When it comes to experts in the performance-enhancing drugs topic, there are very few people who know more about the subject than Dr. Charles Yesalis of Penn State University. The truth is it's difficult to have a meaningful conversation about the topic without at least some input from Dr. Yesalis.
Meanwhile, reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada have done some of the most groundbreaking work on the subject. Reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle, Williams and Fainaru-Wada helped break the BALCO case wide open and their book Game of Shadows is packed with information that has not been refuted. Actually, the news regarding the Marion Jones and Barry Bonds cases that are just being reported now were detailed with much precision by Williams and Fainaru-Wada a long time ago.
In other words, if Yesalis, Williams and Fainaru-Wada are in the same room talking about the topic of performance-enhancing drugs, it's a good idea to listen. Chances are you might learn something.
Better yet, chances are you might hear something that feels like a jolt to the solar plexus.
Actually, it wasn't quite as significant as all of that, but when noting a report on the stellar web site, Steroid Nation, yesterday, I felt like I was making the noise heard from one of those cartoon characters that had just been smashed in the face with a frying pan and was waiting for its original shape to reappear.
Wha, wha what!
At a Penn State roundtable last week entitled, "Steroids and baseball: Where is the public interest?" Yesalis shared the dais with Williams and Fainaru-Wada where they spoke of a societal split on the issues concerning performance-enhancing drugs in the national pastime as well as other sports. The issue, however, wasn't that steroids or HGH, etc. was cheating because that's hard to refute, said Fainaru-Wada.
"They are banned for a reason. They work," Fainaru-Wada said.
The main issue was that there appears to be a backlash from a certain demographic - those under the age of 40 - of the sports fandom that doesn't really see drug use as a big issue. Yeah, sure, using PEDs are cheating, but so what. Sports and the games are nothing more than entertainment, the sentiment goes. The difference between going to the movies, a concert or a ballgame is barely palpable so if it's OK for Hollywood actors or pop stars to use HGH or testosterone why can't a baseball player?
"I've seen numerous fans say, ‘I don't care. I just want to be entertained,'" Yesalis said. "I've talked to a lot of young people. They aren't bent out of shape about this...
"I think in the under-40 crowd, it's strictly entertainment, and if they use drugs to make it more entertaining, whatever."
Whatever, indeed, unless, of course, an accused drug cheat just so happens to be a local star. In that regard, the fans just don't want to hear it. Actually, sometimes it seems as if the leagues don't want to hear it either.
"There's tremendous fan resistance to hearing your local star player is a drug cheat," Williams said.
The celebrity culture appears to have co-opted the sports world. Blame certain blogs that focus on everything except the finer details and nuance of the actual game or blame the jocks for buying into the notion that they are celebrities in a jersey. Either way, it's clear that the red carpet extends beyond the front door of the multiplex.
For better or worse.
The trio also discussed drug testing and how the leagues tout the programs as proof that it has rid the scourge of drug use from its games, but in reality, Yesalis said, "If you're really stupid, you'll flunk. Those people who are not really stupid, don't."
But while baseball is at "peril" with its drug problem, the problem in the NFL is nearly complete. Actually, said Fainaru-Wada, fans believe that it's just a few athletes getting away with it while the rest of the league is clean - a few doped apples spoiling the bunch. The truth is much more sobering, they said.
"You look at these guys, these are not the normal human beings that we all coexist with. Some 300-pound guy running a 4.4 in the 40 is not normal," Fainaru-Wada said.
"There's a societal sort of acceptance that the NFL is a different animal and there's not as much of a push on that."
Yesalis said estimates that 90-to-95 percent of NFL players are using human growth hormone.
Repeat that...
It's 90-to-95 percent of NFL players are using human growth hormone.
That claim is just kind of out there without much behind it. Is it speculation or does Yesalis have proof? But, no matter what, the statistic is quite staggering. Especially if Yesalis is in the ballpark... 90-to-95 percent?
Wow.