TV Report: NFL Still ‘Haunted’ by Tennant Legacy

Channel 7 in Washington, whose reports during last year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans of badly managed drug testing procedures in the NFL created a stir, said Wednesday night that the league is still dragging its feet in confronting its drug-testing problems.

Roberta Baskin, who also did the reporting last year, quoted Chicago attorney George Saunders as saying that a player he represented was about to be banned this summer over a drug test, but that Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and the NFL backed off when Saunders threatened the league with a class-action lawsuit.

A few months after last January’s reports, which centered on alleged mishandling of tests by NFL drug adviser Dr. Forest Tennant of West Covina, Tennant resigned. Transcripts of the report Wednesday night, provided to The Times by Channel 7, said that the NFL continues “to be haunted” by Tennant’s legacy. The report’s implication was that the NFL can’t start with a clean (post-Tennant) slate because invalidating all his tests would trigger retroactive lawsuits; also, Tennant’s alleged mishandling of testing puts the NFL in a tenuous position against future lawsuits. So, the report indicated, the NFL has pretty much done nothing.

“Just check the scoreboard,” Baskin said. “In the two years before our investigation, there were 29 suspensions and three players banned from football for drug abuse. Since our report, there have been no suspensions. And more players have been reinstated than banned. Either the NFL is now drug free, or, as some agents have suggested, players can now ‘negotiate’ their way out of disciplinary action.”