NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said today that he is optimistic an agreement will be reached with the Players Association to begin testing players for use of human growth hormone this off-season.
The NFL announced following the labor agreement with the NFLPA that players would be tested for the performance enhancing drug this season, but the union has resisted, questioning the fairness and accuracy of the test.
Goodell said he thought there would be HGH testing during the off-season and regular season.
“We certainly hope so,” he told reporters at his annual State of the League news conference during Super Bowl week. “We’re prepared to do it, we agreed to do it last August. We have been working to try to address the issues. We believe the science is clear. We do not hear any dispute from scientists around the world. The fact (is) that this test is valid and that we have the basis to enable an HGH test that is fair to the players.”
The Players Association resistance to HGH drug testing (other than the fact that a lot of their member use it) is centered around concerns that football players could possess different threshold levels of HGH than other athletes.
The problem with that argument is that the test does not detect the amount of HGH in an athlete’s system but rather the ratio of different types of human growth hormone isoforms. The size and shape of the athlete is irrelevant because it is a change in the ratio that indicates the presence of a synthetic hormone.
There has been a lot of focus on making the NFL safer for players, with the emphasis on head injuries and how players tackle. This is the logical next step.
photo credit: heather aitken
