According to an AP report, Congress will take another look at drugs in sports next week, with a hearing that will feature top names from all four major professional leagues, the NCAA and the U.S. Olympic Committee. A House subcommittee, working separately from the committee that held last week’s hearing featuring Roger Clemens, is holding a hearing Wednesday on “Drugs in Sports: Compromising the Health of Athletes and Undermining the Integrity of Competition.
The hearings are held by the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection and will include four players union executive directors, Donald Fehr, Gene Upshaw, Billy Hunter, and Paul Kelly, (from baseball, football, basketball, and hockey respectively). The four League Commissioners will appear as well.
One hopes the topic will be Union’s reluctance to approve meaningful and independent testing as well as the code of silence by players and staff alike that was such an impediment to the Mitchell Report. Moreover, as Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) pointed out, the owners were complicit in massively profiteering of a drug-fueled workplace, yet the focus was off them because Clemens was iconic before his dog-and-pony show last week closed our hearts against him forever. Why do you think Bud Selig got the three0year contract extension? The owners thought they were in the clear; the perjury cases of Marion Jones and Bonds – and soon, probably Clemens – took the focus off them.
Well the spotlight is back on and both the PGA and the LPGA should sit up and take notice. Intellectual Property lawyers like Finchem, Bivens and LPGA second-in-command Libba Galloway should put down the co-branding platforms and understand that if Congress thinks their policies, testing, or penalties are ineffectual or depend on any sort of star-system, they’ll be the Rayburn Building faster than you can say double bogey. The lack of testing for HGH at all by the LPGA is the most glaring omission, along with not including testing for high-profile, designer masking agents. We’ll have more on that here and at Cybergolf in exclusive interviews with Dr. Gary Wadler of WADA and with USADA reps as well.
Far worse is the sense of denial spotted so adeptly by JohnPaul Newport of the Wall Street Journal. When cold winds blow, hot water runs deep. For every drug cheat you protect is another dirty secret you need to struggle to keep hidden.
If you are a true golf fan who cares about the game’s integrity, you must be disillusioned at the ham-fisted way the LPGA is run and concerned that Finchem has been ineffectual at best, pandering and enabling to stars at worst. When you plant ice, you harvest wind and many in golf are deeply disappointed in both Bivens and Finchem. Regarding steroids, Newport is right, the denials and protestations coming from the PGA TOUR will ring hollow on Capitol Hill. After all, they understand what’s really at stake here as opposed to merely disconnected, inconvenienced millionaires like Azinger and Lickliter. Make no mistake, Lickliter and Azinger would be cowed by Congress faster than a golden retriever who piddled on the rug if they were called to defend their crass comments at Torrey and the rumblings of allegedly leading resistance against parts of the testing policy, procedures or penalties.
If golf wants to set the good example here, the answer is simple. Do it just like the Olympics. Test the top ten every tournament. Case closed. Let’s see if either Finchem or Bivens has the backbone. A moment’s courage and it is done, but given their penchant for trading in anything not nailed down for the last dollar on the table, don’t hold out much hope until Congress comes storming down the fairway. If they keep up the empty, shallow, whining, it’ll be sooner than they ever imagined.
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