The pissing battle between the NFL and the players’ union representatives continues…
On the docket today, the questions surround testing players for Human Growth Hormones (HGH).
The NFL’s Senior Vice President, Adolpho Birch, has been quite vocal in the news, calling out the Players Association for stalling on an agreement to test for HGH levels for players. A deal was reached in principle between the League and PA way back in October 2011, yet here we are a year and a half later with guys sticking themselves with animal appendages to buck the system – who was the first guy to think it a good idea to start taking deer antler?
”The longer we continue to stall out on this issue or we don’t have an effective regiment in place, it’s a disservice to all of us. We need resolution. This is enough. We’ve been talking about this for two years.” ~ Birch, at NFL Combine
Players Association President, Domonique Foxworth (really, the two guys involved are named Adolpho and Dominique?), hit back;
”We’ve had kind of a long history in our union and the league’s relationship and that’s deteriorated the trust between the two, and the players don’t feel comfortable moving forward and I don’t feel comfortable moving forward without the proper protections in place. As far as I understand, there’s no good reason not to have those protections in place, so that’s kind of the hold up as far as HGH is concerned. HGH testing that doesn’t give our players the opportunity to appeal, that’s just a nonstarter.” ~ Dominique Foxworth
Touche.
I can’t help but think the longer this debate continues, the more antlers players will find to inject themselves with. No seriously, don’t we hear about the “new” steroid that is proven to beat the tests on an annual basis? It’s either we monitor every player’s diet in a massive database, doling out bread and water at scheduled times as we deem necessary (more bread for the O-Linemen), or we move forward and start testing for the substances we are aware of.
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photo credit: Wheeler Cowperthwaite via photopin cc
