Posted on 02/02/2013 8:51:36 AM PST by Para-Ord.45
If everyone is secretly suspicious of so many athletic achievements in the 21st century, why aren't we talking about it?
"Why isn't anyone questioning Ray Lewis's miraculous recovery from a torn triceps muscle? At age 37, not only did he recover in 10 weeks from an injury that usually takes 6 months minimum for recovery, but, upon returning, he played at a higher level than before he was injured. Are sports 'journalists' incapable of learning from their own mistakes (we JUST HAD both the Baseball HOF vote and Lance admitting to steroid use), or is the sport just bigger than the truth?"
When Bertrand Berry and Ty Warren suffered a complete tear of their triceps, it took them six months to recover. When Arizona left tackle Levi Brown suffered a complete tear of his triceps in August 2012, the Cardinals immediately put him on their season-ending injured list. When Ray Lewis suffered a complete tear of his triceps in mid-October, we thought he was finished for the season … only he returned to action a little more than two months later. During the third month of his "recovery," he made 17 tackles in a double-overtime playoff game in Denver. In 13-degree weather. At age 37.
"Peterson nearly broke a 28 year old record in one of the most physically-demanding positions in sports less than 12 months after tearing his ACL & MCL!!! Respect the hell out of the guy and love his extreme work ethic, but think about McGwire's 70. Now think about it happening less than 12 months after tearing a pec. We probably call BS even back then at that point. You may want to take a cold shower and then mention it in a column just in case."
Did I Google photos of Peterson's Oklahoma head and compare them to his Minnesota head? I did. And felt like a loser the entire time. Until I mentioned it to a buddy.
"Oh, I've done that," he said. "Everyone does that. That should just be a website. Before/after photos of athlete heads. They should all be in one place."
We ignored their swollen noggins and rippling biceps.
And I found myself nodding. That's a great idea for a website. He's right.
Before those Miami New Times/Sports Illustrated bombshells dropped this week and we started joking about deer-antler spray, I would have wagered anything that God didn't miraculously heal Ray Lewis's torn tricep. I never actually wrote this. Alluded to it, danced around it, joked about it … just never actually came out and wrote it. I stayed away from Peterson jokes for a different reason: His historic comeback (and historically great season) seemed conceivable. All Day might be a freak of nature, and if you take Dr. James Andrews at his word, the inside of Peterson's knee resembled a newborn baby's knee even after six NFL seasons. Watching Peterson regain his old form wasn't any more eye-opening than, say, Peyton Manning regaining his old form at age 36 after four neck surgeries.
My favorite recent look-the-other-way example: Juan Manuel Marquez couldn't knock down Manny Pacquiao for 36 solid rounds over three of their fights. Before their third fight, the 39-year-old Marquez aligned himself with a disgraced strength-and-conditioning coach named Angel Heredia (Google his name and PEDs; it's a fun 10 minutes), arrived in Vegas so ripped that he weighed in four pounds under the 147-pound limit, knocked Pacquiao down early with a vicious power punch, then coldcocked him a few rounds later with one of the single greatest knockout punches ever thrown. What did we do? We bought the fight, gathered in our living rooms. We oohed and aahed, tweeted our disbelief and forwarded the YouTube clip around. And when Marquez passed the bogus post-fight drug test — for the record, Keith Richards in 1978 after a night at Studio 54 could pass one of boxing's drug tests — everyone let the moment go.
Know this: Every boxing fan I know believes that Marquez enhanced his chances that night.
NBA players get tested up to four times during the course of a season. The fourth time can happen at any point from October to June, but once it happens, that's it. So if your fourth test occurs after your 71st game, you're clear the rest of the way. It's a running joke within NBA circles, something of a get-out-of-jail-free card: Once you pee in that fourth cup, you're good to go. Put whatever you want into your body. Feel like smoking enough weed to make Harold and Kumar blush? Knock yourself out. Feel like replacing your blood with cleaner blood so you have more endurance for the playoffs? Knock yourself out. Feel like starting a testosterone cycle because you might have to play 25 grueling playoff games over the next 10 weeks? Knock yourself out. Remember how competitive these guys are. What would they do for an edge? How far would they go? And why are we giving them the choice?
( Excerpted)
Bu-wa-ha-haaa
NO WAY ANYONE recovers from a TORN muscle that fast, PERIOD, and I won`t even get into his alleged involvement in double-murder making him either an accessory to or an actual killer.
Why fight it?
>>Ray Lewis !?<<
Top thug on a team full of thugs. They are taught to play dirty and they do play dirty.
As for his drug use, all I can say is karma would suggest he ends up like Lyle Alzado (God rest his soul).
Only when the soviets and others started doing so to did we start trying to “crack down” on them... but the real truth is we were only cracking down on the old ones others were using while constantly staying ahead of the testing curve to continue our fake dominance.
There is nothing in the American DNA which would explain our dominance, or that explains the sudden magical leap black athlete's made in the 20’th century.
If you are referring to the incident outside a Buckhead nightclub nobody saw nothin. :-)
Actually, there is something that would explain the sudden magical leap black athletes made in the 20th century. It could be that people whose genes predisposed them to superior athletic ability were finally permitted to compete.
Kinda confusing there.
Is recovering from serious injury using steroidals the same thing as a healthy person jacking up? Are steroids for asthma PEDs?
Recovery from appendicitis and many other ailments is miraculous compared to a generation ago.
Sometimes focus has to narrow to make a point.
If professional babseball players can perform better and have longer careers perhaps steroids and other PEDs are a good thing for us all to consider.
There’s the side effects that shorten lives and directly cause serious health problems later. That’s the ostensible reason for banning them to start with. Not all players are willing to take the risk, and leagues aren’t willing to make the lawsuit payouts.
I think the staggering amounts of money made by the NFL and the TV networks has corrupted the sport. Nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds them, so what once was seen as sports journalism has evolved into sports promotion. Almost everybody is happy with the status quo, even the fans.
If you watch a replay of a classic NFL game from up to about 1980, even the best players look skinny when compared to today’s athletes. It’s even more startling if you look at the change in college football players. Yet the announcers and journalists are reluctant to ask why the players are so much bigger than before.
There have been professional athletes for thousands of years, going back to ancient Greece. But starting in the late 1970’s, modern professional athletes started to get huge. It probably started with bodybuilders and weight lifters, then NFL and MLB. If it could have been accomplished simply with diet and exercise, we would have seen it before the 1970’s.
Americans used to joke about the obvious use of drugs by Olympic athletes from the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic. But now everybody does it. Even if leagues and governing agencies get serious about stopping it, there’s a good chance the drug manufacturers will stay one step ahead of everybody else, either by making their drugs difficult to detect, or by inventing new ones that have not yet been banned.
The sheer size and speed of today’s NFL players is one of the reasons they suffer so many concussions and other serious injuries.
Yup.
NFL network sometimes play some real classic NFL games where the men were big boned and thick but not blown up by `roids.
Ditto for a channel I had the once played classic NHL games in black and white where they had no helmets and body checking was body checking, not taking full sprint runs at a guy to play him and not the puck.
Alas, those days are gone now with 20 somethings making millions per year.
If players are able to perform better in the 30s and 40s perhaps the ‘side effects’ are over-rated.
In any event - why is it legal for a woman to mutilate her body with silicone but illegal for a man to want to enhance natural muscularity for performance and or vanity?
If players are able to perform better in the 30s and 40s perhaps the ‘side effects’ are over-rated.
In any event - why is it legal for a woman to mutilate her body with silicone but illegal for a man to want to enhance natural muscularity for performance and or vanity?
If players are able to perform better in the 30s and 40s perhaps the ‘side effects’ are over-rated.
In any event - why is it legal for a woman to mutilate her body with silicone but illegal for a man to want to enhance natural muscularity for performance and or vanity?
It’s not illegal (generally) to ‘enhance’ muscularity, providing controlled-substance laws are obeyed.
The question concerns professional sports and whether they can have enforceable rules to protect themselves from lawsuits if for no other reason. They can.
Not many familiar with side-effects would call them ‘over-rated’.
http://www.thestlcardinals.com/SteroidsclaimthelifeofKenCaminiti-Wasitworthit.html
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/02/21/Sports/_Roid_rage.shtml
Don’t care. The 2005 Andro ban was one of the dumbest pieces of unConstitutional legislation since the GCA of 68.
Only if abused. It’s their life. They know the risks. They aren’t hurting anyone else.
I HATE the Nanny State. Any “for your own good” reasoning is by default morally bankrupt.
But the question, again, is ‘can sports leagues protect themselves from liability and can they have enforceable rules’?
A person is free to decline to participate in sports under the terms offered, AFAIK.
Split the leagues. Enhanced on one side, natural on the other.
Let the market decide.
Government should be no part of the equation in our Republic.
Split? You mean start new ones?
I’d say your objections are with adjudicating liability not with being unfair to ‘roid ragers.
If we want to stop protecting us from ourselves, how ‘bout starting with something easier like seatbelt laws?
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