Doping: the hidden question

By: Isaiah | August 2nd, 2007

The last few weeks have been calm for me here at the Barcelona Offside Global Command Center. There has been little gnashing of teeth and little worrying about the future. Only the question of Deco’s potential transfer (rumors that keep resurfacing, no matter how many times Laporta quashes them with the “indispensable” tag he’s placed on the player) has had any shot at disturbing my tranquility. The lack of games and the low sodium diet has been very good for the blood pressure, but now it’s time for a rant. It’s time to allow the little niggling issues to rise to the surface and spew forth. I just finished the last Harry Potter book (No, I’m not going to tell the ending — unlike the Daily Show, which spilled the beans about how Ron is actually Voldemort’s pet robot dog and bites off Harry’s head…but everyone already knew that) and whereas prior to page 759 my next minute was obliged to be consumed by things that aren’t real, it’s time now to return to the true universe: the world of sport. The tubes that make up this complex infrastructure known collectively as the interwebs allows me the opportunity to produce verbage and for you to read it. Accio rant, the nerd in me commands:

I was perusing ESPN the other day, enjoying my leisurely stroll through the stories about Barry Bonds not hitting number 755, the KG trade, and other random crap, when I fell onto Jemele Hill’s latest column. While she’s not a particularly good writer (as oppose to moi, of course), Hill does bring up several points about America’s sports-culture-isolationism that are important. Of the Tour de France’s strict drug testing, Hill writes, “Just imagine if the same vigilant testers used in cycling set up shop in American pro sports leagues. How many times would we read about American athletes being busted for performance-enhancing drugs on the ESPN crawl?” As a sports fan who is American and as a fan of American sports, I wonder the same things. But I also apply this question, this fear, to the global soccer game. In a moment where the NFL is dealing with the Michael Vick and Pacman Jones scandals as well as a dispute with ex-players over benefits, the NBA has found one of its elite refs to be under the influence of mobsters, the MLB has a player about to break the “most hallowed record in sports” while everyone suspects (and pretty much knows) he did steroids in order to achieve that mark, and the UCI saw its premier race, the Tour de France, turned into a doping circus, I find it hard to believe that FIFA is free of these issues. The idea that calciogate is over or was confined to one particular FA is silly, if not downright retarded. I fear for my sport because it seems only a matter of time before the allegations of doping explode onto the truly global scene: FIFA.

Are my favorite players using EPO to boost their performances? If so, do I actually care? Really, do I? I’m not competing with them for a spot on the field, so don’t I (and don’t we, as a collective sporting community) want to see the best players playing the best possible? Is Barry Bonds actually not a great player because he (allegedly) used steroids? Were it to come out that Ronaldinho had doped during the 2005/06 season, would that make his skills less beautiful to watch? The question is the Shawne Merriman question that was raised last year after he was suspended for failing a steroid test: Would we rather have the best atheletes, the best sporting events, or the cleanest ones? Because there’s no doubt whatsoever that a juiced up Merriman, Vinokourov, or Bonds is more fun to watch than ones who are not. The same is true for Ronaldinho and all the other soccer players out there.

There are health risks involved in this, of course (see Chris Benoit), but that is not what I’m talking about, as important a part of this discussion as it is (or should be). I don’t condone doping, ‘roiding, or anything else that artificially boosts your abilities, but how many people out there go to 8th grade games and think “Oh man, it just can’t get any better than this!”? No one. No one on earth. How many of you have season tickets to see the Rochester Raging Rhinos play? Honestly, how many? And do you believe the Rhinos are a better team than, say, AC Milan?

Honestly ask yourselves these questions. I find that I’m not sure what is better. One part of me says “Keep it clean, make it a pure game,” but another part of me loves to see absurdly athletic players streaking up and down courts and fields, maintaining a feverish pace to games for however long they go. Good games are, after all, more fun than bad ones. Would we be able to tell the difference in quality? I think so. Would it be worth it? I don’t know.

Have your say in the comments, as there is no doubt a massive amount of this subject that I have either avoided or forgotten.