The-Hogs.net - Washington Football Discussion, Redskins to Commanders Era

What are your feelings on this?

At first I thought "Meh, what business does government have in stepping in to police pro sports?"

Now I'm starting to think that this is a positive thing, the national government is the only body that CAN do this... the owners can't do this even if they wanted (conflict of interest maybe as well) and the players unions don't want this to happen... that's why a 3rd party is needed to make sure that pro atheletes don't use performance enhancing drugs.

Sure there may be more important things for the legislature to deal with, but even as a Democrat I salute Senator John McCain (IMO one of the few rational and responsible people left in the Republican party... but that's another story) for being the driving force behind this new bill. Hopefully pro sports will be clean within a few years and we can stop worrying about asterisks and let improved mechanics and training methods lead to better numbers, NOT improved designer drugs!

Congress should clean up their own messes and the messes we have with other countries (gas prices, etc) before they try and do the "morally right" thing and police sports leagues.

If I were David Stern, Tags, Selig or any of the others, I'd tell 'em where they could shove it.

IMO, that's the beauty of congress, they can multi-task

If they had to solve one problem before moving onto the next government would take even longer to act than it already does.

Primetime42 wrote:If I were David Stern, Tags, Selig or any of the others, I'd tell 'em where they could shove it.

Stern and Tagliabablaba have enough spine to tell them to cram it, but Selig ...

In the NFL, what is the difference between a 2-year ban and a lifetime ban? Not much. The average length of a football player's career is 4 years, so say you play a year, get busted and miss two years. That leaves a year left on an averageplayer that has been playing the last 3 years, not some guy who hasn't played in a couple of years. This would be the equivilent of a lifetime ban for first time offenders.

You cannot, in my opinion treat all three leagues the same.

JansenFan wrote:You cannot, in my opinion treat all three leagues the same.

In my opinion, players in the three leagues shouldn't dope. If the ban is necessary to ensure that they do not. So be it.

What else, other than doping can explain the Patriots' success??? j/k

I agree that they shouldn't dope, but who ever heard of two strikes and your out??

The problem I have with zero-tolerence/USADA doping regulations is that you can test positive for a substance that isn't on the illegal substance list and still be banned.

Someone somewhere (I'd give credit if I could remember who) said that they should clear up all gray areas in the matter and come up with an allowed substance list.

Doing things that way, there is a cut and dry list and if you take something not on the list, even if it's aspirin or tylenol, tough luck.

If you find a new supplement that you want to try, you submit it to a committee and it is reviewed and either allowed or disallowed. Again, no gray area. Then you make the penalties what ever you want, and no one can say boo about it.

Yeah, zero tolerance policies almost always backfire...

I don't think the same mentality that can get a highschooler expelled for brining a steak knife to eat his lunch with or a person fired from their job because the truck they drove to work had a couple rounds of ammo in the glove box from a weekend hunting trip should be applied to pro sports.

The legislature is the only one who can do anything about this, but hopefully they are careful in how they approach the situation.

Skinsfan55 wrote:Yeah, zero tolerance policies almost always backfire...

I don't think the same mentality that can get a highschooler expelled for brining a steak knife to eat his lunch with or a person fired from their job because the truck they drove to work had a couple rounds of ammo in the glove box from a weekend hunting trip should be applied to pro sports.

The legislature is the only one who can do anything about this, but hopefully they are careful in how they approach the situation.

And if they were being truly careful and mindful of getting things right, then they wouldn't even approach the situation at all.

. . .and in doing so they'd save everyone the trouble of the mistakes that they are going to make by interfering.

If I read this rule correctly, the ban would apply to ALL sports leagues in America, not just the "big Four" (Three, depending on this NHL stiatuon).

So if (just throwing out a name here, not speculating at all ) LaVar Arrington were found to have taken THG and given that 2 year ban, he wouldn't be allowed to even play in the AF2 league til the ban was lifted. Is that really fair?

Let's propose this idea to Congress: If a member of any government group (Congress, House of Reps, Senate) is found to have taken ANY questionable substance that is NOT on a list, via a random, unannounced drug test, they have no viable options for work other than making minimum wage flipping burgers at BK. Somehow I doubt they'd agree to it.

Primetime42 wrote:Let's propose this idea to Congress: If a member of any government group (Congress, House of Reps, Senate) is found to have taken ANY questionable substance that is NOT on a list, via a random, unannounced drug test, they have no viable options for work other than making minimum wage flipping burgers at BK. Somehow I doubt they'd agree to it.

that's because they're politicians, and they're better than us common folk. apples and oranges. silly man.