NFL: We Can Handle This

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue on Wednesday defended the league’s steroid policy and disagreed with the suggestion that an international sports governing body should decide how steroid offenders in pro football should be punished.

“I happen to believe that Americans can solve America’s problems just as well as anybody else in the world,” Tagliabue testified before a congressional committee investigating steroid use in sports. “When we apply our minds to it, we can be the best in the world. If we’re going to start outsourcing or offshoring our drug problems, then we’re in trouble.”

Earlier in the day, Gary Wadler, a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which oversees Olympic drug testing and penalties, said a “detailed, written policy, as exemplified by the world code, is in the best interest of both the players and the league.” He did, however, praise the NFL’s steroid policy as the best of the four major U.S. professional sports leagues.

Committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.) is working with ranking Democrat Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on legislation to create uniform steroid policies for major sports. Such an effort would face obstacles in Congress, which has been reluctant to legislate professional sports policy over the years.

Some members of the committee questioned whether the NFL’s penalties are severe enough. A player is suspended four games for his first positive test, six games for a second and at least a year for a third. The Olympic standard calls for a two-year suspension for a first positive test and a lifetime ban for a second.

Of the 111 NFL players who have tested positive for steroids since the policy was put in place in 1989, 54 served a four-game suspension and 57 retired immediately. Two players tested positive a second time, but each retired instead of serving their suspensions.

“It works,” Tagliabue said. “It’s easy for me, as the almighty god on high to say, ‘Throw them out of the sport.’ That’s not fair. It works. We’ve had 54 violators and never a repeat. Four games works.”

Whereas last month’s baseball hearing stretched more than 11 hours, football’s lasted just less than six hours and was far less contentious. Members of the committee, who shuttled in and out of the room to cast votes on the House floor, repeatedly praised the NFL for being more forthright and responsive on the subject than baseball.

“You’re a breath of fresh air,” said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), who later said he was concerned that the nation’s youth are getting the wrong message from some pro athletes. He added that he had no pity for players who lose their careers as a result of using illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

“I feel no sympathy, none, for people who cheat,” he said.

The NFL was first contacted by the committee last month, shortly after a CBS report saying that three Carolina Panther players had prescriptions for testosterone cream filled during the 2003 season and within two weeks of playing in the Super Bowl. The cream is banned by the NFL.

Also last month, at the annual NFL meetings, New Orleans Saint Coach Jim Haslett, a former pro linebacker, said steroid use was “rampant” in the NFL in the 1970s and early ‘80s -- before the current policy was put in place -- and he estimated half the players in the league used them.

Among the witnesses who testified Wednesday were Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Assn.; Steve Courson, a former guard for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who attributes his serious heart problems to steroid use during his playing days; and Bobby L. Barnes, a high school football coach from Buckeye, Ariz., who suspended 10 of his players after learning they had taken steroids.

“The prevailing attitude in most schools is don’t ask, don’t tell,” Barnes said.

Courson attributed that to the win-at-all-costs pressure put on high school coaches and players.

“This may be appropriate when big money is at stake, but is it elsewhere?” he said in remarks prepared for the hearing. “The mentality in youth sport needs to change. How can coaches teach valuable lessons about preparing youth for life when their value is based only on wins and losses?”

Several witnesses were asked about the dramatic rise in the number of NFL players who weigh 300 pounds or more. According to research cited by Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.), there was a 6,000% increase in 300-pounders in the league from 1985 to 2003, from five to 327.

Dr. John Lombardo, the league’s advisor on steroids and related substances, said he believed that increase is a result of the changing rules of the game -- the fact that blockers can now use their hands and therefore don’t need to be as nimble -- and not to steroid use. Tagliabue agreed, calling those steroid accusations “nonsense.”

“The issue of the size, we’re aware of it,” Tagliabue said. “You’d have to be blind not to be aware of the fact that athletes in general are growing. You have Yao Ming playing in the NBA. No one saw Chinese players of that size playing in the NBA 20 years ago.

“Over the past 20 years, our players have become both smaller and bigger. We’ve had a far greater number of big players, and a far greater number of small players, under 6 feet and under 190 pounds. It reflects a specialization in our game.

“With respect to the large players, we don’t believe that they’re getting there because of steroids. If you read all the literature about steroids, what does it do? It reduces body fat. It makes athletes lean and sculpted. ... These large players are exhibiting none of those characteristics.”

On the eve of the hearings, the NFL announced it was tripling the number of off-season drug tests players could face. Players now will be subject to a maximum of six random drug tests during each off-season, up from two.

Upshaw said that the change was not prompted by the hearings and that the timing of the announcement was coincidental. He said the NFL had been working hard to eradicate steroid use among its players long before Congress took an interest in the issue.

“We didn’t just come to the dance a couple of years ago,” he said. “We were here many years ago. And we’ll stay until the song’s over.”