Former Lions’ linebacker Richard “Dirt” Jordan (a friend of mine whom I also worked with at WDFN in Detroit) once told me that players can’t even take cold medicine without first running it by a team doctor. So I find it a little silly that the NFL hasn’t been testing players for HGH use over the last couple of years.
Cold medicine = check with team.
HGH = have at it, hoss. Oh, but it’s frowned upon.
But that will all change if the NFL has anything to say about it. According to a report by FoxSports.com, the league is insistent upon there being HGH testing in the next CBA. Under the late Gene Upshaw, the NFLPA has expressed resistance to blood testing and no urine test has been developed for HGH, so this report should go over well with the players and do wonders for the current labor dispute. (See you in 2012, fans.)
“We want it. We think it’s necessary,” Adolpho Birch, who runs the league’s drug-testing policies, told Marvez. “We’re going to ensure that it’s done. That’s something very important to us and the integrity of our game. We believe some of the basis for going slowly on it before has been addressed. At this point, it’s proper for it to be an active part of our program.”
Funny how the league is so concerned about the integrity of the game, yet the players are locked out and are free to do whatever they want when it comes to supplementing this offseason. As long as they properly cycle out whatever substance they’re putting into their bodies before the lockout ends and the league starts testing them again, they’re fine. (Look at me sounding like your neighborhood steroid distributor – you like that?)
If HGH testing is so important to the NFL, does it know that players aren’t being tested now? If HGH testing is so important to the NFL, why doesn’t it convince the owners to end the lockout and get back to the negotiating table so that there’s a season next year?
