinalysis" became the next so-called solution, maxed for PR effect by the Olympics, NFL, NCAA, and U.S. government.

Random sampling was invalid then and remains ineffective, finally exposed itself by years of criminal probes that pin doping on star athletes worldwide, across multiple sports, whom urinalysis missed repeatedly.

So officials keep pace in their terminology, yakking now about "independent" anti-doping, or "outside" testing. The International Olympic Committee fosters puppet organizations adorned with the indie label, including its own World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, and an American arm in USADA.

Consequently, WADA is regarded as gold standard for PED testing, however lousy, and the agency enjoys endorsement of governments and dumb media spanning the globe.

WADA and satellite organs like USADA aren't autonomous, of course, being funded and overseen by governments and sport federations. "WADA Family" agencies offer no transparency in practice and close their detection "science" to outside peer review. WADA, 10 years in existence, counts a host of outside experts among its harshest critics, representing disciplines ranging from blood analysis and statistics to sport doping and democratic law.

But rhetorical hocus-pocus of the word independent is state of the art, mesmerizing media and more opinion leaders, and the magic isn't lost on opportunistic NFL officials.

Formerly, NFL management and union jointly rebuffed suggestions from federal lawmakers to relinquish anti-doping to outside testing, but that changed recently with their contentious split over a court case challenging league policy.

Two Vikings players, Kevin Williams and Pat Williams, who are unrelated, tested positive for bumetanide, a diuretic the NFL classifies as a masking agent for steroids. The players claim that bumetanide tainted a supplement they ingested for weight loss while the league knew about it but failed to warn them. The players have thus far avoided serving suspension as the case goes to a Minnesota court charged with determining whether NFL steroid policy violates state workplace law.

Politicians are entering the fray predictably, laughably, declaring something suddenly afoul about the NFL program. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., whose ongoing grandstanding about sport doping makes national headlines, has called yet another hearing on Capitol Hill.

Amid the present environment, the NFL is considering outsourcing its anti-doping program, according to reports by Mark Maske of The Washington Post. Existing policy can be "fragmented by wide-ranging state laws," said Jeff Pash, league counsel and executive vice-president of labor. "If we can't administer the program on our own, we might have to turn to an outside entity like WADA."

League commissioner Roger Goodell and sidekicks have met with WADA brass, Maske reports, but likely for information gathering that doubles as public front. Many NFL owners wouldn't approve government sucklings like WADA and USADA for anti-doping, and the union would never play by WADA rules without dramatic revision, especially the agency's controversial "whereabouts" clause, requiring athletes to pre-log daily locations during offseason so testers can track them anywhere.

Whereabouts rules already face stiff protest from professional cricket and soccer federations who adopted the WADA code. India's attorney general says the clause violates privacy of athletes, and international cricket has ceased whereabouts compliance until further review, talking instead of establishing its own "independent" testing.

Look for the NFL to take that path in concert with the union, both agreeing to establish and oversee the league's own "outside" testing during new collective bargaining, and thereby duplicating the IOC charade with WADA.

Perhaps the NFL could entreat other U.S. pro sports to come aboard and even major colleges, for their de facto pro games in football and men's basketball. Everyone could jointly establish the American Anti-Doping Authority, or something akin.

NFL management would be happy, the union would be happy, and bleating politicians could quiet until time for the next stage in PR for PEDs.

Fresh official BS will be needed, because sport doping never changes for the better, neither does invalid detection, and scandal awaits, always.

E-mail the author at mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com. For more information about his new book, Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, visit www.fourwallspublishing.com.