Peppers taught the band to play, 20 years ago today. Harrison was in the band.

Very nicely done.

selig = blind squirrel. he found his nut!

crap, sorry about my freak confusion.

how many Primates just want fans to react to Barry Bonds the way they do to news of NFL juicers.

I'm in this camp. I expect that athletes in any sport where strength, power, or size will confer an advantage will juice. In both baseball and football, steroid use is clearly part of the fabric of the sport in this generation and thus represents as much of a level playing field as steroid use in bodybuilding, World's Strongest Man, or Olympic sprinting.

The NFL has punished those testing positive. Name players, too, like Julius Peppers and Rodney Harrison. Meanwhile, baseball players who are known or thought to have used PEDs, A-Rod, Bonds, Sosa, Clemens, Palmeiro, McGwire, got off scot-free.

What?

I will give you $100 for every MLB player who has taken steroids and not gotten caught. You will give me $20 for every NFL player. You will owe me so much money that you will pray for death.

And the false dichotomy you set up there is exactly why baseball is getting the shaft here. You applaud the NFL just for punishing people who test positive, and then you excoriate baseball for letting players "known" or even just thought to have used PEDs go "scot-free".

If one set of parents grounds their kid for burning their house down, does that make them more laudable than parents who didn't ground their kid because, while there was no evidence they did burn the house down, there's no evidence that they didn't, either?

He was linked romantically to Paris Hilton and does ads for Old Spice and Campbell's Soup. His jersey is consistently one of the top five sold in the NFL. He is famous.

And Vitamin Water. He's definitely very famous.

And Fatheads!

But the question here is how many Primates sincerely want fans to react to NFL juicers the way they do to Barry Bonds, vs. how many Primates just want fans to react to Barry Bonds the way they do to news of NFL juicers. There's more than one type of motivation that sets off charges of "hypocrisy."

I want people to act the same way for both. I prefer they not have that opinion based in gross ignorance, but I can't educate everyone. If you want to be a giant ####### about one, be one about *all* sports and users, even teh NBA. But most people that I see here will spout outrage about baseball and shrug off usage in the NFL (or NCAA). Oh, they don't care about other sports. ######## in nearly every case. It's gross hypocrisy.

The difference is simple. The NFL has punished those testing positive. Name players, too, like Julius Peppers and Rodney Harrison. Meanwhile, baseball players who are known or thought to have used PEDs, A-Rod, Bonds, Sosa, Clemens, Palmeiro, McGwire, got off scot-free. That's two hall of fame classes at least.

Meanwhile, look at the latest Pro Football inductees: Bruce Smith, Rod Woodson, Derrick Thomas, Randall McDaniel. None of their name has even been whispered in connection with steroids. That doesn't mean they're clean, but it's a marked difference from MLB.

Is this a joke? The NFL didn't suspend ANY players that didn't test positive. They suspend players that fail tehir testing. Like Manny Ramirez. Those players got off "scot-free", just like Mike Webster (et al and inducted to the HOF.) because IT WASN"T AGAINST THE RULES.

I mean, really, people think Lawrence Taylor didn't take steroids (in his array)? Rodney Harrison (Oh, and he got suspended, but is close to a lock for the HOF)? Bill ROmanowski?

What a joke of a post (no offense to you personally).

The NFL has punished those testing positive. Name players, too, like Julius Peppers and Rodney Harrison.

Even this part isn't really true, given that the NFL just announced they're not going to suspend the Williams' from Minnesota, even though they both tested positive last year.

I owe Jeff a Coke.

No thanks, I have a drug test tomorrow. I'll wait until afterwards, when I can use my negative test as positive proof that I have never done a drug in my entire life. Unless I were an MLB player, in which case it just proves I'm on HGH.

Even this part isn't really true, given that the NFL just announced they're not going to suspend the Williams' from Minnesota, even though they both tested positive last year.

Um, no. Their suspensions last season were postponed by a judge after they filed suit, they have since lost the lawsuit and will be suspended at the beginning of the season.

If it is true that baseball players are more noted than football players -- and I'm going to grant that I have no perspective, because I only pay attention to college football and when I saw the name Julius Peppers I thought, "The basketball player?" -- anyhow, if it is true, I think not to be overlooked is the fact that football players do their work almost entirely with their faces covered. I would probably recognize the names of maybe a dozen or more football players if you said them to me, but I'm pretty sure I could only recognize Manning, Favre, Brady and maybe Owens by sight. Both the nature of the game and the nature of the equipment serve to make football players anonymous.

Some will take this opportunity to gratuitously bash Selig, but one thing I'm sure you won't hear is a rationale for treating steroid use in the two leagues differently.

Okay, here's one:

What NFL does to the player's bodies is so detrimental and damaging in the long run, that steroids really don't rank that high on the list of things that are ruining their health. By contrast, baseball does not ruin bodies in the same way, so steroids represent, proportionately, a much higher risk to the players.

