A couple of weeks ago I wrote that I wasn’t taking either the players’ or owners’ side in the NFL labor battle. As a fan I feel that neither side really gives a damn about us. No matter what the players and owners say they will keep doing things that ultimately screw the fans. So both sides should stop insulting us.

But no matter what they do, we’ll be fine. We’ll live. I’ll be okay. Our “problems” with the NFL are really insignificant in the scheme of things. We’re addicted and will keep coming back. Neither higher ticket prices, PSLs, 4 hour games or any other indignity will keep the fans from their appointed game.

However, there are some people who won’t be fine, won’t be okay. As a matter of fact, they will get worse with every passing day. These people are the former NFL players upon who’s back the league was, and is, built.

NOTE TO THE PLAYERS: Drew Brees or any of the other players who are the face of the NFL labor movement should bite their tongue the next time they feel compelled to invoke their concern for the fans, and instead talk about how today’s players will not settle or agree on any plan that doesn’t include total medical care for those former players who need it.

NOTE TO THE OWNERS/COMMISSIONER: No matter what survey data says, fans don’t give a damn about players taking steroids or using human growth hormone. Stop wasting time with the nonsensical position that the league will insist on a test for HGH. Such a (valid) test doesn’t exist and the league will not catch one single player. And we all know you don’t want to catch anyone; people will not pay top dollar to see 220-pound linemen butt heads. Players use steroids and HGH, which is why guys continue to get bigger, faster, stronger. It’s not the training or diet or legit nutritional supplements. It’s the drugs. So rather than waste time on what guys today are taking – and what you need them to take – show concern for the guys who got hurt playing the game and need care.

Not the superstars, not the household names, but the guys who come into the league at their physical peak and leave four years later diminished in every way. This isn’t a recent phenomenon in the “bigger, faster, stronger” era; this has been going on ever since the league came in to being.

Rather than go through the whole story I will keep it simple. There are hundreds and hundreds of guys you have never heard of or, worse, you’ve forgotten about, who have been ignored by the league. These guys were injured in the line of duty and have been told by the owners that they are on their own, that they have to pay their own medical bills. These are the players people talk about when referring to the “average career” of three-and-a-half years. These are the guys behind the statistic.

Check out Dave Pear’s blog. He’s just one of the guys left to beg for what he deserves by the league he helped to make great, a guy who is trying to help others like him get what they are owed.

Too many of these athletes post NFL-careers are spent as professional patients, collecting Social Security disability checks. Here’s another case where the fans, and non-fans alike, wind up paying the bills that should be paid for by the league. It’s bad enough taxpayers get ripped-off when we pay for stadiums, but the real disgrace is that the league hasn’t even been decent to the guys who gave their bodies in the course of their service.

While the owners and the players are fighting over billions of dollars there are former NFL players begging for table scraps in the form of medical care. Keep that in mind the next time you hear a player, owner or empty-suit commissioner tell you how much they care about us.

Care about us?

They don’t even care about their own, so how can they possibly care about us?

So from now on I will be rooting that these forgotten players get taken care of. I will hope against hope that the players’ union will look out for their brothers, and one way or another make sure that guys who really did “leave it all out there” don’t get left out there.

Brian Cushing, the NFL’s Defensive Rookie of the Year, has been suspended for failing a drug test, allegedly testing positive for hCG. hCG is human Chorionic Gonadotrophin and is commonly used by drug cheats when they are coming off a steroid cycle because it helps to stimulate the body’s natural testosterone production.  A drug cheat needs to stimulate their testosterone production because using exogenous testosterone (external to the organism) shuts down the natural production of this hormone.

But all of this is a distraction from the real issue.  The real issue is that people have to stop being surprised, become more skeptical and stop being gullible.  Stop being surprised when athletes fail steroid tests.  Be skeptical when a 165-pound high school kid turns into a 220-pound high school senior, 250-pound college senior and a pro athlete who adds muscle well past the time when physical maturity ends.  Don’t be gullible to think that there are some secrets to training and nutrition that continue to be “discovered” and that are responsible for creating the physical specimens that grace the fields of competitive sports.

There are no real training, nutritional and supplement secrets.  Performance enhancing drug use is the secret. The training hasn’t changed appreciably over the past 50 years, and while diet and supplementation has improved from what it was a half century ago, nothing has really changed in the past 20­­­­-years to explain the massive growth of our athletes.  So don’t believe the nonsense that elite athletes and trainers know things nobody else knows.

Nothing, that is, except steroid and human growth hormone use.  The other drugs these athletes get popped for are part of the overall drug regimen they use.  There aren’t just two, or three or ten drugs used by the drug cheats.  Human growth hormone was being used over 20-years ago, well before 99.99% of the population had even heard of it.  So it stands to reason that in the year 2010 athletes have moved on and are using the next generation of substances, substances that 99.99% of the population hasn’t heard of yet.

So Brian Cushing failed a drug test and got caught cheating.  Big deal, get used to it.

Comments made by Mark McGwire’s bodybuilding idiot of a brother illustrate A) what a joke bodybuilding is and B) why bodybuilders should NEVER be allowed anywhere near real athletes.

