CS&T/AllsportsAmerica: What have HGH and PEDs done for an athlete's performance and how has it affected your feelings toward professional sports? What's your take?

Chicago Sports & Travel, Inc./AllsportsAmerica

What have HGH and PEDs done for an athlete's performance and how has it affected your feelings toward professional sports?

 

Performance-enhancing drugs have been grabbing headlines repeatedly over the last few weeks, including Lance Armstrong's admission that he took them while winning seven Tour de France titles, allegations that Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis used deer antler spray to aid his comeback from a torn triceps muscle this season and former NL MVP Ryan Braun being linked to a Florida clinic being investigated by MLB.

 

Both baseball and football have been working to incorporate a reliable test for HGH into their testing procedures. The NBA is watching those proceedings, and Stern believes they will follow suit. (See additional articles below in this blog).


How 'bout them Chicago Blackhawks?

Overall Record 9-0-2. So far so good on this six game road trip!!! Joel Quenneville is in an odd position for a coach. He has no complaints. “We’re pleased with basically most every aspect of our game,” Quenneville said. “It’s been a fun start.” The best part? Quenneville sees the Blackhawks getting better. Let's finish this road trip strong!!! As I've said, I have a great feeling about this team. This is our year, remember, you heard it here first!!!!! Go Hawks!!!

 
Williams apologizes for Saints' bounty scandal

By TERESA M. WALKER

Gregg Williams thanked NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for reinstating him back to the league, and he also is apologizing while taking ''full responsibility'' for his role in the New Orleans' bounty scandal.
 
The NFL reinstated Williams on Thursday morning, and the Tennessee Titans hired him as a senior defensive assistant.

Speaking at a news conference, Williams says he's here to work tirelessly for the Titans and to make a positive impact. He says he's grateful for the opportunity.

The league issued a statement saying that Goodell cited several reasons for reinstating Williams including that Williams accepted responsibility for his role in the bounty program, his commitment to never be involved in any pay for performance system and pledging to teach safe play and respect for the rules.

CS&T/AA's Take: Why do the N.O. players and the NFLPA keep saying , there was no pay for performance system when the head coach and defensive coordinator keep apologizing for it and both set out the year as punishment? Hopefully, It's behind all parties concerned and maybe the players and the NFLPA will realize that truth is the light and it will set them free. N.O. players and fans please follow Coach Payton's example; accept responsibility, move forward and reestablish your creditability and leadership in the NFL. You've come a long way, onward and upward, that's the ticket. Future championships await you!!! 

 Stern sees HGH, PED testing in NBA as early as next season.

 By The Sports Xchange
 

NBA Commissioner David Stern said Wednesday that the league hopes to begin testing players for human growth hormone (HGH), perhaps as early as next season.

In a nearly half-hour exchange with reporters prior to the Timberwolves game against visiting San Antonio, Stern covered a number of topics, including the possible relocation of the Sacramento Kings to Seattle.

But addressing the HGH and Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) issue was significant, as Stern intends on keeping the NBA free of many of the problems that the NFL and Major League Baseball have endured in recent years.

"It's not a commitment, not a promise, it's an expectation," Stern said. "It might slide a little bit, but I think we're well on our way."

Unlike the NFL and MLB, the NBA has had few instances of players caught using HGH or PEDs. Stern attributed that to players and their union being amenable to testing, as well as being willing to expand the league's list of banned substances with little conflict.

"Our players have, as a group, said we want to be demonstrably free of drugs as much as any group of athletes in the world," Stern said, "and I think they've kept that pledge."

The last NBA player of note to have tested positive for illegal substances was Rashard Lewis, who was suspended for 10 games in 2009.

"If they (players) get through what I think they're going to get through and have full-fledged testing (for PEDs and HGH), based upon our overall dialogue with the union, we'll be in a good place to have that as well for next season," Stern said.
 

Latest scandal shows MLB will never cleanse sport of PEDs.

 

By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo Expert

 

The fallout from the new BALCO – the Miami-area Biogenesis clinic – continues to extend and envelop more major league players.

In this case, it's news from Yahoo! Sports that Milwaukee Brewers star Ryan Braun's name is in Biogenesis records. MLB is now investigating links between the former MVP, who previously tested positive for synthetic testosterone in 2011, and the clinic.

