From Volume 84, Number 3 (March 2011)
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INTRODUCTION “The use of steroids [in sports] has become a public health crisis. Half a million kids a year in the U.S. are taking steroids . . . and many of them do this because they are emulating their sports heroes.” In the past several years, performance-enhancing drug (“PED” or “steroid”) use in major professional sports has captured the attention of not only average fans, but also lawmakers in Congress. Rampant steroid abuse in Major League Baseball (“MLB”) catalyzed a 2005 congressional hearing at which famous ballplayers like Mark McGwire testified. In 2009, two National Football League (“NFL”) players challenged their suspensions for using substances banned by the NFL collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”) in court. This suggests sports leagues may lack the legal authority to conclusively bargain for and uniformly apply certain aspects of a CBA such as the PED policy—a fact that compelled NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to seek congressional intervention in the steroids arena.
During this so-called steroids era, sports radio and television shows have shifted in focus from the magic of record-breaking performances to the possibility that PED use tainted those achievements. Cynics have cast the entire 1990s as a statistical lie, claiming there is no way to tell who was taking PEDs and who was not; as a result, many commentators have recommended adding asterisks to individual or team records that indicate those records might have been tainted by PED abuse. Scholars from a variety of fields have explored how PED use has negatively affected the integrity of professional sports, the medical dangers of taking PEDs, and how professional athletes’ use of PEDs has adversely affected youth athletes. In response to this outburst of PED use in professional sports and the subsequent explosion of literature decrying it, leagues such as the NFL and MLB have significantly increased the penalties for players caught using PEDs in an attempt to cleanse the leagues’ images.
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