Column: The NFL's steroid problem

Everybody knows that the steroids sra has ruined professional baseball, and it didn't take Alex Rodriguez's confession to make that clear.

But when the National Football League's commissioner looks through bemused eyes at baseball's unmitigated disaster, can he see the seeds of pro football's own demise sown amongst the ruins?

In these days and weeks ahead, the NFL needs to reconsider its own drug policy before it is too late, before the lurking specter of steroids bursts through the surface and hangs over football like a poisonous cloud.

While football's drug program is certainly ahead of the other US sports leagues, cracks are already beginning to appear in the shiny veneer of the new American pastime.

Dana Stubblefield, the veteran All-Pro anchor of the San Francisco 49ers championship team in 1995, was sentenced recently to two years of probation for lying to federal investigators about his steroid use.

In exchange for leniency, Stubblefield has agreed to give investigators the names of NFL players and trainers he believed to be currently involved in the abuse and distribution of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs).

Recently Larry Izzo, a former linebacker for the New England Patriots, signed to the New York Jets, agreed to testify that he received and used steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) from the former trainer of Barry Bonds, the disgraced baseball slugger still mired in his own steroid scandal.

And a poll released recently showed that nearly 1 in 10 retired NFL players say they used banned anabolic steroids during their playing days.

The NFL has tested for steroids for two decades, conducting over 12,000 random urinalysis tests annually and adding new drugs to its banned-substance list each year.

But Alex Marvez, the president emeritus of the Pro Football Writers of America, wrote in an article for Fox Sports that only "roughly a dozen players test positive each season".

NFL Hall of Famer and current FOX Sports broadcaster Terry Bradshaw has come out as saying he took banned substances as a player.

Is it possible that less than one per cent of the 1,856 active roster players in the NFL are using steroids? The players, who know better than anyone else about what happens in the locker room, aren't buying that line.

Past Super Bowl champions, including Steve Courson and Terry Bradshaw of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Bill Romanowski of the 49ers, have detailed their past steroid use and expressed concern about widespread abuse in today's game.

Jon Jansen, the widely respected Washington Redskins tackle, has played in the nation's capital for a decade. Asked about the subject in 2006, Jansen said to NBC Sports that "human growth hormone use is on the rise," and "maybe 15 to 20" percent of the league's players were using performance-enhancing drugs.

Dana Stubblefield, the ex-49er turned government informant, believes "at least 30 per cent of players are using human growth hormone," according to an interview with the New York Times.

While most players are reluctant to speak out about football doping for a multitude of reasons, there is a growing group of retired greats and future hall of famers who are owning up to the problem the NFL is facing.

So where are all of the positive test results?

There have been reports, corroborated by anonymous players to league officials, that players have been tipped off about the tests days in advance.

And there are ways of manipulating the body's testosterone levels by the careful ‘cycling’ on and off of anabolic steroid regimens.

But the real reason nobody tests positive is staring the league right in the face: the NFL does not test for HGH.

The NFL banned human growth hormone from the league in 1991, but the league has steadfastly refused to open up its drug program to an independent monitor, or allow its players to submit to an HGH blood test.

Gene Upshaw, the former president of the NFL Player's Association, said to ESPN, "I know personally I would have a problem with someone coming in and trying to take the players’ blood. I’m not ready to make that leap."

The league hasn't been forced to make that leap yet because there still isn't much of a place to land.

There is no reliable urine test for HGH, only a blood test that originates from the 2004 Olympics in Athens. The NFL has questioned the blood test's effectiveness, claiming that the 36-hour window for growth hormone detection is "too small to be effective".

Former NFL player Bill "Romo" Romanowski was listed as being a client of the scandalized BALCO organisation.

But if tests are truly given at random, 36 hours will more than suffice as both an effective assessment of violation, and as an excellent deterrent against HGH abuse.

Football is a dangerous and violent sport, yet there is nothing stopping today's football player from abusing HGH. Players are much bigger and faster than they were 20 years ago, and injury and concussion figures are on the rise.

When the size of the average baseball player went through the roof in the last decade, along with the game's treasured home run record, nobody stopped to ask why. Now the game can't close the book on steroids, and the worse may be yet to come.

The NFL can see a solution to their growing problem and has chosen to look the other way, pretending that there is nothing wrong.

Before his death, the old Steeler Steve Courson wrote in a letter to the LA Times: "The NFL is a prisoner to their own public relations myth. The level of deception and exploitation that the NFL requires to do business still amazes me."

Football must implement blood testing before its steroid problem gets any more out of control, or today's gridiron heroes will be tomorrow's disgraced villains.

And as baseball's meteoric fall from grace has shown, there is no closing the door on a steroid scandal once it's been opened.