This follows a report last week from the Miami New Times linking Alex Rodriguez, Nelson Cruz and Gio Gonzalez to Biogenesis' operator Anthony Bosch, aka the new Victor Conte.

All of a sudden, MLB is back in crisis mode.

If one thing is clear by now, it's that baseball's so-called "Steroid Era" continues on. In fact, it should be obvious that there isn't really an "era" at all. It's just a fact of baseball life over the last half century.

There is plenty of evidence of PED use dating back to the late 1960s and clearly little has changed since the Mitchell Report and MLB deciding to get more vigilant in its testing over the last decade.

As long as there is an incentive to gain an edge this will continue. And since that incentive is not simply financial, but rooted in human nature, MLB can never truly exhale. The sport will forever be forced to chase its tail.

The solution is neither simple nor likely possible. A peace must be made with the desire for clean competition and an understanding it will never truly be obtained. The problem for baseball, unlike other sports, is that the unique way the game is played may make that impossible.

Perhaps nothing upsets baseball fans and executives more than the double-standard reactions to PED use in football. The NFL is awash in this stuff, yet fans and media mostly shrug it off. In baseball every suspension is treated with over-the-top seriousness and a chorus of condemnation.

And in basketball, hockey and other sports, no one seems to care at all. Those sports get an even bigger pass than football.

There is a difference though. In baseball, the PED advantage enjoyed by power hitters was so obvious and significant it didn't just change the game – consider how teams had to pitch around Barry Bonds in his heyday – but completely obliterated so many sacred records.

It took 34 years and eight extra games for Roger Maris to hit 61 home runs and surpass Babe Ruth's 60 (accomplished against white-only competition, of course). Then in a four-year stint between 1998-2001, three players did it a total of six times, with Bonds hitting 73 (21.7 percent more than Ruth).

Many of those blasts by Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were massive shots of almost unprecedented length. This was a cartoon.

In the NFL, similar records have not fallen that way; thus the benefits of PEDs aren't as obvious. Quarterbacks aren't suddenly throwing passes 80 yards in the air with ease. Running backs aren't churning out 400-yard days, carrying three guys on their back. No one is running 40 yards in 3.8 seconds.

The basic integrity of the game stayed the same. While records come and go – throwing for 5,000 yards is no longer that big a deal for a quarterback – that's because of advanced offenses, not, it would seem, a performance-enhancing drug.

Likewise, no one in the NBA or NHL believes those sports are without some PED use. But it's mostly for advanced conditioning to allow additional game time without tiring. Since there is no indication it helps someone shoot a basketball or puck appreciably better (other than not being tired) no one seems to care.

Football, meanwhile, gets the benefit of the doubt because of the clear physical toll the game takes on the players' bodies.

Baseball has been unable to earn such disinterest, even if in some cases, the sport deserves it. The concept that advanced medicine via drugs helps keep or make athletes healthy should extend to baseball, which may be a "non-contact" sport, but can still exact a brutal toll on the body.

Fans – and indeed executives – should want players back on the field as soon as possible, and if a banned substance aids in recovery then what's the harm?

If given the choice of having a ligament tear take one year or eight months to heal, why prohibit the eight months because it uses a drug currently frowned upon? And if guys hold up better, or play for more seasons, because a drug allows them marathon off season conditioning work, then where's the harm?

Baseball would do well to consider rewriting some of the rules to better represent modern reality. Was any of the motivation of A-Rod and the others to allegedly do business with Biogenesis based on health and not simply a performance edge?

Much was made during Super Bowl week of Mitch Ross of S.W.A.T.S – an Alabama-based company – trying to push non-steroid alternatives, most famously his deer antler spray. Ross may not be the best vehicle for the argument but his basic premise is worth consideration.

His stated goal is to provide athletes with the healthiest possible advantage to avoid or recover from injuries. He thinks deer antler spray, among other products, has been unfairly targeted and shouldn't be banned by any sport. It's a natural substance, he insists. There is science to still be done, but it's certainly worth further study and analysis by the leagues.

If Ray Lewis did, indeed, use this stuff to recover quickly from a torn triceps and get back on the field, then how is that a negative for the NFL, its business or its fans?

It's not.

What happened at Biogenesis in South Florida, and by whom, will continue to play out. This is a story that is getting bigger and wider, not dying down.

