NFL Releases Statement on Fairness and Integrity of NFL Drug Programs

by Saintsational on Sep 15, 2009 7:53 PM CDT Comment 18 comments

The league released a statement today regarding the suspensions of Will Smith, Charles Grant and the Williams' Wall. Here it is in it's entirety.

COMMISSIONER GOODELL announced today that the suspensions of New Orleans Saints players CHARLES GRANT and WILL SMITH for their 2008 violations of the NFL's Policy on Anabolic Steroids and Related Substances will not be enforced at the present time.

"This situation presents several unique and narrow aspects that I believe call for us to put the good of the game ahead of questions of discipline," Commissioner Goodell said. "Considerations of fairness, uniform application of our policies, and competitive integrity all support deferring the suspensions at this time. I am not prepared to treat players differently when the same conduct is involved."

Last Friday, a federal appeals court in Minnesota unanimously ruled in favor of the NFL in the so-called "Star Caps" case, rejecting all of the challenges brought by the NFL Players Association, including unfounded claims of bias and failure to share information with players about diuretics.  The Court of Appeals fully upheld the earlier rulings of a federal district court in favor of the league.

The ruling upheld the suspensions of the Saints players.   However, the federal court also allowed KEVIN WILLIAMS and PAT WILLIAMS of the Minnesota Vikings to pursue separate claims under Minnesota state law, which prevent suspending them at this time.  Commissioner Goodell said the NFL will vigorously contest those state law claims and enforce appropriate discipline on a consistent and uniform basis.

Commissioner Goodell added, "Our primary goal is to maintain the effectiveness and integrity of our program, which has repeatedly been recognized as among the finest in all of sports.   An important part of that program has been a tradition of fairness for players and clubs, with all players knowing they are held to a common standard.  Because the Minnesota and New Orleans players committed the same violation and had their appeals resolved at the same time, I believe the appropriate step is to defer the suspensions while we pursue both our legal options and continue discussions with the NFLPA.

"Now that the courts have rejected the NFLPA's improper challenge to our collectively bargained program, we hope the union will join us in ensuring that these principles of fairness and uniformity are preserved.  The union's unfortunate refusal to do so thus far has created needless uncertainty for our program. This is an important issue not only for the NFL, but for all sports and everyone who cares about the integrity of sports competition.  This is why the other professional leagues and the USADA supported us in this case. "

It;s starting to look as though Smith and Grant will not get suspended this year. Good news?

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No, Its not

Someone on the NOLA.com message boards summed it up perfectly today:

It’s Official: Charles Grant Sucks

Who IS the Stig?

by Hollywoo! on Sep 15, 2009 8:07 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

That picture of Goodell makes it look like he's got heartburn from this whole situation...

Smell Greatness

by HansDat on Sep 15, 2009 8:17 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

im guessing

this is going to be grants last year with the saints, maybe smith too?

by lockguy on Sep 15, 2009 8:49 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

1. We won’t now have to worry about depth problems on the D-line. If they had been suspended and McCray, Hargrove, or Charleston got hurt, who would then have stepped in? How long could that patchwork have lasted?

2. Goodell and the league were wrong from the get go on this. They deserve to have their flawed, totalitarian drug policy exposed. The players took a weight-loss supplement with unlisted ingredients that the league knew about but didn’t warn the players about after they had approved the product a year earlier when Deuce submitted it for testing. Allow me to repeat this important point: The players are guilty of using a tainted weight-loss supplement, not steroids. So, they should not be punished as if they had used “performance-enhancing drugs,” steroids, crack cocaine, etc. It was a weight-loss supplement! A weight-loss supplement! Weight…..Loss…..Supplement, not steroids. Sorry about stressing this point, but it’s annoying how people sometimes overlook this glaring difference and buy into the league’s flawed justification for suspension.

