The NFL and Steroids

It is often asked why NFL fans do not show concern when a player tests positive for performance enhancing supplements in the same way MLB fans do. The answer is simple: NFL fans are smarter.

Certainly, this is a hard pill to swallow, that football fans are more intelligent because they ignore what it is that is happening in their sport. But let us think about this for a second, ponder it. Because when you do, it begins to make sense, though honor and pride begin to lose their luster.

Let us look back only two years ago when the steroid scandal swept through baseball. After Jose Canseco lifted the veil of secrecy that kept baseball "clean," everyone began to question star athletes who had popped home runs. Every player who hit a homer and looked more like Goliath than David was questioned.

After Canseco's book release, everything began to make sense: the home run derby that took place in 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, the records that were broken. Canseco was both ridiculed and praised. Some thought that he had sold his teammates out to turn a profit while others praised him for his honesty because, really, if he didn't tell, how would we know?

But look at what has happened to professional baseball. Look at its main attraction: the home run. It is now forever questioned in legitimacy. Has anyone truly beaten Maris' 61? Every record broken during what is now referred to as the "steroid era" has an asterisk attached to its name.

I am not an advocate of cheating or the use of steroids, but when baseball fans began to demand answers, they destroyed their sport.

The '98 season made baseball popular again among younger fans, with Sosa and McGwire battling it out and "Big Mac" finally destroying the record and hitting 70 taters during the season. The '05 steroid hearings in Congress destroyed both player's reputations: Sosa forgot how to speak English and McGwire defending his fellow peers by pleading the Fifth.

During the hearings, fans demanded answers and got few. In fact, they had only succeeded in arousing suspicion and tainting their sport with a smudge that will perhaps never be erased, at least not until Barry Bonds retires.

Bonds was the center of focus leading up to and after the hearings in Congress. People looked at baseball cards from his rookie season and his present day physique, noting he had radically grown in stature. He went from possessing an athletic body to something that looked like it belonged in the world of professional wrestling instead of baseball.

He is, to this day, still questioned, and millions of fans will demand that he be stricken from the record books or, at the very least, have his name marked with an asterisk when he breaks "Hammerin'" Hank Aaron's record this season. And what will that asterisk say? Probably something along the lines of, "Record was broken during Steroids Era of baseball."

Because while there is strong suspicion surrounding Barry Bonds, there is no proof he has ever knowingly taken performance enhancing supplements. His reputation and career were destroyed because fans, fans who never came closer than their television set to meeting him, suspect that he has "juiced."

Am I acting in Bonds defense? To some degree I suppose. It is unjust to suspect a player and declare him "guilty until proven innocent" because he can never be proven innocent, no different than accusing you of smoking an illegal substance at one time during your life. Though you've never failed a drug test, can you prove that you have never taken an illegal drug?

Baseball fans have dug for answers, but have only succeeded in digging their sport's reputation a grave. You may call NFL fans naïve, pathetic, lacking in pride. I prefer another word: wise.