Last week it was A-Rod, Cruz and Gonzalez. This week it's Braun. Soon it will be someone else.

The only certainty is that the Steroid Era is still going strong, perhaps not with the moon-shot home runs, but in every other imaginable way.

MLB will never be able to eradicate this from the game. It needs, instead, to somehow find the kind of happy truce that other sports have managed.

American Indian museum tackles racism in US sports.

By BRETT ZONGKER (Associated Press)

The Washington Redskins' team name has been the subject of legal battles, political debate and now will be part of a scholarly discussion at the Smithsonian about the use of Native American mascots and nicknames in American sports.
 

The National Museum of the American Indian will host a daylong symposium Thursday entitled ''Racist Stereotypes and Cultural Appropriation in American Sports.'' Scholars, sports writers and Native Americans will gather for the public discussion.

The Redskins' name, perhaps the most visible, has been the subject of ongoing debate. As recently as Tuesday night, Washington Mayor Vincent Gray specifically avoided saying the name of Washington's NFL franchise in his State of the District speech and instead referred to ''our Washington football team.''

Museum Director Kevin Gover, of the Pawnee Nation, said the name ''redskins'' is the most offensive term for a team, at least to his ear.

''It is the equivalent of the n-word,'' Gover said. ''That's how it was used when I was a child. That's the name people chose to call me if they wanted to hurt my feelings, and I think that's still the case in many circumstances.''

The Redskins' name and logo was part of a 17-year court battle with a group of American Indians who say the name is offensive and want it changed. In 2009, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the Native Americans based on the age of the plaintiffs. There is now a new case filed by younger plaintiffs that is due for a hearing in March at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Former Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who will attend the symposium, said he introduced a bill in Congress about 20 years ago to block any federal land for a stadium for any team that carried a derogatory name. He debated with then-Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, who cited public polls supporting the name, before the Redskins opted to move to a site in Maryland.

''From my perspective, it's just a matter of basic fairness for anybody that's of a minority culture,'' Campbell said. ''There are derogatory names for any group. Most of that has been cleaned up, there's been so much public pressure ... but unfortunately, it has not been that way for Indians.''

The team did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday. Owner Daniel Snyder has been adamant about keeping the name. Last week before the Super Bowl, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell defended the Redskins.

''I think Dan Snyder and the organization have made it very clear that they're proud of that heritage and that name, and I believe fans are, too,'' Goodell said.

Since the 1970s, hundreds of high school and college teams have done away with Native American nicknames, though many others remain. In 2005, the NCAA announced it would ban the use of American Indian imagery and nicknames at postseason tournaments. Some schools were granted exceptions with the support of tribes, such as the Florida State Seminoles.

The museum plans to explore the roots of Indian imagery in sports and elsewhere in American life. Gover said he's been thinking about the debate over such mascots since he was 15, attending junior high school in Norman, Okla., when the University of Oklahoma had a mascot called ''Little Red'' who would dance after the Sooners scored a touchdown. The university was among the first to abandon that mascot. Other prominent changes were made at Stanford University and Dartmouth.

''There's actually a long tradition in American life of 'playing Indian,' of pretending to be an Indian,'' Gover said.

In the nation's early years, fraternal organizations were formed around made-up Indian rituals and ceremonies in many Eastern cities, he said. In the 20th century, he said, the focus shifted to the theory that the Indians were on their way to extinction and ''we're going to assert the right to represent who they were.''

Professional sports teams using Native American names and imagery emerged around that time. The Washington Redskins were originally the Boston Braves, but owner George Preston Marshall changed the name in 1933 to avoid confusion with a local baseball team. The team moved to Washington four years later.

Manley Begay of the Navajo Nation, a professor of American Indian studies at the University of Arizona, said many people are surprised the stereotypical imagery is considered derogatory and racist. ''It's very hard for someone to come to that realization,'' he said.

The lead plaintiff in the original case against the Washington Redskins said more team names will change over time. Suzan Shown Harjo, the president of the Washington-based Morning Star Institute, an advocacy group, said it was important to hold this discussion at the Smithsonian.

''The museum we have built is one of the places that these names and the symbology and the mascots and the paraphernalia need to be retired to,'' she said. ''They need to be consigned to the history books and to museums.''

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