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The PED double-standard

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Versatile, Dec 29, 2012.

  1. Versatile

    Versatile Active Member

    Tim Keown lays out a very well reasoned point that the masses scream bloody murder about baseball players using performance-enhancing drugs, then ignore the glut of football players, college football players in particular, who are doping.

    Here's the AP story mentioned: http://bit.ly/12Wt4J9
     
  2. Have any top quarterbacks or wide receivers tested positive for PEDs? No one goes to a game to watch linemen and linebackers.
     
  3. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    A curious situation but hardly a new take on it. In the past 20 years we've gone from it being noteworthy when an NFL lineman weighs 300 pounds to noteworthy when one doesn't. (Is there a starter below that threshold?) At the height of the baseball problem, Klosterman wrote an article pointing out that Shawne Merriman was bigger than Anthony Munoz and faster than Jerry Rice, and nobody seemed to care and everyone accepted his excuse that he used a tainted supplement one time.

    My theory on it is this: The outrage about baseball is in great part due to the idea that "normal" people play it and thus parents and grandparents can envision their kids making it to the Yankees one day. Football, though, the highest levels of it are reserved for the genetic freaks anyway. Same with basketball, which I believe has a similarly underreported steroid problem.
     
  4. Versatile

    Versatile Active Member

    We wouldn't know if they had. That's part of Tim Keown's point.
     
  5. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    I think that's a lot of it.

    I also think fans are obsessed with baseball's history far more than football, so when a roided-up baseball player threatens a record people are unhappy. No one really cares about football records.
     
  6. YGBFKM

    YGBFKM Guest

    Can we just skip to the part where oop enters the thread and it derails for the next 50 pages?
     
  7. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Is it MLB fans with the double standard anymore, or is it just sports writers?

    Because I don't know many fans who are up in arms about PED users these days. But man, I sure know a lot of writers still up on their high horses, especially when it comes to the Hall of Fame.
     
  8. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    My theory is that no one cared about PEDs in baseball either until they got so out of whack that they ruined the balance and busted up the record book.

    If 61 still stood, no one would care who took what.
     
  9. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Yes. That's exactly right too.
     
  10. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Along the lines of PEDs getting out of whack in baseball. ... baseball has deeper roots in America than any other sport, and for right or wrong, baseball fans tend to be geekier about its records.

    I knew growing up that 60 was Babe Ruth. 61 was Roger Maris. 755 was Hank Aaron. In fact, you could just say 755 and I probably immediately thought of Hank Aaron. I knew that 3,000, as in hits, was a big deal.

    Football has deeper PED roots than baseball. They struck football in the 60s or 70s and probably didn't start becoming prevalent in baseball until the 1980s/90s. In football, people are less attached to numbers then they are to physical feats. And seeing bigger, faster, stronger players makes bigger, faster, stronger games. Basketball -- where this undoubtedly use -- has gotten a complete pass. As have other sports. So, yeah, it's fair to say that there is a double standard. But in the case of baseball, because of what PEDs did to those records baseball geeks care about, it is fairly easy to reason out why.
     
  11. BB Bobcat

    BB Bobcat Active Member

    I think it's because baseball PED use has affected the record book. In football the juicers are canceling each other out on both sides of the ball.

    If only offensive linemen juiced and teams started scoring 40 points a game it might be a different story.

    And I think it's the media more than the fans that get outraged anyway.
     
  12. SixToe

    SixToe Well-Known Member

    Where did they come from? East Germany? Trainers there, talking with trainers or physicians in the U.S.? Weightlifters? All of the above?
     
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