May 7, 2009

Just say “NO” to drugs.  If you’re around my age (28) you probably heard that a lot growing up.  Drugs are bad, they make you dumb, they kill you…”If you take drugs, you aren’t going anywhere in life.”  Clearly many athletes were absent during those school days when the D.A.R.E. program came to visit.

For as long as sports have existed, athletes have been looking for an edge; a way to get a leg up on the competition.  In years past, its been weight-training, or wind-sprints, or eating right.  As sport evolved, that training was coupled with vitamin supplements and protein shakes.  When that wasn’t enough, people began looking to the various drugs you hear about today; the various steroids, other PED’s, HGH, etc.

The effect a single doping athlete has may not be apparent at first, but upon further examination it can seriously hamper team business.  Case in point? Manny Ramirez.  Sure his positive test for PED’s and subsequent suspension will cost him $7.7 million dollars and will cost his team his presence in the lineup until July 3rd, but its much more than that.  What about the Dodgers ‘Mannywood‘ section that was named after Ramirez?  Its hard to have a special promotion and higher priced seats when the person for which the section was named is serving a 50 game suspension.  On top of that, Ramirez being far and away the Dodgers best player, how do you account for the decrease in ticket sales because he’s not there?  Potential playoff ticket revenue, television rights, concessions, and merchandise are also in jeopardy.

In all honesty, I’m surprised that any major sport has ever taken a hard line stance regarding banning substances.  Why?

a.) Capitalist Ideology.  Owners run the risk of losing a star player due to a suspension and potentially losing millions of dollars in revenue (ala Manny being Manny)

b.) Once you start, where do you stop?  At some point you’ll find that drinking a bucket of cough syrup may give you a slight advantage (see: the Olympics, and their testing), then what do you do? ban everything?

c.) Sometimes the known evils are better than the unknown evils.  Knowing players are taking steroids vs. banning steroids, someone creating a super drug, and having an athlete die on the field from the super drug. What then?

THE FUTURE OF DRUG TESTING

Truthfully? We’ve probably already passed the point of no return.  Steroids are a “no-no” in every sport, so we’ve now reached the level where new drugs must be created to avoid current drug testing procedures (hello HGH!).  Of course, right now, someone is working on a way to test for HGH…and someone is working on creating the new HGH that’s still completely undetectable, and has never been heard of.  Drug testing is officially in an endless cycle where the only plausible result is that every sport does test for every thing…until everything is banned.

2015 — Manny Ramirez was suspended today for violating the league’s drug testing policy.  Apparently he had twice the allowable limit of Vitamin C in his system.  Ramirez argued that he inadvertently had a second glass of orange juice with his breakfast and will appeal the suspension.

That is where we are headed. Its the only logical conclusion.  Now, am I saying its right to take steroids? Of course not.  Am I saying its wrong to police a professional athlete’s personal decisions regarding drugs?  Possibly.  Obviously every sport has a right to set a conduct policy, from their appearance to certain substances in their body.  But again, there is no place to draw the line, because as soon as you draw it, everyone is either going to get a close to it as possible, or find a way to cross it without you knowing.

Again, its the capitalist ideology.  Stringent drug testing has only come about due to the belief that fans may stop spending money if they believe a sport is unclean.  Why did it take Bud Selig 10+ years to produce the Mitchell report?  The fans, his revenue source, begin complaining that baseball might be dirty.  Why does football’s drug testing policy seem less stringent than baseball’s?  The revenue source doesn’t care about dirty football players (yet).  The problem? What happens when the fans want to see premium product and that premium product has been suspended for too much Vitamin C?

The athlete enhancer quagmire continues.

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