Idiots Write About Sports

While I’m busily cribbing from weblogs updated more frequently and more skillfully than my own, I would be remiss if I did not mention that attention should be paid to this USS Mariner entry from Derek Zumsteg on a particularly dopey thing that Gregg Easterbrook wrote last week.

Now I like Gregg Easterbrook as a writer. I read Tuesday Morning Quarterback each week (though, for whatever reason, I skimmed over the thing that drew Derek Zumsteg’s ire). We link to his archive directly from our site. I even wrote a pissy letter on his behalf to ESPN last year when that Web site gave him the bum’s rush (not that you have to ask me twice to write pissy things about ESPN). We even own a copy of The Progress Paradox. So it’s safe to say that I’m a fan of him and his work.

Then again, even people whose work I enjoy are capable of coming up with a clunker, as Easterbrook did last week when the talk turned to steroids:

As Major League Baseball finally acts against steroids and related substances, bear in mind athletes are hardly the only ones conducting unsupervised medical experiments on their own bodies. Studies show that one-third of Americans woof down herb-based nutritional or medicinal supplements that are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.

OK, nothing terribly wrong with that premise. So let’s skip down a paragraph or so…

Where are the most amazing physical specimens of the modern age found? In the National Football League, which elaborately tests for steroids and many other drugs, including many supplements. NFL players get their physiques the old-fashioned way. Those who get their physiques through chemical shortcuts may end up with long-term health consequences — Major League Baseball better have a good health-insurance plan for retirees, because there are going to be some very sick former players.

Now I’m not a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute, so forgive me if I’m not following the logic here. But Easerbrook seems to be suggesting:

PREMISE: NFL players are big, strapping lads.

PREMISE: The NFL tests for steroids, which are forbidden.

CONCLUSION: NFL players certainly didn’t become big, strapping lads thanks to steroids, since those are forbidden.

Easterbrook’s not the first person to advance this line of thought. Shortly after the Jason Giambi nonsense broke in December, professional loudmouth Sean Salisbury was on SportsCenter crowing about how you never see problems like this in the NFL thanks to its steroid testing policy.

It could be suggested that when you are making the same points as Sean Salisbury, perhaps your argument lacks the usual intellectual heft.

I don’t deny that the NFL has a steroid-testing policy and that it’s probably effective, at least when it comes to catching substances that the tests are actually designed to catch. But the human mind is limitless in its capacity to find ways to circumvent rules and game test results. In other words, just because the NFL is testing for substance A, B, and C doesn’t mean that it’s going to catch substances D, E and F — or A, B and C if used with particularly effective masking agents.

Or to put it another way: NFL players are much larger than they were a decade ago. A cursory search of the Internet came across this figure: there were around 50 NFL players in 1990 weighing in at 300 pounds or heavier; that figure is up to more than 300 these days. (More anecdotally, remember when William Perry burst onto the scene? Back then a 314-pound defensive lineman was a novelty; these days, The Fridge wouldn’t even rate a double-take, let alone his own poster and 15 minutes a pop-culture icon.)

OK, so football players are bigger. But they’re also faster, too. How do you think they got that way? Hard work? Mom’s home cooking? Flintstone’s Chewables?

Hey, if you want to think that many people got that larger and that faster without any help from their friendly neighborhood pharmacist, be my guest, Gregg. But you’ll pardon me if I regard any future arguments you make with something of a more jaundiced eye.

As for football players enjoying long-term health in their golden years… Easterbrook’s got to be pulling our collective legs, right? A few years back, Real Sports did a segment on the health risks faced by massive football players upon retirment in which Bryant Gumbel interviewed ex-Saints lineman Frank Warren; a few days after the interivew, Warren passed away at 43 after suffering a massive heart attack. ESPN is running a series this week on Mike Webster’s final years — it is not a pretty picture. We could trot out the names of a dozen other such NFL alums, but I’d rather not come across as ghoulish.

Look, I’m still going to read Tuesday Morning Quarterback, and I’m still going to enjoy it by and large. But Gregg Easterbrook wrote a dumb thing last week. Let’s hope he doesn’t make a habit of it.

Sportsnation's doing a tournament of champions using the last 16 WS winners. Which is fine. But they made a crucial, galring faux pas: They announced the team's seedings.

Why would you not want to seed, you ask? Because online voters are sheep. They'll put maybe 5 seconds of thought into it, and if they see that one of the teams is a 7 seed and the other's a 10, problem solved! This was perfectly demonstrated last March Madness, when Sportsnation filled out their bracket, round-by-round. With maybe two exceptions, it was pure chalk. (And by 'exceptions', I mean 9 beats 8, or 5 beats 4.) When it got to the Final 4 with all 1 seeds, the voting came up 50-50, as if to say 'Please, sir! More seeding!'. A worthless bracket.

So guess how the first round of the TOC is shaping up.

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