Posted on 03/21/2015 11:26:46 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Former National Football League quarterback Fran Tarkenton says the prevalence of performance enhancing drugs likely played a role in the decision by San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland to quit football after playing professionally for just one year.
"What this guy's really saying at 24, retiring after one year . . . and walking away because if he knows if he's going to continue for another 10 years, he's got to shoot himself up with PEDs that's going to do all kinds of bad things to him," Tarkenton told J.D. Hayworth on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV on Friday.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
He made the best decision for himself.
the game of football would be safer is the league would FINALLY demand that players did not use any drug enhancements at all...no steroids, no HGH....
the players are big enough and fast enough already, and making them bigger and faster still is only making the hits more damaging...
The problem is that the athletes have figured out how to take PED’s in a largely undetectable fashion. Many of them start early in their careers, even as early as high school. Even if, starting a college career, that they started testing and the players stopped using, most of the gains have already been made.
Lyle Alzado, quoted from a Sports Illustrated article shortly before his death:
" I started taking anabolic steroids in 1969 and never stopped. It was addicting, mentally addicting. Now I'm sick, and I'm scared. Ninety percent of the athletes I know are on the stuff. We're not born to be 300 lb (140 kg) or jump 30 ft (9.1 m). But all the time I was taking steroids, I knew they were making me play better. I became very violent on the field and off it. I did things only crazy people do. Once a guy sideswiped my car and I beat the hell out of him. Now look at me. My hair's gone, I wobble when I walk and have to hold on to someone for support, and I have trouble remembering things. My last wish? That no one else ever dies this way."
As a footnote, I lost a close friend, one of my "gym rat" buddies to steroid induced cancer about 15 years ago. Not a pretty thing.
(Rest in Peace, Big Mike.)
A lot of the pro bodybuilders, after they retire, admit that they have a very long list of medical conditions: shut down kidneys, enlarged hearts, no testosterone, etc. If you google it, most of the elites are dead before they turn 50.
Having had two diagnosed concussions during his youth from soccer (??) and football was enough to make him worried about his own future health. The definitive reasoning being fear of concussions and fear of head injuries and their effect on mental stability later in life seems pretty reasonable to me although of course former and current players are all going to come at it from their own agendas.
I see Chuck Bednarik made it to 89 and passed just a day or so ago. He definitely was the nfl pre-steroid period. HGH is legal in Germany and I had read where Peyton Manning, Tiger Woods,and many others travel there a few times a year to partake. Not surprised..
Unfortunately the ones that don’t take them are “outplayed” by those that do. My sons have never asked me to play football (they play soccer instead), and I’m glad I didn’t have to disappoint them by saying no. There is no reason for a teenager to deal with permanent injuries for a game...
I wonder if I will be seeing this in the NHL soon enough. Anybody who does not think PED’s are a problem in that league have their head in the sand. They put their helmets and visors and oversized elbow and shoulder pads on and think they are Superman, the music and sound effects at the games is deafening. The game is now made into such a visceral, emotional experience for fans. It does not surprise me that all of that plus the PED’s are leading to player depression and drug abuse leading to suicides. Hoping I am not being off topic here.
Why would they travel to Germany when it's readily available anywhere here? It may be legal to obtain it THERE but it's still illegal to have it in your body HERE......
10 years ago the best players on my sons high school team were using performance enhancing drugs.....and the coaches knew. They ignored the drug use because winning was the single most important thing in the coaches lives.
There are plenty of high school students taking Adderall and other attention deficit disorder drugs because they think they will enhance their academic performance. Probably more in college. Personally, I think the problem is in part that we have redefined what ‘success’ is in life.
I was stationed at Altus AFB in the early '80s and a former HS football "star with great potential" would come around the bars once in a while - totally burnt out mentally and physically due to his Dad and coaches providing the juice to "enhance his performance". He was pleasant enough but not all there and you could sense that somewhere below the surface he knew that his very essence had been burned out of him - really sad to see.
I did say no to my son both to football and to MMA fighting both of which he wanted to do as a teen. I told him if he still was interested he could participate when he turned 18.
Why would they travel to Germany when it’s readily available anywhere here? It may be legal to obtain it THERE but it’s still illegal to have it in your body HERE......
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HGH is nearly impossible to detect as it is traceable for about 24 hours. Getting it legally in Europe avoids any charges of drug law violations etc.. They don’t take it during the testing periods in the season.
If you think this is scary, just wait till we start seeing highly-customized PED’s made from the each athlete’s own adult stem cells. The result will be effectively undetectable and could make testing labs totally useless.
PED’s have been and will continue to be a problem in sports. The “records” that have been set by those who have used PED’s undetected, inspire those on the way up.
How does a truly average kid (in stature) grow into a behemoth. You can spend all the time in the weight room you want, but you’re only going to get as big as your DNA is going to support. Is that big enough to get him where his dreams want to take him? In most cases the answer to that is a resounding NO !.
Enter the PED, and zoom, all the work in the weight room pays off, he’s got muscles beyond what his DNA would have assigned for his frame, and he’s headed for a career as an athelete. No PED and he’s just another wannabe player who may have played in college, and done OK, but not a star, and definitely not a “prospect” as a professional. That’s a bitter pill for some folks.
You get “house’d” by some guy who’s a “star” but you know deep down that he’s not better than you, but just plain bigger, and you think.... Hmmm, I can’t beat him because he’s just bigger, and if I were bigger I could really take it to him.
My kids never asked about MMA; that would be an emphatic NO!. Every kid should learn to fight, but I couldn’t watch some tattooed roid-head crush my kids...
Steroid use was legal at that time. Lyle Alzado's public problem was that his rare type of Lymphoma was most commonly associated with AIDS.
Two groups of people who commonly fall victim to the disease are people with AIDS, whose immune systems are destroyed by the HIV virus, and organ transplant recipients, whose immune response is blunted by drugs they must take to prevent organ rejection.http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/04/sports/football-alzado-tumor-is-rare-and-deadly.html
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