liftsiron
Owner/Admin
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2003
- Messages
- 19,023
Congress shouldn't waste time with steroids
by Austin Burton
April 28, 2005
With the recent news of ?Monday Night Football? moving from ABC to ESPN, I hope you didn?t miss the National Football League?s ?other? network debut: The NFL on C-SPAN.
Yesterday, the head honchos of the NFL went before Congress to talk about the League?s steroid policy. The hearing comes weeks after Major League Baseball got the congressional third-degree and not far removed from the 2004 Summer Olympics, which were almost overshadowed by steroid busts.
The U.S. government is wasting time by concerning itself with steroids in sports, time that could be spent on more prevalant issues that the country faces.
By running around trying to find out which millionaire ballplayers are using performance-enhancing drugs and which aren?t, the government comes off as a bunch of camera-whores.
Why does the government all of a sudden care about steroids now? In fact, until baseball got involved, the government didn?t seem all that bothered with performance-enhancing drugs. Steroids in professional football have been an issue since at least the 1970s, and the NFL regulated itself. While steroid abuse has never been a major problem in basketball or hockey, doping controversies in track and field come around more often than in any sport.
But now that baseball, America?s pastime - supposedly - has been tarnished by ?roids, Congress wants something done. Why?
They say they are trying to save lives, but no one seemed to care when bodybuilders and professional wrestlers are dying left and right from steroid abuse. They say they want to stop kids from abusing, but high school football players have assuredly been using steroids well before teenage baseball players were.
The real motivation seems to be that baseball?s steroid saga is getting way more media attention than other sports, and the U.S. government has been drawn to the camera lights like bugs in the middle of the night.
It is so hard to define a performance-enhancing drugs, which makes the whole thing pointless. If supplements like androstenedione are not okay, why are supplements like creatine acceptable? Why hasn?t every GNC store been raided by the FBI and shut down? Do they not sell performance enhancers?
Why are athletes allowed to take painkillers and cortizone shots to numb their aches, but other recovery-driven performance enhancers have been deemed illegal? On a lower level, aren?t simple, everyday items like soda, coffee, ginseng and vitamins all performance enhancers? Where should the line be drawn, and why should it be drawn at all?
If someone wants to take performance enhancers, that should be their choice. If that drug is illegal, than let it be a police matter, not a league or congressional matter.
This isn?t the ?70s anymore. Every athlete who has reached an Olympic or professional level knows the risks backward-and-forward, so if they want to take that risk, let them. Those athletes risk injury or death just by playing the sport itself, but we don?t step in and stop people from playing football or baseball or boxing or skiing, do we?
If Congress insists on wasting time grilling football and baseball officials about steroids in their sport, do your government a service and ask why that room isn?t being used for something useful, like why inner-city public schools are so far behind suburban schools, or perhaps why unemployment and homelessness rates are so high. But those issues aren?t camera-friendly, so they get ignored.
by Austin Burton
April 28, 2005
With the recent news of ?Monday Night Football? moving from ABC to ESPN, I hope you didn?t miss the National Football League?s ?other? network debut: The NFL on C-SPAN.
Yesterday, the head honchos of the NFL went before Congress to talk about the League?s steroid policy. The hearing comes weeks after Major League Baseball got the congressional third-degree and not far removed from the 2004 Summer Olympics, which were almost overshadowed by steroid busts.
The U.S. government is wasting time by concerning itself with steroids in sports, time that could be spent on more prevalant issues that the country faces.
By running around trying to find out which millionaire ballplayers are using performance-enhancing drugs and which aren?t, the government comes off as a bunch of camera-whores.
Why does the government all of a sudden care about steroids now? In fact, until baseball got involved, the government didn?t seem all that bothered with performance-enhancing drugs. Steroids in professional football have been an issue since at least the 1970s, and the NFL regulated itself. While steroid abuse has never been a major problem in basketball or hockey, doping controversies in track and field come around more often than in any sport.
But now that baseball, America?s pastime - supposedly - has been tarnished by ?roids, Congress wants something done. Why?
They say they are trying to save lives, but no one seemed to care when bodybuilders and professional wrestlers are dying left and right from steroid abuse. They say they want to stop kids from abusing, but high school football players have assuredly been using steroids well before teenage baseball players were.
The real motivation seems to be that baseball?s steroid saga is getting way more media attention than other sports, and the U.S. government has been drawn to the camera lights like bugs in the middle of the night.
It is so hard to define a performance-enhancing drugs, which makes the whole thing pointless. If supplements like androstenedione are not okay, why are supplements like creatine acceptable? Why hasn?t every GNC store been raided by the FBI and shut down? Do they not sell performance enhancers?
Why are athletes allowed to take painkillers and cortizone shots to numb their aches, but other recovery-driven performance enhancers have been deemed illegal? On a lower level, aren?t simple, everyday items like soda, coffee, ginseng and vitamins all performance enhancers? Where should the line be drawn, and why should it be drawn at all?
If someone wants to take performance enhancers, that should be their choice. If that drug is illegal, than let it be a police matter, not a league or congressional matter.
This isn?t the ?70s anymore. Every athlete who has reached an Olympic or professional level knows the risks backward-and-forward, so if they want to take that risk, let them. Those athletes risk injury or death just by playing the sport itself, but we don?t step in and stop people from playing football or baseball or boxing or skiing, do we?
If Congress insists on wasting time grilling football and baseball officials about steroids in their sport, do your government a service and ask why that room isn?t being used for something useful, like why inner-city public schools are so far behind suburban schools, or perhaps why unemployment and homelessness rates are so high. But those issues aren?t camera-friendly, so they get ignored.
