5-03-05, 9:14 am
Like a gaggle of smitten schoolgirls at a Ryan Cabrera concert, the US Congress swooned this past week in the presence of the National Football League. The NFL, ostensibly, came before Congress to testify about steroid prevention, but they would have had a tougher time if the House Government Reform Committee had offered them a hot towel and a back rub.
In stark contrast to the Congressional inquisition that scalded Major League Baseball, many Congressmen prefaced their remarks or questions by calling the NFL's appearance a 'breath of fresh air.' As Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays put it, 'I kind of love you guys.”
Reflecting the Congressional ardor, columnists also raced to see who could kiss the NFL’s tush with the most relish. Columnist Larry Biel wrote, “All you had to do was watch five minutes of [the hearings] to see why the NFL is the king of sports and baseball can't seem to get anything right. Look at the men in charge. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was in complete control of the room, while baseball boss Bud Selig stumbled and bumbled his way to embarrassment last month. Tags was an accomplished attorney before becoming commissioner. Selig was a used car salesman. It shows. If Selig were hired by the NFL, he might be qualified to be Tagliabue's caddie, that's about it.”
The conventional wisdom is that the NFL was “rewarded” for its “vigorous” steroid enforcement while Major League Baseball was raked over the coals for their incompetence. The NFL fortified this PR by savvily announcing the tripling of the number of off-season steroid tests each player can face, right before their Congressional appearance.
If Congress wanted to put the NFL on the rack, there is ample smoke, if not fire. In 1989, there were less than ten players who tipped the scales at over 300 pounds. Now there are 455. But since the league began testing 15 years ago, only 54 players have been suspended – none of them famous outside their immediate neighborhoods. This would be like going after the Jackson family and only indicting Tito. Also, while Congress put a line-up of future Hall of Fame baseball players under the lamps, the only NFL “player” called before the committee was the longer retired Steve Courson, a former admitted user who now speaks out against the supplement that almost took his life.
Another argument for the NFL pass is the numbers theory. Because Major League Baseball has seen its record books rewritten by muscular sluggers of questionable personal chemistry, while NFL players most likely to ‘roid wouldn’t be the glamour positions. There is no question that numbers in baseball hold a mythic allure that doesn’t exist in other sports. Baseball fans know exactly what you are talking about if you say 755 (Hark Aaron’s home run record), 2,632 (Cal Ripken’s consecutive game streak), and the infamous 4,256 (Pete Rose’s career hit totals). In football, few could tell you exactly what Jerry Rice’s, and Dan Marino’s records are. But the numbers theory just doesn’t fly. It’s hard to believe that the same Congress which thanked “Major League Football” for agreeing to the hearings are rotisserie geeks looking out for the numerical sanctity of the sport.
I want to post that Congress was reduced to coquettish glances and blushing titters because of what I am calling the Male Cheerleader Principle. Today, to be a male football cheerleader is to live with the knowledge that people assume you are either Gay, have found an inventive way to meet coeds, or are a frustrated dancer (or any combination of the three). But male cheerleading has a tradition on elite campuses that precedes modern definitions. In the “old days” – sometimes referred to by Tom Delay as “the future” – campuses were lily white, women didn’t play sports, latent homosexuality was expressed through bizarre fraternity rituals, and being a male cheerleader was a sign of leadership, school spirit, and a desire to engage in the emotion of football without getting your ascot in a bunch. Both George W. Bush and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott cut their teeth as cheerleaders, and that mentality of uncritical support for football still pervades the halls of Congress, albeit with a twist. Now instead of going gaga for Biff the star quarterback, their adoration is reserved for money and power. When you cross-breed that with the National Football League, its unrivaled cultural prestige, and an ownership club more exclusive than a Papal conclave, this collective cat nip seemed to overwhelm the oversight committee's senses.
The NFL’s saccharine treatment proves only that these congressional hearings are, in the words of Woody Allen, “a sham of a mockery of a travesty of a sham.” The league and union should be able create andimplement their own drug policy without Big Brother getting in the mix. It’s also almost too ironic to sea Congress that over the last ten years has given us spiraling health care costs, the predominance of HMOS,and an underclass of senior citizens who have to choose between prescription drugs and food, fulminate about the nation's health.
In a moment that highlights the utter hypocrisy of the hearings, Willie Stewart, head football coach at Anacostia Senior High School in Washington, D.C., testified about how one his former players had died two weeks ago of kidney failure, a condition the coach suspects was linked to steroid use. 'His death was just a waste of a human life,' Stewart said through a veil of tears. Willie Stewart has in recent years become a local symbol of heartache, having coached numerous players that have died by gunfire, substandard medical care, or a toxic combination of the two. But don’t expect Congress to hold hearings on life in South East DC. Time is better spent nuzzling with “Tags”.
--Dave Zirin's new book 'What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States' will be in stores in June 2005. Check out his revamped website edgeofsports.com. You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com. Contact him at whatsmynamefool2005@yahoo.com.
