“Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football” is a new book about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs in American football written by writer Matt Chaney. Chaney is an admitted steroid user who experimented with anabolic steroids when he played collegiate football for Southeast Missouri State in 1982. His master thesis analyzed the media coverage of anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs in American football in the 1980s and 1990s (”Excerpt: ‘Spiral of Denial’ reveals culture of steroid abuse in football,” January 3).
Professor Charles Yesalis, a top steroid expert, gives the book a glowing review.
Before you read this book, make sure you can handle the truth about drugs in football. Why? Because Chaney lays it out for all to see. He thoroughly documents the widespread problem in NCAA football and the NFL. He details the lies, obfuscation, and denial on the part of coaches, athltes, sport journalists, politicians, and, of course, us the fans! Oh, one other thing: This book is one hell of a read.
Former Michigan football player Rondell Biggs was arrested last summer after Michigan state troopers discovered ten tablets of stanozolol in his car during a traffic stop. State prosecutors chose to prosecute him for felony steroid possession based on the 10 steroid tablets. But the jury acquitted Biggs after deliberating only 15 minutes (”Former Michigan player Rondell Biggs cleared on steroids charge,” December 16).
A Washtenaw County Circuit Court jury deliberated about 15 minutes before finding Biggs not guilty, defense attorney Marc Lakin said.
“It’s good that he cleared his name,” Lakin said. “He’s always been a clean athlete, and he didn’t want his reputation tarnished.” [...]
According to Lakin, Biggs was told by the person who gave him the steroids that they were “weight-loss pills.”
“The jury definitely felt that there was not enough evidence to convince them that he knowingly possessed a steroid,” Lakin said.
Fortunately for Biggs, the jury saw the steroid charge as trivial and accepted the defense argument that Biggs unknowingly possessed and used steroids.
The Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) is objecting to new steroid testing rules that will apply to footballers in England’s Premier League beginning in July 2009. The Barclay’s Premier League has been touted as the most watched sporting league and the most lucrative professional football (soccer) league. The new anti-doping rules will subject 30 top players to as many as 5 random drug tests throughout the year.
At issue is the new “whereabouts ruling” requiring tested players to provide anti-doping officials with advance notification of their whereabouts for a particular hour each day even on vacations and during the offseason. … Read the rest of this entry »
The NFL’s Miami Dolphin announced that they will implement the NFL ATLAS & ATHENA anti-steroid education program at six local Florida high schools. While the programs do have some empirical support for reduce teen steroid use, the researcher behind the program, Dr. Linn Goldberg, has been known to argue a causal connection between anabolic steroids and paranoia recently stating that steroid use ”makes you paranoid.” Goldberg defended the statement at Steroid.com.
It is not that steroids MAKE you anything, it promotes changes in neurochemistry that make the susceptible more likely to suffer these effects. To believe that powerful hormones don’t cause these changes are to deny both behavioral evidence and evidence of neurochemistry. It is causal! It just requires the susceptible individual. (Emphasis added)
Chicago Bears guard Terrence Metcalf was suspended for four games for violating the NFL policy on “anabolic steroids and related substances.” Metcalf insists who was not using anabolic steroids and did NOT test positive for anabolic steroids. He is telling the truth. He really tested positive for a diuretic (that is not a steroid and not a performance enhancing drug).
But given that the NFL’s steroid policy includes all performance enhancing drugs and doping masking agents, the general public assumes violations of the policy involve steroids. Any athlete who is found in violation of this policy must, fairly or unfairly, defend themselves against the societal stigma of “steroid use”.
Former NFL player Tony Mandarich admits to using anabolic steroids in an interview with Inside the NFL on Showtime today; more noteworthy is the fact that he was addicted to alcohol and prescription painkillers early in his NFL career. Yet rumors of steroid use were the dominant explanation for his disastrous bust as a second round NFL draft pick of the Green Bay Packers.
Steroids allegedly destroyed his body such that he could no longer play football at the level he displayed in college with the Michigan State Spartans football program. You know a substance has reached the pinnacle of demonization when it is used to both dismiss spectacular performances (e.g. Usain Bolt) and account for disappointing performances (e.g. Tony Mandarich).
The St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office announced a major steroid bust in Louisiana today. A seven month undercover investigation into anabolic steroid distribution at local gyms uncovered a network of 15 steroid dealers and identified at least 100 customers including several St. Parish area high school football players. The Sheriff’s Office has arrested four individuals on steroid distribution charges and has not ruled out pressing steroid possession charges against some of the customers (”Authorities say high school football players being investigated in steroid ring,” July 22).
Neither the football players or the high schools they attend were named by St. Landry Sheriff’s officials in a news conference today.
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