Mission Impossible: “Drug-Proofing” Professional Sports

Posted on June 29th, 2008. Written by Emmett Jones.

You can’t stop it, you can only hope to contain it.

- Dan Patrick

Professional sports, as many know, are a multi-billion dollar a year industry.  Ticket revenue, merchandise sales, concessions…you could probably run some small countries off of the revenue brought in by the larger sports like football and baseball.  That being said, its understandable that those figures who are at the helms of these sports; the commissioners, the owners and to a smaller extent the players, would want to do everything in their power to preserve the “pristine nature” of their sport, because obviously, a dirty sport may hurt revenues.  In recent years, we’ve seen the attempts to preserve the sanctity of the sport in things like the Mitchell Report and re-vamped drug policies.  You know the problem is serious when golf, yes, I said GOLF, is going to implement a drug testing policy?  But what exactly have all of these new testing procedures achieved for the preservation of sports?  Does anyone believe that baseball is cleaner due to the Mitchell Report?  Did all of those suspensions in football last year prevent the next player from taking steroids?  Is golf’s drug testing policy going to prevent John Daly from doing…well, whatever it is John Daly does to stay in such immaculate shape?  I highly doubt it.

So where does that leave us?

As history has already shown us, even the “stand-up” superstars aren’t immune to the problem (anyone remember Rafael Palmerio?  anyone hear about Terry Bradshaw this week?), so lets not even bother arguing that there’s only a certain level of player that would deal in such debauchery.  So, if no one is immune to the problem, we test every athlete, right?

Okay…that’s easy enough.  What do we test for?

Steroids?

Sure, but some people are using HGH now.

HGH?

Alright.  what about those people who are using Viagara?

Okay…Viagara too.

What about all of the various things you can’t think of, or those that haven’t even been invented yet?

Umm….

See where we’re headed?  Ten years from now, we’ll have to test players for orange juice because “that guy isn’t catching a cold as often as the normal athlete”.  Am I for keeping professional sports as clean as possible?  Of course.  But at some point, the known evils are better than those unknown evils.  Knowing that Barry Bonds was on steroids and he hit 73 home runs in a year as opposed to 50 is a much better outcome  than the creation of some yet unknown super drug that lets somebody like Juan Pierre hit 60 home runs (I am in no way implying Mr. Pierre uses drugs, his name is used only to make a point).  I know that it goes against our nature, and potentially against any profit motive one might have, but the line has to be drawn somewhere, or else so many resources will be expended cleaning up the game (that you’ll never be able to clean up) that you’ll have to cut into the profit margin to pay for the various drug tests.

Let me state now though, I am in no way saying that each sport does not need some sort of drug testing policy in place.  What I am saying is that continuing to make the drug testing policies consistently more stringent is going to result in the creation of an untestable drug that turns a human into a robot.

Cheating will always be a part of sports.  At the end of the day the question you have to ask yourself is, would you rather deal with that known drug that enhances abilities or the unknown drug that enhances abilities to herculean proportions?

Agree? Disagree? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

GOLF.com:  Drug testing to arrive on tour next summer

Sports Business Digest:  Chuck Knoblauch:  98 Career HR*

6 Responses »

1. 

   Sportsattitude

   September 20, 2007 • 8:08 am

   Very intelligent post. I knew of this “vote” scenario but was not compelled to participate until I read this. For what its worth, I voted for the ball to spend its remaining years on Earth in beautiful Cooperstown NY. I have not had a problem with the performance-enhancing drugs others have. The ball belongs in the Hall!
2. 

   The Sports News Fan

   September 20, 2007 • 11:29 am

   Thank you for the great article!

   The Sports News Fan
3. 

   everythingscomingupmilhouse

   September 21, 2007 • 9:54 am

   Thanks for the words….we really appreciate it.

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