So Mark McGwire’s loose-cannon brother has come out with a book, and in it he details his big brother’s steroid and Human Growth Hormone (HGH) taking regimen.  Does anyone really care what this little man has to say about his disgraced brother? As a matter of fact, who really could be interested in what he might have to say about anything, what it’s like to be the talentless brother?  Is there that much interest in bottom feeders these days?

Note: Someone should ask Jay if he helped his NFL quarterback of a brother Dan McGwire get an edge, as well.

Jay McGwire’s comments really speak volumes about how little bodybuilders know and why they should be ignored when they talk about athletic performance.  Here’s a sample of idiocy from Little Jay, “Oh, his strength. His leg strength was awesome. I talked about what he is doing on the leg press — over 600 pounds for 20 reps. That is pretty good for a baseball player. And that is the key in baseball, I think. … Mark didn’t really have big legs until after that. He couldn’t do some other serious leg workouts because of his lower back issues, so we had to be careful with that.”

Hey Jay, did you stop and think the leg press machine might be responsible for your brother’s back problems?  What did you do to try to strengthen the lower back, huh? Also, as a guy who supposedly spent a lot of time in the gym, you should know that 600-pounds on the leg press is common-place, unless you’ve spent your time in Curves’ gyms.  And come on, what functional purpose does the leg press serve for a baseball player, not to mention for a guy who is approaching the end of his career? A lot of people can leg press 600-pounds for 20 repetitions, I have seen it countless times and it is completely unimpressive.  It also proves nothing and is indicative/predictive of nothing.

More nonsense. “And obviously his arm strength, getting those hands through the [hitting] zone. Think about it, it is pretty remarkable. He is gaining 30 pounds over three years, and that is the right way to do it because you go slow and the body reacts slow in the ways of getting it more flexible. So Mark was more flexible 30 pounds heavier. Now think about that torque that he could have. That is why the ball was going out of stadiums.”

WTF? This is gibberish. It would take thousands and thousands of words to try to decipher this garbage. It’s classic bodybuilding, throw some jargon around, figure you’ll impress/intimidate people who supposedly don’t know as much, and Voila, you sound like an expert.  He actually sounds like a moron.

At 170-180 pounds Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle and Hank Aaron were hitting home runs, why couldn’t Mark McGwire hit them at 225-pounds?  Oh, and the Cardinals’ new hitting instructor had more strike outs than hits during his years as an active player in St. Louis.

Then Jay McGwire spoke about his brother’s drug cycles.  More Neanderthal musings.  Just like Greg Anderson, the alleged personal trainer who ruined Barry Bonds’ body with steroids and unsound training, Jay McGwire dosed his brother up with massive amounts of drugs.  Again, bodybuilders who don’t do anything that can be considered even remotely athletic just need to add muscle, and ingest tons of drugs.  Baseball players and real athletes don’t need to pack on muscle at any cost, especially at the cost Jay McGwire exacted on his brother’s body.

No less of an expert than BALCO Labs’ Victor Conte says, “The first thing you are going to see is size. You are using Dbol (Dianabol) and this stuff at this dosage, you’re going to look like Hercules, if he is doing the weight training. At 12 weeks and those dosages, this is not baby food.”  By the way, you can train like Olive Oil and you’ll look like Popeye if you dose up like Mark McGwire did.

The final insult comes in the form of this statement by Jay McGwire, “Jay McGwire repeatedly stressed that any changes weren’t just from the drugs, but that his brother trained ridiculously hard, often six days a week. And the combination paid off.” This is just bullshit.  The drugs are responsible for allowing someone to train “ridiculously hard, six days a week.” Don’t buy this nonsense. And don’t but the malarkey that teammates and team personnel didn’t know what was going on.

Mark McGwire cheated by taking performance-enhancing drugs because he wanted to break home run hitting records and his brother was right there with him every step of the way.

As the New York Times reports that Dr. Anthony Galea, a physician who has treated Tiger Woods, is being investigated for providing Performance Enhancing Drugs to athletes, debate is being waged on sports talk shows across the radio dial; did the revealed-to-be-a-horn dog golfing great use steroids or human growth hormone and if he did, how much, if any, did these drugs help?

As usual, when discussing athletes and PED use, logic and facts take a back seat to emotions, incorrect and inconsistent assertions, and misinformation about what these drugs can and cannot do.

Arguments are being forwarded in this debate that were used when baseball players got caught using steroids and HGH.  Steroids don’t make the athlete, technique does; bulk doesn’t help these athletes; young athletes don’t really get any benefits from the recovery benefits offered by PEDs; the athletes were great when they were teenagers and young men, so why would they need to take PEDs to get any better, and the list goes on.

Different sports and different athletes, but the same bad info and faulty logic.

For the sake of discussion, let’s accept the” big picture” assertion made by some folks that athletic performance in golf is (somehow) different than all other athletic endeavors, and therefore, steroid use cannot improve the swing and play of a golfer.

So what?

