Steroids. With one word, I either tuned you in or turned you off to the whole column. I suggest you bear with me, because the past few months have illuminated a serious problem in pro sports that no one was willing to acknowledge as recently as last year. If it's not obvious now why baseball was so opposed to random testing, don't tell the ACLU, but it had very little to do with civil liberties and a whole lot to do with a cover-up.
Steroid use in professional sports has become a ubiquitous media topic, and I know plenty of people are sick of it, but as baseball just learned, it's an issue sports and sports fans can no longer write off.
The House Government Reform and Energy & Commerce subcommittees have already devoted a considerable portion of the current legislative session to investigating how the major sport leagues are handling the issue. Congress has been harsh on David Stern and the NBA's lax testing policies, but basketball faces more immediate demons with another lockout on the horizon. Bud Selig has bent over backwards to bring the MLB's inadequate steroid policies up to date and still faces opposition from the players. Paul Tagliabue has avoided most of Congress' scrutiny thanks to the NFL's stringent policies, but he is staunchly opposed to an outside testing body.
As of now, all of the major sports are responsible for testing and disciplining their own players, but it does not appear that things will stay that way for long. H.R. 1862, the "Drug-Free Sports Act," is on its way up the legislative chain.
Apparently, America's major sports leagues are in need of a wake-up call. Using steroids is cheating, and these sports are maintained on the premise of competition, which only works on a level playing field. Feel free to side with those who see this as a civil liberties issue, but I don't think these systems can work unless the field is made even and the cheaters exposed.
If everyone were allowed to take performance-enhancing drugs and learn their lesson the hard way (e.g. Barry Bonds' knee), then players would feel obligated to take steroids in order to keep up. A system that pressures its players into shortening their life spans just won't do. The only solution involves devising clear anti-doping standards and equitable implementation.
I was originally puzzled why Congress actually cared about any of this, but when you consider the economic scope of sports, this issue is tantamount to a billion-dollar corporate scandal. As an institution, sports might seem inconsequential, but there is an enormous amount of cash involved in these leagues. When you consider the fact that baseball's $2.2 billion payroll is equal to half of Somalia's 2004 GDP, congressional involvement makes a lot more sense.
The league commissioners seem unwilling to enforce a badly needed ethical standard on their sports. If the problem hadn't been avoided long enough to foster, and then expose, rampant fraud in a billion-dollar industry like baseball, Congress wouldn't have to be involved. These laws are necessary, but only because years of leagues' neglect have made them so.
So what do these leagues seek to lose by accepting a universal legislative standard in lieu of their current autonomous systems? If the NFL's testing policy is so flawless, why couldn't someone else be responsible for it? The rules and enforcement have to be transparent. Designating and implementing them in-house leaves too much room for more deception. In H.R. 1862, the World Anti-Doping Agency, which runs all Olympic testing, will oversee each league. If these commissioners were truly opposed to doping in their sports like they claim to be, accepting third party testing would send a compelling message.
It's time for America's major sports to finally stand up to performance-enhanced cheating. It's too late to lobby for Congress to back off and let the sports police themselves. As baseball has shown, that simply did not work.
The commissioners, players and owners should actually consider themselves lucky. Enabling this kind of billion-dollar fraud has recently landed a lot of non-athletes in jail.