IOW, if you are going to be dead by 50 anyway, what does it matter if you raise your risk for developing a cancer at 60 that you are not going to live to see?

I will give you $100 for every MLB player who has taken steroids and not gotten caught. You will give me $20 for every NFL player. You will owe me so much money that you will pray for death.

How do you know this?

Meanwhile, baseball players who are known or thought to have used PEDs, A-Rod, Bonds, Sosa, Clemens, Palmeiro, McGwire, got off scot-free.

I think I missed a chunk of the middle of this thread, but has anybody pointed out that Palmeiro failed a drug test and was suspended by MLB?

Go to any sports bar on any Sunday afternoon in the Fall

when it is full of football fans, because who else is in a sports bar on fall sunday

or tune in any sports talk show when the discussion comes around to football

When the football fans are the ones listening

and you won't find many who don't know who those two guys are

because the people involved are, in fact, football fans who care about the game.

Now, go down the street and ask random people to identify:

Julius Peppers
Rodney Harrison
Sammy Sosa
Alex Rodriguez

and see who as the higher Q rating.

Why do posters here feel the need to piss on other sports they do not watch?


Given the way the piss on just about everything that they don't specifically endorse, I am going to go with: Force of habit.

I think I missed a chunk of the middle of this thread, but has anybody pointed out that Palmeiro failed a drug test and was suspended by MLB?

Your mistake was applying consistent logic to the original comment. I'm pretty sure the guy that posted what you did also implied that MLB should be punishing those thought to use, but that the NFL already does punish those that are thought to use or something strange like that.

the piss is not on the sport itself

the piss is on the attitude that media/many people have about steroids in sports that are not baseball.

the attitude is - like, so? or well, why would people playing in an aggressive violent sport use steroids??? and besides, there aren't positive tests and if there are well they are "punished" and like so what

as for nobody caring about football players shooting roids - well the football players, except for the glam quarterbacks, are just a bunch of ghetto boys, faceless grunts and we wanna see a LOT of violence and if roids increase that, well all the better and who cares about Those People anyhow?

the whole thing about roids in baseball is really all about The Sacred Records which is why no one gives a flying eff about ryan franklin and pablo ozuna

i still don't understand this misty colored memories about a past that never existed. i still don't understand how people think every single thing about every baseball game is exactly in every way like it was Back When The Babe Was Kingggg

it's like the nut cases who INSIST that things were SOOOOOO much better for women in the past??????? back when it was just peachy fine for 40 year old men to screw their friend's 12 year old daughter???

selig = blind squirrel. he found his nut!

Which is remarkable, because I always assumed he could not find his ass with both hands and a road map.

crap, sorry about my freak confusion.

Was this part of Mel Hall's defense?

Selig really let loose witht hat one. I can't imagine calling the NFL a bunch of cheaters is going to help relations between the sports.

The reality is, when the sports commissioners were dragged before congress years ago, Paul Taglabue and the NFL always were like, "What?....Who? Me?...... Us? the NFL? No......."

Even there congress was mostly on baseball's ass and the NFL actually took a phony moral high ground explaining how they defeated the problem with "the toughest testing policy in sports."

If I were Selig I would have never been able to bite my *tongue through that load of crap. I'm surprised it took Selig and baseball so damn long on this. I hope I hear more of this from the public and media. The NFL needs to get a handle on ITS OWN PED epidemic.

*corrected

If I were Selig I would have never been able to bite my tough through that load of crap.

Beano, I hope you never bite your tough.

How do you know this?

How do I? Well, I don't. If I did, if I knew for absolute sure, I'd be kind of a dick for offering a bet like that. How am I as sure as I am that this is true, which is 99%?

1) Everything I've read indicates it. Everything I've been told by people who have reason and/or access to know indicates it. All anecdotal evidence points towards it being true.

2) Steroids were a problem in the NFL, again by all accounts, long before MLB.

3) If we include the minors, it's my perception that with the sweeps of the first year or two, baseball has suspended more people for PEDs than the NFL has. If you want to balance things and include D-I football to match the # of teams, I honestly, sitting here right now, cannot tell you a single college player in any way punished for PEDs. Nor any suspicious suspensions or anything of the sort, and especially here with regards to UT and the Big 12, I have long known people with the access to know the story behind the story on crap like suspensions that are for other reasons.

4) Numbers game. The NFL has a higher roster limit, it has shorter careers (cycling more guys through more quickly) and the positions most likely to use PEDs (and the ones that are the easiest to point a finger at), offensive and defensive line, are the ones that cycle through players the quickest.

So yeah, I don't know it. But if anyone wants to take me up on it, please. We'll figure out a way.

The NFL has punished those testing positive. Name players, too, like Julius Peppers and Rodney Harrison.

This is a lie. About 8 or 9 years ago the NYT broke a story saying the NFL sandbagged positive roids test results for superstars.