Tiger has displayed such incredibly bad judgment in the way he has handled his personal life it’s entirely reasonable that he would use the same faulty decision making process regarding the use of PEDs.  Knowing what we know about this mess, Tiger’s reasoning skills are obviously suspect.

What we know about athletes who use PEDs, their motivation is that they believe taking the drugs will help.  It is also clear that many athletes are willing to go to extreme measures to be successful and to gain an edge over the competition.  In this regard, could Tiger be that different from Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Rodney Harrison or any other uber-competitive, successful athlete?

The nonsense about increased muscle mass – aka “bulk”- and steroid/HGH use comes from what people think they know what these drugs can do as a result of stories about body builders and other meat heads.  Unless the definition and physics of “athleticism” and “ability to perform more work” has changed, increased muscle mass is never a bad thing; a relatively small increase in muscle mass can reap large performance benefits.

A golfer, baseball player, tennis player, swimmer or any other athlete will benefit from increased muscle mass and athletes who use PEDs don’t have to look like this, they look like this.

By the way, Tiger is known to have hit the weighs hard and has added muscle to his body over the past several years, so it’s clear that Tiger thinks adding muscle to his frame will help his game.

Again, for the sake of argument if we accept the line of reasoning that adding muscle is detrimental to a golfer’s performance to explain why Tiger Woods would not use PEDs, how can this “no improvement” be measured?  Whether from weight lifting and PED use, or weight lifting alone, if he wasn’t as muscular would he have won more tournaments?  First, there’s no way to know this and second it is not logical to say that Woods wouldn’t use PEDs simply because he didn’t want to add muscle mass.

In the real world we can’t ignore the facts for the sake of argument and the unshakeable reality is that additional muscle is beneficial to any athlete, athletes are aware of this, and as a result follow many strategies – ethical and unethical, legal and illegal – to improve their performance.  However, while increased muscle mass can’t be considered to be a detriment, there is no doubt that a golfer – or any athlete – can decrease performance and increase their risk of injury by following an improper weight lifting regimen.

There is no evidence that Tiger Woods has taken steroids, human growth hormones or any other banned PEDs.  However, absent any proof, hackneyed and ignorant arguments cannot be used to explain why he wouldn’t.

David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, Bernard Kohl, Shane Merriman, Rodney Harrison and the rest of the athletes who have failed drug tests are guilty of “Athletic Plagiarism.”

Athletic Plagiarism is when an athlete uses illegal/banned/designer performance-enhancing drugs (PED), or any legitimate drug in an illegitimate way.  The definition of plagiarism is, “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.”  In academia, journalism and the world of publishing, plagiarism is the ultimate sin.  Plagiarists get thrown out of school, lose their jobs, credibility and any awards that they may have won as a result of this form of cheating.

Athletes who use PEDs are guilty of the same sin and should be treated similarly.  Roger Clemens‘ drug use allowed him to garner headlines, win awards and be considered by some to not only be the greatest pitcher of the generation, but of all time.  He redefined the idea of a power pitcher and a dominant pitcher.

But Clemens’ performance and his 354 wins are an illusion. Plagiarism.  He used drugs to give him what others have done naturally.  He got the credit that others truly deserved.  His performance set the standard, but this performance was based on unauthorized use of drugs and portrayed as being the result of his hard work and natural gifts.

The accomplishments of all other pitchers – contemporaries like Greg Maddux (355 wins) and those from the past – were relegated to the shadows of “the PED Rocket.”  Clemens became the pitcher to which all other pitchers were compared.  Until we know better Greg Maddux should be recognized as the greatest pitcher of this generation, and perhaps of all-time, for if he doesn’t get ensnared in this scandal he will have excelled against PED users.  But that’s a different argument for a different time

Hitters like Bonds, Ramirez, McGwire, Canseco and a litany of other drug cheats not only reaped rewards and stole the thunder of other players, their successes no doubt encouraged other players to plagiarize via PEDS. These players changed the course of the game the way Clemens changed the way pitchers were evaluated.  Power was in; speed, agility and fundamentals were out.  “Small-ball’ took a backseat to the long ball, and guys like Craig Biggio, Will Clark, and other guys who hit 15-30 home runs naturally lost money, fame and roster spots to these athletic plagiarists.

The argument used by the defenders of Clemens, A Rod, Manny and the other cheaters that these players were great without steroids and should still be in the Hall of Fame, is specious. Anyone who supports and forwards the idea that an athletes’ plagiarism – and its effects – is isolated or limited to a few months/handful of games cannot be taken seriously.  This argument/defense is as ridiculous as that of the person who gets caught cheating on a test and says, “But I only cheated on question 13, I did the rest myself!”

With every at-bat and every pitch thrown these players – and the others that haven’t been named/caught, but that exist – affected the outcomes of games, pennant races, the evolution of the way the game is played, the salary structure, the entire financial structure of sports and adversely affected the integrity of the game in a manner far worse than Pete Rose’s gambling ever did.  And we all know his story.

Drug cheats/athletic plagiarists put their personal pursuits ahead of everything that they should have respected, and as a result disrespect their profession, the world of sport, their peers and predecessors who didn’t cheat, and took credit for work that wasn’t theirs.