3. If Deuce is now healthy enough to play, he has a much better chance of getting picked up by a team.

I’m as down on Grant as anybody, but I’m not yet willing to give up on Will. I still believe he’ll soon return to his pre-groin injury self. If he doesn’t, Payton, Williams, and Johnson will bench him or reduce his role and put someone in there who does get the job done. G-Dub isn’t married to either one of these guys and, big money contracts or not, he’s gonna play the best guys on the roster. Now that they aren’t distracted by this bogus suspension, they may just play better. I’m willing to give them a few more games to come around. If they don’t, another player will and we’ll have decent D-line depth behind whoever that is.

Those idiots posting at NOLA.com need to lighten up and give these guys a couple more games at least to tune up their game. If WIll and Chuck don’t start producing, I’ll gladly lead the petition to bench their overpaid asses. I have a feeling they’ll now play a little better without this year-long distraction hanging over them.

"He has got a good ol' boy sense of humor, but he has also got a good ol' boy sense of kick you in the ass, too,"--Gregg Williams describing Bill Johnson. The D WILL ROCK THIS YEAR!

by satchmo26 on Sep 15, 2009 9:33 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Satch, it doesn’t matter one single bit what the purpose of taking the supplement was. It was still a banned substance.

The problem is not that they were “just trying to lose weight”. If I took marijuana and then claimed in court that “I was just trying to lose weight” I wouldn’t get any slack whatsoever. In fact, after the judge got back from rolling on the floor laughing he’d probably throw the book at me even harder.

No, the problem is that that the NFL had approved the supplement for Deuce a year earlier, then subsequently found out about the tainting and did not inform him and the rest of the league. THAT is the REAL problem. It’s why I still can’t understand why the courts haven’t slammed them six ways from Sunday over this. Deuce had official permission to take the supplement… and then he tests positive for a banned substance from taking the supplement, and the NFL is NOT at fault? Hello? Anybody home in there? Are these judges from Betelgeuse or something? Does one of them have the last name of ‘Prefect’ perhaps?

by FriarBob on Sep 16, 2009 7:56 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

I agree with the last part

That’s the point I was trying to make. Only, the weight-loss supplement wasn’t a banned substance. The bumetanide it secretly contained and the players could not have known about was the banned substance. No, it wasn’t smart of the players to use it for shedding pounds quickly, but it’s not an illegal substance.

"He has got a good ol' boy sense of humor, but he has also got a good ol' boy sense of kick you in the ass, too,"--Gregg Williams describing Bill Johnson. The D WILL ROCK THIS YEAR!

by satchmo26 on Sep 16, 2009 8:15 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

back down Bob

If im your boss and you say
" Hey boss.. I have a weight problem and I hear a once a day spliff at night before bed can make me drop 5 pds a night… do you mind if I do that? It wont effect my work as the effects will be gone by the time i wake up but if you make me pee in a cup you will see im doing it so thought I would ask first. I will be using Jay’s house of weed product and here is a sample you can test out to see if its kosher."

Course in this example assume the spliff is LEGAL to do at home just not PERMITTED to do at work.

Now i say " SURE no problem, just make sure you use the Jay’s product as we put it thru the test machine and then rolled on up ourself and it was all good."

Now.. a year later I fire one up and I get a major reaction.. so I go and retest it and Woah.. there is something new in the mix and its not good. I DO NOT TELL YOU THIS.
Instead.. I go to the inhouse lawyer and say.. hey. we can bust FrairBob with a 4 week suspension and save ourself 1/4 of his pension contributions this year.

Now… here is my question to you.

What did YOU do wrong?

by MT_always on Sep 16, 2009 8:37 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Sorry if you (or he) thought I was attacking satch. I wasn’t intending to. Maybe I sounded mad or something, but I wasn’t. Well not at him at any rate. I am at the idiots on the judicial benches and in the NFL offices. But mainly I was just trying to point out that the general scenario you point out was the problem, not the claimed (and I do actually believe them, but it is still merely a claim) reason they were taking the supplement.

See I could say I’m doing something for any legitimate reason I want and if there is a drug policy that I violate (absolutely completely irregardless of whether the violation was knowing or not) it’s not going to cut me any slack. And it really shouldn’t. Because barring a lie detector that can never be fooled, which is currently only available in science fiction, then we have no way to know if the person is lying about what their purpose was or whether they knew or not.

