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Thread: HGH use in the NFL
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05-01-2013, 08:18 AM #1iggyman555 Guest
HGH use in the NFL
The one we continue to know about the honor system is that the honor system doesn’t work.
The NFL bans HGH use. The NFL still has no test in place to determine whether players are complying with this rule. Not surprisingly, players still ignore the rule.
Dan Patrick mentions from time to time that a starting NFL quarterback privately told Patrick within the past two or three years that 60 percent of the league uses HGH. Tyler Dunne of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that HGH use is “rampant.”
“It’s like clockwork nowadays,” an unnamed NFC starter told Dunne. “Not tested and it’s easy to get. Nowadays, dude? In 2013? [Expletive] yeah. I’m just being real.”
The unnamed player estimates that 10-15 players per team use the substance, which puts the percentage in the range of 18-28.
The NFL and NFLPA agreed in 2011 that blood testing for HGH will be implemented. Two full football seasons later, blood testing for HGH has not yet commenced, due to a lingering impasse regarding the manner in which testing will happen.
Periodically, members of Congress huff and puff regarding the perception that the NFLPA is dragging its feet. But the NFL is, too. Indirectly. Subtly.
With a battalion of high-priced lawyers at the league’s disposal, the failure of the NFL to pursue a lawsuit or a grievance or some other device to compel the players to honor their agreement suggests that the NFL doesn’t really want to push the issue. On one hand, the league likely doesn’t want to try to force its players to have their skin pierced with a needle and blood drawn. On the other hand, the league possibly isn’t interested in having those predictions of rampant HGH use come to fruition — or in having the players who use HGH quit cold turkey and suddenly become unable to return from injuries.
So players can continue to use it, and there’s no way to determine it based on the contents of their blood. (If they admit to using HGH or otherwise are caught buying or possessing it, the NFL can take action.) But if HGH use really is rampant, won’t a former player eventually shed the cloak of anonymity and pen a Jose Canseco-style book, blowing the whistle on the issue?
Maybe not. The book likely wouldn’t sell. After all, most fans assume NFL players are using something to get that big, to stay that big, and to return so quickly from the injuries that happen when large bodies collide.
i cant say im really surprised with 60% of players using HGH, i would of put the number at 75%. These guys are all big and fast and any edge they can gain they will do it legally or illegally. plus we all know HGH is not tested for in the NFL so why not use it if 3/4th of the locker room uses it...im pretty sure it will blow up soon but most folks wont care since we already know most players are on 'something'
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05-01-2013, 08:24 AM #2Legendary RSR Poster
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Re: HGH use in the NFL
If they are reporting 60%, I guarantee it's higher. To me it's a no brainer for a NFL player to use it. You get ridiculous lean muscle gains, and it helps in healing/recovery.
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05-01-2013, 08:59 AM #3Legendary RSR Poster
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05-01-2013, 10:03 AM #4Regular 1st Stringer
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Re: HGH use in the NFL
If it's not tested for why wouldn't they use it?
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05-01-2013, 10:22 AM #5
Re: HGH use in the NFL
Yet people complain about widespread doping in cycling. Fun times.
Hrafn
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05-01-2013, 10:23 AM #6
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05-01-2013, 10:27 AM #8Regular 1st Stringer
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Re: HGH use in the NFL
In tennis they have a 'passport' system whereby samples are taken from athletes and kept for and tested later, that way if any drugs don't show up right now, they are still tested down the line when testing becomes more comprehensive.
Clever system
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05-01-2013, 10:33 AM #9Regular 1st Stringer
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05-01-2013, 10:42 AM #10Legendary RSR Poster
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Re: HGH use in the NFL
Legal in so far as under a doctors supervision and for the purpose of gaining an athletic advantage.
Unlike anabolic steroids, hGH use will result in healthy gains of muscles mass and tissue repair. Under it's proper use, a human taking hGH will only produce their natural limit of testosterone. Anabolic steroids will push the body well past it's natural production of testosterone and that's where the medical and metal problems surface.
Now hGH can be abused as can any drug, but that's why I gave the caveat of "under a doctors care".
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05-01-2013, 10:44 AM #11Pro Bowl Poster
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Re: HGH use in the NFL
The difference between cycling and football is like night and day. Cycling is a barely professional unorganized sport where the players and middle management have no power and outside organizations that have no interest in promoting the sport are able to dictate policies for their own enrichment. Cycling is still acting like it is 1910 with 1910 morality,1910 hypocrisy, and 1910 standards of treating labor and accumulating wealth.
With the NFL, outside interests like WADA do not benefit materially by yelling DOPER! at the players as they do in cycling. Same is true of other well organized sports like soccer in Europe, the NBA, NHL. Baseball has had it's organizational problems and so you see more doping scandals there, though not nearly as many as cycling or track and field. Tennis is like baseball in this regard: some scandals but noting too much. The Olympics is a precarious organization: the awareness of corruption is there but since most of the time it is not in the public spotlight the corruption can remain in place. (In track and field most of the best US long distance runners these days are diagnosed as hypothyroid and so get legal meds to boost their performance. Are they really hypothyroid? No.)
Doping happens in all of professional sports because the incentive to dope to win remains in place and will always remain in place. That's just a given and no amount of congressional oversight or UN-sponsored agencies will change that. But if the sport is well organized with ownership and labor working together, the worst of the doping is mitigated, the issue is kept out of the public eye, and the sport prospers. As long as the perception of fairness is maintained, sport prospers.
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05-02-2013, 09:39 AM #12
Re: HGH use in the NFL
Completely disagree. This, in and of itself, is the issue here. It's not that HGH is a dangerous drug, although if not used properly, can cause some serious side effects. It's player A using this drug and gaining an athletic advantage over player B, who does not use. It's about a level playing field for all players.
Also, if the NFL legalizes this substance, what message will they be sending our youth? There is already a huge black market for this stuff, and I can just imagine if the NFL were to legalize it, we will have an epidemic of HGH use in kids that are way too young to even understand what the long term effects might be. In fact, I'm not even sure that the medical community understands what the long term effects are."I don't know a man on this Earth who can outwork me". Ray Lewis
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