There has been plenty of investigative stories breaking PED scandals in the NFL, the difference it, those stories vanish from public view faster than Mel Hall Jr beds a 12 yr old.

When 60-minutes broke the story about the NFC Champion Carolina Panthers using roids, including the punter, before the Super Bowl, the nation yawned.

The Steelers team doctor.....yawn. TEAM DOCTOR FOR CHRIST SAKE.

Ray Buchanan, one of the smallest professional athletes, is a known NFL Roid user.

It seriously wouldn't surprise me to find out that 70% of the NFL uses PEDs. It would mildly surprise me to find out it was less than 50%. I would be shocked if it was less than 35%, and I would flat not believe it's under 25%.

The difference is simple. The NFL has punished those testing positive. Name players, too, like Julius Peppers and Rodney Harrison. Meanwhile, baseball players who are known or thought to have used PEDs, A-Rod, Bonds, Sosa, Clemens, Palmeiro, McGwire, got off scot-free. That's two hall of fame classes at least.

Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro both got suspended for PED use. Both are obvious Hall of Famers without the steroid issue. I don't think you can say that about Peppers and Harrison.

Meanwhile, look at the latest Pro Football inductees: Bruce Smith, Rod Woodson, Derrick Thomas, Randall McDaniel. None of their name has even been whispered in connection with steroids. That doesn't mean they're clean, but it's a marked difference from MLB.

Well, that's what people are complaining about, isn't it? No one would ever say, "With the way he bulked up, I wonder if Randall McDaniel used steroids," because they don't care if he did or he didn't. His name hasn't been whispered because no NFL players' names are ever whispered. But baseball players get whispered about all the time.

Mark Schlearth, formerly the fat OL from the Broncos, boasts on his website that he got on some bicycle riding and diet that got him down to 217. This is not a misprint. 217. Look at pictures of him during his playing days, easily 80 lbs heavier.

It seriously wouldn't surprise me to find out that 70% of the NFL uses PEDs. It would mildly surprise me to find out it was less than 50%. I would be shocked if it was less than 35%, and I would flat not believe it's under 25%.

agree with the exception that I move it one group higher, I would flat out not believe that it's less than 35% and it wouldn't surprise me that it's over 85%.

The NFL has to be well over 50%. And I have to think, once it hits a 50% threshold, then the stage is set for just about everyone using PEDs, since that becomes the norm and the price of doing business in football.

Jeff pointed out college football. There is no question in my mind that PEDs are raging throughout college football. They have testing, but it is probably the easiest to beat of any of the sports leagues, not counting high school---which is where many start on PEDs.

Over the last 10 years, I swear that the most athletic football players in the world are NFL 1st rd picks. Guys that are aged 20, 21, 22 and 23. They are using in college, no question. They continue in the NFL.

It's quite simple, really. The weight gain in the NFL is ####### staggering. And not only have guys not gotten slower, they've gotten faster. It is zero point zero percent possible that the size expansion in the NFL does not owe a large, large percentage of its raison d'etre to PEDs.

The Palm Beach Post, in October 2006, compiled a database of NFL rosters since 1920, 40k players. Findings:

* From 1920 to 1984, there were never more than eight players in any season who weighed 300 pounds or more. This year, there were 570 players who weighed 300 or more listed on 2006 NFL training camp rosters, nearly 20 percent of all players.

* Over the same period, the average offensive lineman is 62 pounds heavier; defensive lineman, 34 pounds. (That's 1984 to now.)

* In 1980, offensive linemen outweighed their teammates by 45 pounds. In 2006, the difference is about the weight of one Olsen twin — 81 pounds.

* This season, the average weight for an offensive lineman is 312 — 23 pounds heavier than the average defensive lineman.

The NFL and its patsy ESPN can say it all they want that steroid testing has eliminated steroids from the league, and that HGH isn't a problem even though it's not tested for. They're lying. They are outright lying, they know it, and if anyone, anyone deserves to go to jail (outside of those selling and buying it, though frankly I only say that because the law is written as it is, I don't find moral culpability in individual use or the provision of it) or get ####### at or have to wonder about his and his league's future, it's Paul ####### Tagliabue.

Whoever mentioned it earlier is right, if I had been Selig and I'm getting yelled at with that guy sitting next to me? I'd have lost it. "MLB Commissioner Swears at Congressman Under Oath, Attacks NFL Commissioner" would have been the headlines. The gall to sit there and act sanctimonious and pious.

and that HGH isn't a problem even though it's not tested for

Once again, just for the hell of it -- is there yet any scientific evidence whatsoever that HgH has any performance enhancing or muscle building qualities, and that it is not just a 21st century version of snake oil/monkey glands?

I have no idea. I do know that it's commonly thought to have those effects, and just in looking up that PBP article I stumbled across Don Shula and a former NFL player both saying that HGH is a problem.

Besides, don't knock my monkey glands.