Top U.S. Pro Leagues Face Steroid Hot Seats

In a radio commentary two months ago, Frank Shorter outlined a principle that many sports executives and anti-doping officials around the world have embraced.

“People who promote sports should never police them at the same time,” said Shorter, the 1972 Olympic marathon champion, who served as the first chairman of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

The notion has failed to catch on, however, with one significant group: the major professional leagues in the United States.

It promises to be at the crux of the debate today as Shorter, the commissioners of Major League Baseball, the NBA, NHL and Major League Soccer, and players’ union leaders testify in front of a House subcommittee about legislation that would impose Olympic-style doping rules on the major U.S. leagues. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue is scheduled to testify Thursday.

The proposal, announced April 26 by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), marks a radical break with the traditional rules of engagement in the area of doping controls, advancing a far more aggressive role for the federal government.

Though it is uncertain what chance the proposal stands of becoming law, Stearns and others insist it was not drafted merely for symbolic or public relations value. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said Monday he would support the measure unless the Major League Baseball Players’ Assn. agrees to tougher anti-doping rules.

Penn State professor Charles Yesalis, long an authority on sports doping, said a “confluence of events,” including the BALCO scandal and the publication of baseball slugger Jose Canseco’s tell-all book, have changed the landscape, making the prospect of such legislation politically palatable.

“There’s nobody protesting on the steps of the Capitol, saying, ‘Stop Anti-Doping Now!’ ” Yesalis said.

The measure calls for the Commerce Department to oversee the implementation of drug-testing rules, a level of government involvement found in many nations.

The use of performance-enhancing substances can lead to criminal sanctions in Italy, for instance, where a 34-year-old soccer player, Josep Guardiola, was sentenced last week to seven months in jail after he tested positive for the steroid nandrolone.

The Stearns bill does not propose jail. It seeks a two-year suspension for a first offense and a lifetime ban for a second, in accord with World Anti-Doping Agency standards. Those sanctions are far more severe than baseball’s current program, for instance, which calls for a 10-day suspension for a first offense. That discrepancy is “ridiculous,” Stearns said in a statement April 26.

Five players from major league rosters have been issued 10-game suspensions so far this season.

A first positive steroids test in the NFL draws a four-game suspension, one-fourth of the regular season. A first violation in the NBA draws a five-game suspension. The NHL doesn’t test for performance-enhancing drugs. MLS Commissioner Don Garber can terminate a player’s contract for a positive test.

The WADA rules, like the Stearns measure, seek consistency -- what WADA calls “harmonization.”

Unlike Olympic officials, who have the unilateral authority to decree drug-testing authority, U.S. pro league officials must negotiate with players’ unions to alter their drug policies.

The Stearns proposal would include amphetamines, among a range of substances banned under the WADA code. They are “far more dangerous” than steroids, Yesalis said. Major League Baseball does not penalize amphetamine use.

Another House panel, the Government Reform Committee, is also weighing legislation. That panel took testimony March 17 from baseball players and officials and from the NFL on April 27; it is scheduled Thursday to hear from NBA Commissioner David Stern, union chief Billy Hunter and Washington Wizard guard Juan Dixon.

The Senate Commerce Committee, meanwhile, announced hearings next week, with USADA Chief Executive Terry Madden, U.S. Olympic Committee Chief Executive Jim Scherr and sprinter and admitted steroid abuser Kelli White among those expected to testify.

The hearings illuminate the possibility -- seen as slim only months ago -- that U.S. pro leagues might be forced to accept the international rules.

WADA came into being after a doping scandal that rocked the 1998 Tour de France. Its standards are employed by all 35 Olympic sports.

International pro soccer has signed on in principle, though officials are wrangling over the two-year rule. But even that dispute, said WADA Chairman Dick Pound, shows that the approach need not be one size fits all.

“The normative sanction for a doping case is two years,” Pound said. “But there’s a range that goes from zero to two years depending on the circumstance.

“If [British soccer star] David Beckham is captured by a squad of Nazi frogmen and injected with steroids, he’s going to test positive. He’ll lose the game he played in. But he doesn’t deserve a two-year sanction. If you’re inadvertent or careless and you have no significant fault, you can have the sanction reduced. There’s lots of flexibility in the rule.”

More than 160 nations have signed a non-binding declaration, adopted in Copenhagen in 2003, that signals acceptance of WADA’s doping code -- the U.S. among them.

In ceding control of its anti-doping program to USADA in 2000, the USOC “brought a new level of confidence and credibility to our efforts to eliminate doping in international sport,” USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said Tuesday.

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, called on U.S. leagues last month to adopt the WADA rules, calling it “definitely the only way to get hope of credibility.”

Shorter, reached earlier this week, declined to preview his remarks at today’s hearing. But on National Public Radio on March 17, he said: “Every American sport needs a truly independent transparent testing agency at its top level, an agency that’s accountable to an equally independent higher authority.”

But in his April 27 testimony, Tagliabue signaled resistance.

“I happen to believe that Americans can solve American problems just as well as anyone else in the world,” he said. “ ... If we’ve got to start out-sourcing or off-shoring our drug problems, then I think we’re in trouble.”

The NFL conducted about 9,000 tests in 2004, Tagliabue testified, noting that USADA conducted about 7,600.

“They did it in [dozens of] sports. We did it in one sport. They had nine positive tests. On average, we have about seven,” he said.

Tagliabue referred to the nine positive tests USADA recorded in 2004 for anabolic steroids. Its 2004 annual report details 43 “adverse analytical findings,” 27 of which resulted in a sanction.

The NFL’s policy has been under renewed scrutiny amid reports that three Carolina Panthers received steroid prescriptions from a South Carolina doctor within two weeks of playing in the 2004 Super Bowl.

In questioning the need for government oversight, the league says it has responded quickly when issues surface, such as the decision in 2001 to test for the stimulant ephedra.

“If you have to wait for government, because of the process it takes for government to ban something, it might not be as strong a program,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said.

Traditionally, the baseball union has resisted tougher testing and sanctioning, viewing the process as an invasion of a player’s privacy. Major League Baseball did not begin testing for steroids until 2003.

The union agreed this year to the 10-day suspension for a first offense; previously, a first offense meant counseling. Selig, in a letter sent in late April to the union, proposed a 50-game suspension for a first offense, 100 for a second and a permanent ban for a third.

Pound argues that it is fair to ask players to give up rights they bargained for “because that’s the deal” -- that when one puts on a major league uniform, one assumes a key responsibility: “We don’t use drugs.”