And whether the substance is “legal” really makes zero difference. Sorry. It just doesn’t. The substance in question is banned because it can help mask other substances that allow a player to “cheat”. And it should be banned because of that. There is nothing wrong with that. The NFL doesn’t want people to try to cheat, and they have every right to try to prevent that. And we should support them in that goal. Would you like your players to have a competitive disadvantage against other players who used drugs to make themselves able to play better? I wouldn’t. And if those drugs were legal to take and use to increase your ability to play it wouldn’t be long before every team forced their players to use them. Again an evil that should be prevented at nearly any cost.

But when there is proof that they had hard evidence that this banned substance was “not” there (previously) and they had official permission to take the product based on testing that had previously been done and told them that the product was clean, then at that point the NFL is (or at least should be) 100% liable.

by FriarBob on Sep 16, 2009 12:55 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

The solution is obvious

…and it’s been there all along. If the NFL is going to test supplements for banned substances, they should keep a master list of approved supplements that everyone can refer to. If it’s on the list, you can take it. If it turns out later that the supplement was tainted and a player tests positive for a banned substance, he’s off the hook if he can prove he ingested it through using the supplement.

What’s more, if a player tests positive for a legal-though-banned substance, such as Adderall, in the off-season, he gets a caution. (Off-season means what, kiddies? That’s right, no competition…hence no unfair competition, hence no need to test for those substances that have only short-term effects). If he tests positive in the preseason, he gets a warning, and is placed in the intervention program. Only if he tests positive during the season does he get a suspension.

Or is this unreasonable?

The problem, of course, is that this solution introduces a certain level of good judgment and responsibility that the NFL would rather not be burdened with. Zero tolerance is just so much easier.

"Tell all the killjoys to pound sand." -- Ralph Malbrough

by MtnExile on Sep 16, 2009 1:35 PM CDT up reply actions 2 recs

Amen

you got it right!!

"Indecision may or may not be my biggest problem" - Jimmy Buffet

by Philinwood on Sep 16, 2009 3:04 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think we have our signals crossed somehow

And whether the substance is "legal" really makes zero difference. Sorry. It just doesn’t. The substance in question is banned because it can help mask other substances that allow a player to "cheat". And it should be banned because of that. There is nothing wrong with that. The NFL doesn’t want people to try to cheat, and they have every right to try to prevent that. And we should support them in that goal.

I do support that goal. Do you believe the players were trying to cheat the system in some way? The product StarCaps wasn’t banned. The non-listed ingredient Bumetanide was banned. You and I both believe the players did not know the banned ingredient was in there, right? So, they weren’t trying to cheat the system and there’s absolutely no indication they were using steroids, so they shouldn’t be punished as if they were using steroids. That’s my point as to why I think there is a huge difference between using a legal weight-loss supplement tainted with unlisted ingredients and using steroids.

You seem to be suggesting that StarCaps itself was banned and the players should have known better than to use it. The NFL keeps saying they warned the union and players to not endorse StarCaps. I’ve never understood how that is the same as warning them to not ingest StarCaps. That’s the big disconnect here between the NFL and the NFLPA and it’s the main point at which I believe the league is being dishonest.

Or, do you believe that them avoiding this suspension for now jeopardizes the entire anti-performance-enhancing drug policy? I don’t think so. This entire fiasco exposes flaws in the zero tolerance drug policy and I hope it forces the league to adopt something along the lines M-E suggests—one with a certain level of good judgment and responsibility.

I’m not trying to argue for the hell of it here, Bob. In fact, I don’t quite understand where the disagreement is, other than whether or not Starcaps itself was ever officially banned by the league before the players used it. I don’t believe it was. Only the unlisted ingredient was banned.

"He has got a good ol' boy sense of humor, but he has also got a good ol' boy sense of kick you in the ass, too,"--Gregg Williams describing Bill Johnson. The D WILL ROCK THIS YEAR!

by satchmo26 on Sep 16, 2009 2:40 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think we may very well be misunderstanding each other then.

