Why Doping Matters (Part 2)
Will anyone care when the first blockbuster doping scandal rocks the NFL?
It’s only a matter of time. The NFL is impossibly synthetic. But then, maybe it’s not a matter of time. Because nobody—the fans, the players, the owners—seems to care that 235 pound men are jumping 40 inches and running 4.3 40s. Why is that?
I don’t know. Except that football is itself a game of brutality. Maybe football is the natural arena for a drug that mutates men into angry, irrational thugs.
Will there be congressional hearings? Will Jeff Novitzky be on the case? Will NFL fans everywhere start writing thoughtful articles about the long term impact that doping has on the game? Not likely. The NFL has been riddled with PED’s since the 1960’s. Nobody cares.
But people do care about baseball and steroids. And people care about cycling and drugs.
Why?
Numbers, and participation.
Baseball has more than a century of statistical holy grails all neatly arranged in books. Record books. Modern number crunching and sabermetric analysis have made it possible to effectively compare players from 1911 with players in 2011. A .300 hitter then, is as rare as a .300 hitter now. Baseball and America have a unique emotional relationship. Before the free-agent era, professional ballplayers were working class heroes. They were as ordinary as a typical factory worker. They worked regular jobs during the winter. They went to war. They spit and swore and beat each other up in bars. They were just like everyone else. Baseball helped see a lot of people through some enormously difficult days. And regardless of ability, anyone could go out back and play catch. Or hit a double in a sandlot game. Or keep score at Fenway Park.
Numbers are the lifeblood of baseball. For baseball, numbers are history. And steroid-addled mutants spat in the face of those numbers. That history. And today, the record books are an impossible array of ethical limbo and legions of asterisks.
That’s why people care about doping in baseball.
Numbers in cycling are a softer standard. Courses change. Tactics evolve. The wind blows. But everyone who watches cycling, is a cyclist. Mostly. And especially in the United States. And so we know, if only imaginatively, how difficult it must be to climb Alp d’Huez because we all have our own versions right outside our front door.
And if that isn’t enough, we can ride the actual Alp d’Huez. For 364 days of the year it is, after all, just a road. Because we ride a bike, we understand the beauty and the grace and the speed that we witness in Grand Tours and Spring Classics. We can stand close enough to the action to crash the yellow jersey with a musette bag. Or we can cheer on friends as they climb familiar roads in the Tour of Utah. And we know their pain.
When a professional cyclist cheats, he cheats each one of us. Our pain is worth less, and our effort to the summit is cheapened because his success is manufactured. Ill-gotten. Our training and hard work becomes a bitter pill when others, who supposedly worked harder, and smarter, were just cheating.
That’s why we care about doping in cycling.
The NFL is entertaining. But those athletes are unrecognizable as people. They hide behind suits of armor, and perform super-human feats of speed and strength. And we all know it’s as fake as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. But nobody cares.
And really, why would we?
3 Comments
Chris Bingham
June 1, 2011enjoyed the piece, the thing that kills me is the younger riders coming up in the sport. I look at Keegan and Noah, they have some talent. Is it worth it to take the health risks to go to the next level? Should they even have to consider it?
I remember reading an article 10 or so years ago talking about a young pro trying to make it. I finally dropped out cycling because he didn’t want to dope. So we are loosing talent because a young person doesn’t want to risk his health or cheat.
I also remember the early days of EPO when the Dutch dropped like flies. Too bad they got it sorted. Maybe with the risk of death it wouldn’t be so prevalent.
Maybe my black Live Wrong bracelet has some relevance? Maybe I will start wearing it again…..maybe I will wait and see.
Grizzly Adam
June 2, 2011Exactly Chris. I’d hate to see some of the up and comers here in Utah have to make the choice between success and drugs. Hopefully riders in the pro pelotons (at every level) start changing the dope culture.
KanyonKris
June 3, 2011You make a good case, but all the impassioned pleas in the world will not put the genie back in the bottle. I know, I’m a cynic.
But there is a silver lining, it forces people to analyze what sport really is: just another form of entertainment. Sure, we’d like to hold sport up higher, but even without doping it’s hard to take it much more seriously than any other form of entertainment. Sorry, that’s what money does. That said, I’ve enjoyed watching some stages of the Giro – those guys still work hard, the scenery is outstanding and I get a kick out of the fans lining the roads cheering.
What is pure in sport is your own involvement in it. When I ride my bike I revel in the sensation, I’m not wondering about pros doping. I wish doping weren’t an issue, but frankly it doesn’t impact my cycling so I don’t care.
Here’s how to stop doping: don’t support pro cycling. If the money dries up the sport will die and doping will be gone. I see nothing sacrosanct about pro sports. All sports started as just-for-fun games. There’s nothing mandating that all games be elevated to such heights. Just go play, the world will not stop turning without pro sports.