Roids
I've posted about this before, but one of the things that really confuses me is that people are all up in arms about steroids in baseball...but that they seem to not care about the fact that it appears to be much, much more widespread and ingrained in football.
Chuck Klosterman is a fantastic writer, and his latest contribution to ESPN is on this subject, or really drugs in sports in general. His point below about the punter is the reason I clipped this - if a punter is doing steroids, can you really believe that linemen aren't?
clipped from sports.espn.go.com
Several members of the Carolina Panthers' 2004 Super Bowl team were implicated in a steroid scandal involving Dr. James Shortt, a private practitioner in West Columbia, S.C. One of these players was punter Todd Sauerbrun. Do not mitigate the significance of this point: The punter was taking steroids. The punter had obtained syringes and injectable Stanozolol, the same chemical Ben Johnson used before the 1988 Olympics. I'm not suggesting punters aren't athletes, nor am I overlooking how competitive the occupation of punting must be; I'm merely pointing out that it's kind of crazy to think punters would be taking steroids but defensive tackles would not. We all concede that steroids, HGH and blood doping can help people ride bicycles faster through the Alps. Why do we even momentarily question how much impact they must have on a game built entirely on explosion and power?