In direct answer to your question, yes, the unlisted ingredient is banned and the players knew it (or at least had that information available to them). And the product itself (or more precisely as I’ve heard it the company) was listed as “do not endorse”. But if prior to all the hullabaloo it was ever specifically said “do not use” about the product itself then I certainly haven’t heard about it.

So no I’m not saying the product itself was banned at all. What I thought you were saying was that they didn’t do anything illegal and/or that it was a laudable goal and so therefore it was OK. I guess that wasn’t what you meant, which is good because it isn’t true. What they did was perfectly legal but banned by league policy. And we seem to agree that the intent of the policy at least is a good idea. And we seem to agree that the ZT crap is just that, crap.

Now I do think that the WAY the suspensions were avoided may pose a danger to that policy. That being the state law overriding the national CBA. While in many ways I am actually a proponent of states rights (which I mention solely for reference — and explanation of why I’m splitting hairs so finely on this issue — not in an attempt to start a political debate) in a case when you have a nation-wide interest at state you get into at best a major gray area. But that could as you and he say be easily fixed with fixing the ZT crap.

On the other hand, the reason why using the masking agent is treated as if you were taking steroids is because if you are taking steroids and the masking agent or if you are taking only the masking agent (knowingly or not in either case), you with almost no exceptions get the exact same results every time. You will test positive for the masking agent and not for the steroid. And to my knowledge there is no 100% foolproof secondary test to know whether they were taking steroids, nor is there any way to 100% for sure know what their intent was. And unfortunately without those secondary tests available I have to say that while it would be nice to have some other option we don’t really have it.

IF, of course, we don’t have a situation in which the league had given its official blessing to a product after testing it and finding it safe and then failing to inform everybody in explicit and completely unambiguous fashion of the change in situation. But in this case we do have such a situation and that changes everything. And we seem to agree there too.

Finally, yeah, frankly I think the league is lying too, or at least very badly stretching the truth. But I think the reason is not because of the CBA or the drug testing program. I think they realize they made a mistake by voluntarily testing a product for a player and they are hoping to cover that mistake up (and avoid liability for it) with lots of noise and hand-waving.

by FriarBob on Sep 16, 2009 7:45 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

We defintely agree on this:

Finally, yeah, frankly I think the league is lying too, or at least very badly stretching the truth. But I think the reason is not because of the CBA or the drug testing program. I think they realize they made a mistake by voluntarily testing a product for a player and they are hoping to cover that mistake up (and avoid liability for it) with lots of noise and hand-waving.

Well said.

"He has got a good ol' boy sense of humor, but he has also got a good ol' boy sense of kick you in the ass, too,"--Gregg Williams describing Bill Johnson. The D WILL ROCK THIS YEAR!

by satchmo26 on Sep 16, 2009 7:57 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Fairness & Roger Goodell

Now there is an aximoron. Goodell preaching to us about fairness? Of course they don’t deserve to be suspended….ever. Get over it Goodell, move on. You messed up. Start over already. We in Minnesota ofte forget Deauce had the stuff tested or asked the NFL about it. This was a trap to destroy the Saints and the Vikings. Please Mr. Madden, teach Goodell about fairness.

by BigSkyViking on Sep 16, 2009 1:13 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

I could almost dislike Goodell a little less for this

but what prevents me from warming to him is the fact that 1) he still totally screwed Deuce 2) What about Nesbit ??(I think he was the one who already served the suspension if I remember correctly) – that really sucks and 3) there was no reason for all the stress, legal fees, keeping players and teams in limbo, etc. The only worse sports commissioner is the baseball comissioner- what a joke? How has he kept his job? Stats (like home runs, batting average, rbis, extra base hits, era, pitcher’s strikeouts etc) during his tenure don’t even count anymore.

"Indecision may or may not be my biggest problem" - Jimmy Buffet

by Philinwood on Sep 16, 2009 3:03 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs