The Salazar Rumors, Part 2: Lance would be proud

This is Part 2 in a two-part series on the recent reports from the BBC and ProPublica about alleged doping by Alberto Salazar and the Nike Oregon Project (NOP). Part 1 is written assuming innocence and Part 2 is written assuming guilt. I recommend reading Part 1 (and, if you're feeling ambitious, at least one of the two reports) prior to reading this post.

Admittedly, this piece was more fun to write than the innocence piece, as I get let my mind run wild with speculation. I am not making any judgment; just trying to present the argument from both sides.

Without further ado...

Salazar and Beardsley in the Duel in the Sun

"'He is sort of a win-at-all-costs person and it's hurting the sport,' says Kara Goucher, the nation's most prominent female distance runner. She left the Oregon Project in 2011, after seven years."
When he was still competing, Salazar almost ran himself to death twice: once in 1978 at the Falmouth Road Race when he even had his last rites read, and again in the 1982 Boston Marathon (known as the "Duel in the Sun") when he opted not to drink any water during the course of the race. Salazar brings that same mentality to his coaching philosophy, doing whatever it takes to finish first.

"USADA's public testing data, however, shows Rupp was drug-tested 28 times in 2013, the most of any American athlete, and 11 more times than the previous year. (Rupp has never failed a drug test.)"
Lance Armstrong passed 275 drug tests. Marion Jones was clean for 162 drug tests (in 2006 she tested positive for EPO but her B came back negative). Many other dopers went their entire athletic careers without testing positive for something. Point is, just because you don't fail a test doesn't mean you're clean. The list of dirty athletes who have passed all of their drug tests is a lot longer than the list of dirty athletes who failed one.

"In a 1999 speech at Duke University, he said that he believed it's difficult "to be among the top five in the world in any of the distance events without using EPO or human growth hormone." He said that his own 'desire to win' would be 'very hard to ignore in the current age where many athletes feel it is impossible to be competitive against the best in the world without doping.'"
We already covered Salazar's need to win; this is further proof. He's basically admitting that if he were competing in the late 90s, he would have doped up to be competitive. There is no evidence that his mind set has changed.

"International anti-doping rules allow for expedited (and even retroactive) exemptions when acute medical problems need treatment, but Salazar and Rupp were unable to procure an exemption, Magness says. Rupp took the medication anyway, and while he flew ahead to Germany, Magness was directed by Salazar to fly to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to have a bottle of Rupp's urine tested. 'They did that to see if it tested positive,' Magness says. 'I hand-carried Galen's urine through the airport, onto the plane, and into my rental car and drove to this clinic and dropped it off, and that was it.' He never learned the result of the test."
So Rupp didn't get a TUE, took his meds anyways, and sent Magness to Minnesota to see if his pee came back hot. If it did, Rupp probably wouldn't have run the race, as he might be subject to a drug test. Even though prednisone can be used legally with a TUE, taking it without exemption is a violation of doping code. Also, why did they have to go to the Mayo Clinic specifically? Is there a crooked doctor or lab tech there who would test Rupp's urine for whatever Salazar wanted? Why not just do it at Nike?

Reasonable explanation?

"Magness then flew to Dusseldorf to meet Rupp prior to the race. Soon after he arrived, Rupp told him he wasn't feeling well. Magness called Salazar, who he says told him to expect a package. Two days later, a box arrived at his hotel room. Inside it he found a paperback thriller. Confused, he flipped it open. A section of the pages had been hollowed out to form a compartment into which two pills were taped. 'At that point,' Magness says, 'my mind was like, this is stuff you see in movies, this is extremely strange.' He handed the pills to Rupp, who he says promptly swallowed them and laughed off the clandestine packaging as typical Salazar antics. Magness, who had been on the job less than two months, says he never asked what the pills were. At the end of the week, Rupp placed fourth in the 5K in Germany. Neither Salazar nor Rupp responded to questions about the hollowed-out book containing pills."
Magness is right: this is movie-grade stuff. If nothing illegal were going on, why bother with the theatrics? Sending something Shawshank style raises more questions about what's going on, even if the book only contained vitamin C pills or omega-3 fatty acids.

"In his email, Salazar says Rupp had an asthma flare up and there was not enough time to get a therapeutic use exemption, or TUE. The testing was to ensure the medication was completely out of his system. In a separate email, Rupp says if he has 'used a medicine that is permitted out-of-competition but is only permitted in competition with a TUE, then I will not compete in a race unless I have received a TUE or I am certain the substance is no longer in me.'"
Fairly certain that's still cheating. Let's use an example: Adderall is, as best as I can tell, only banned during the competition season. Adderall is definitely a performance enhancing drug--just ask any MLB player. The effects on a distance runner would be less pronounced than on a sprinter, but it'll help. If Rupp used Adderall without a TUE, that would be problem. I don't see why this is any different.

"When Magness came to a page charting Rupp's hemoglobin, he was stunned to find a note that corresponded to a date when Rupp was still in high school: 'presently on prednisone and testosterone medication.' Magness already knew Rupp used prednisone, but various testosterone medications comprise perhaps the greatest scourge in all of sports doping, and are strictly banned save for cases of extreme medical need."
Uhhhhhh....WHAT? Someone explain to me why Rupp was on testosterone as a 16 year old. Please, has anyone come across a sixteen year old boy who needed more testosterone? If Rupp had a legitimate hormone deficiency, he would not have been able to compete at a high level. He wouldn't have been able to compete at all. I've actually seen what this looks like, and it isn't good. So, either Rupp somehow had a hormone deficiency that was severe enough to warrant therapy but not severe enough to hinder performance or Salazar was doping him in high school. If the latter is the case, we're dealing with some seriously messed up stuff. It's one thing for a high schooler to go out and get steroids by himself because he wants to look good at the beach; it's a whole different ballgame to have a professional coach give a high schooler testosterone.

I would actually be interested in what the OSAA's (Oregon's high school sports governing body) PED policy looked like in 2002 and see if testosterone was banned. This also makes me wonder if we aren't getting the whole story on the recent Mary Cain story of her going back to New York and a rumored break-up with Salazar (the NOP denies any such break-up).

For what it's worth, Salazar's explanation for this issue is the doctor who wrote the chart screwed up and didn't know what he was doing. I dismiss this as a rational explanation. As Magness said, "It's like, well, you're still taking advice from [Doctor Myhre], so why now all of a sudden is he crazy?"

"In the coming months, a second situation led Magness to question how Salazar was using testosterone, a controlled substance that is illegal without an appropriate prescription. Magness says he shared an office cubicle at Nike with Salazar's son, Alex, who helped work out the team budget. Alex was occasionally used as a guinea pig to test supplements and then get evaluated in the lab. In one instance, Magness says Alex told him that he was testing testosterone gel: rubbing some on, getting tested in the lab, rubbing some more on, getting tested in the lab. Magness and another Oregon Project athlete separately say the reason Salazar gave for the testing was to determine how much of the gel it would take to trigger a positive test in case a rival attempted to sabotage an Oregon Project athlete by furtively rubbing it on one of them at a race. 'It seemed ludicrous,' Magness says. He believes 'it was them trying to figure out how to cheat the tests...So it's how much can we take without triggering a positive.'"
This is exactly what Magness says: seeing how much you can take before you come back hot. It's called microdosing and it's highly illegal. More concerning is that a lab at Nike a. was testing for testosterone doping on its campus without reporting anything, b. that they have the capabilities to, depending on the type of test, test for testosterone doping (if it's a simple T/E test, this isn't concerning; if it's a test to identify exogenous testosterone, there's a problem), and c. he was using his own son as a lab rat. That might be more messed up than doping a 16 year old Rupp.

"The athletes had left the camp, and he wanted Stiner to clean up the condo and ship some items to him. Then, Salazar surprised Stiner. 'He said to me, 'I don't want you to get the wrong idea',' Stiner recalls. 'And he goes, 'There's a tube of Androgel in the bedroom, and it's under some clothing.' ' Androgel is testosterone medication prescribed for men who aren't producing enough testosterone naturally. According to Stiner, Salazar told him: 'It's for my heart, it's all fucked up.'"
As noted later in the story, testosterone is dangerous for heart patients, so Salazar is lying from the get go. I can see Salazar calling the masseur to clear the air on anything questionable, but why not just have him throw it out in a dumpster away from the house? For someone who claims to be as paranoid as Salazar is, leaving testosterone meds in a training house is a pretty big oversight.

Not really related, but the story notes that Salazar and Rupp shared a room in the house. That seems weird to me. I love my coaches, but if I'm at a training camp, I'd want some time away from them.

"'I did a blood test at Nike,' the runner says. He says he was told his 'thyroid was low and testosterone was low.' He says that Myhre suggested he go get thyroid hormone and testosterone from a doctor that Salazar sent athletes to. Myhre, he says, assured him, 'This is what Alberto does. You'll feel better and you'll be able to train better.' 
The runner says he then questioned whether it was cheating, to which he says Myhre told him, 'Well no, I mean Alberto does it.'
The runner asked whether taking testosterone would cause a positive test, and recalls Myhre said: 'No. No. No. We'll get you into the normal range.'"
Normal range for who? Everyone is different. I could have less testosterone than Fritz, but if I dope up to his level, it's still cheating. This sounds eerily reminiscent of cyclists doping their hematocrit up to 49--a legal number, but the method by which they got there was legal. For more, read Tyler Hamilton's book, A Secret Race, and do some Googling about Dr. Michele Ferrari.

"Giving low doses of testosterone, a process known as 'micro-dosing,' is often justified as simply boosting someone up to normal or optimal levels. But even small doses can aid muscle building and recovery from workouts, as well as promote the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. And micro-dosing—a technique that owes its fame to Lance Armstrong—has bedeviled anti-doping organizations because it is difficult to detect."
Yup. Explains the use of Salazar's son as guinea pig, doesn't it?

Decker at the 1996 Olympic Trials

"In 1996, Salazar was coaching American running legend Mary Decker when she tested positive for high levels of testosterone. Decker, who had been a teen phenom—she still holds three American records—was then 37, and had just qualified for the 5K at the Atlanta Olympics. Both denied wrongdoing at the time."
There is reason to be suspicious of supposedly clean athletes with coaches who have had other athletes test positive. It's hard to imagine that a coach would have one subset of athletes be clean and another subset be dirty. So, this is another strike against Salazar and Rupp.

Decker had a T/E greater than 6:1. That's not natural.

"At the 2013 World Championships, he told the Telegraph: 'None of our athletes are on any sports-specific supplement other than beta alanine, which is an amino acid. Other than that, it's iron, vitamin D and that's it. You don't really need anything else.' One former Oregon Project athlete provided ProPublica with the labels of supplements Salazar recommended—all prior to his statement to the Telegraph—ranging from a product claiming to boost natural production of growth hormone, to one that listed the main ingredients as chemical formulas that scientists who later examined the label for ProPublica couldn't decipher."
Part 1: So why are you shipping iron in a hallowed out book?
Part 2: Please justify the list of recommend supplements, which to me looks like a GNC catalog.

"Five months after she gave birth to Colt in 2010, Salazar was unhappy about Goucher's weight, she says. Salazar had previously recommended that several female runners he deemed overweight take over-the-counter supplements marketed as fat-burners. But for Goucher, he had something different in mind. 'You need to just take some Cytomel,' she says he told her. Cytomel is the brand name for a form of synthetic thyroid hormone, prescribed when the thyroid is naturally underactive, which can lead to weight gain and fatigue. When Goucher asked how she would get it, she says Salazar told her, 'Just ask Galen for some of his, he has a prescription for it.'"
Salazar isn't a doctor. He shouldn't be prescribing medication for his athletes. At least have some quack doctor tell Goucher she needs it. Also, I'm weary of recommending weight loss to someone with a history of eating disorders, regardless of how far in the past they were (video...go to around 1:30 for the Dorito story).

The rest of the Cytomel story in the article does not reflect well on Salazar.

"At the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, Kara Goucher was in a taxi with a U.S.A. Track and Field official when she says Salazar called the official, fuming that a U.S. doctor had declined to give Rupp an IV. She says Salazar insisted he would go to a British doctor instead.
Goucher says Salazar later told her how they would convince the doctor Rupp desperately needed an IV: 'We have it down. I've coached [Rupp] on what to say. The doctors will ask him, 'When was the last time you went to the bathroom?' and he'll say, 'I don't remember.' They'll say, 'When was the last time you were able to drink?' and he'll say 'I can't'.'  Neither Salazar nor Rupp responded to questions about the IV in Daegu."
As noted earlier in the story, Lance Armstrong and others used saline IV drips to mask drug use. There are no noted performance enhancing benefits (read: no reason to use the drip unless you're hiding something). Not to mention that lying to obtain the TUE is cheating.

"Still, Kara is deeply suspicious. 'I had a conversation with Galen in 2011 in the British training camp [at the World Championships] in Daegu," she says, "and he told me how tired he was and how exhausted he was, how he was so excited to have the season be over.' Three weeks later, Rupp broke the American 10K record.
'You don't get to the end of a long year burnt out and take two weeks off and come out and run the best race of your life,' she says. 'That's not how it works.  You have to rest. You have to recover. You have to start all over again.'"
Goucher is exactly right. That's not the way it works. When you start to get run down at the end of the year, you usually run one bad race and realize it's time to pack it and start the next training phase. Pharmaceutical enhancement, though, makes this turnaround possible.

The way I see it, the NOP is doing the same thing that Team USPS was doing in cycling in the late 90s and early 2000s. The only difference is the coach (Salazar) is heading the operation instead of an athlete (Armstrong). The parallels are uncanny.

The Salazar Rumors, Part 1: The BBC Report in Context

Nike Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazar

Yesterday, the BBC and Sports Gene writer David Epstein released articles connecting Alberto Salazar to systemic doping of his athletes. Seven of Salazar's former associates--ranging from athletes to assistant coaches--spoke to the reporters about their experiences with the Salazar-headed Nike Oregon Project (NOP). The BBC article can be read here and Epstein's in-depth piece can be read here.

This is Part 1 in a two-part series on this story. Part 1 will be written under the assumption that Salazar et al. are clean as a whistle and Part 2 will be written assuming they are dirty as all sin. In each part, I will go through the various claims and defend them for the perspective of that respective part. I will then leave it up to the reader what to believe--I try not to make judgments on this blog, preferring to deal with what we know.

If some of the arguments in either part seem non-rational, they very well could be. I'm writing what I would say if I were defending either side and will leave out details that don't help my argument.

The format of the post will be simple: I'll pull bits from Epstein's story and respond to them one by one.

"USADA's public testing data, however, shows Rupp was drug-tested 28 times in 2013, the most of any American athlete, and 11 more times than the previous year. (Rupp has never failed a drug test.)"
Twenty-eight tests in one year is a test everything 13 days. That's a high level of testing, and Rupp passed without a single problem.

"Salazar was able to entice some of these athletes not just with his name, but with all that Nike's budget could provide: specialized coaches for strength and conditioning and sports psychology, masseuses, personalized lab tests, altitude tents, a 'Space Cabin' cryo-chamber, even an underwater treadmill."
The NOP has the best resources in the world available to its athletes. Athletes coming to Salazar and dropping time is a product of good coaching and taking better care of their bodies. Nike, in effect, has unlimited money, so any new piece of technology Salazar thinks will help his runners, he'll get it, regardless of the cost.

"In a 1999 speech at Duke University, he said that he believed it's difficult 'to be among the top five in the world in any of the distance events without using EPO or human growth hormone.' He said that his own 'desire to win' would be 'very hard to ignore in the current age where many athletes feel it is impossible to be competitive against the best in the world without doping.'"
Okay, this doesn't look good for AlSal on the surface, but it was the 90s--long before any sort of effective testing for blood boosters or HGH was even thought of. WADA wasn't even formed yet. With today's testing, clean athletes can once again be competitive.

Galen Rupp celebrating his silver medal in the
10000m at the 2012 Olympics

Rupp allegedly took prednisone without a TUE in 2011 because of asthma issues, and Steve Magness was instructed to take Rupp's urine to the Mayo Clinic for testing. Sounds suspicious, but Salazar and Rupp have an answer:
"In his email, Salazar says Rupp had an asthma flare up and there was not enough time to get a therapeutic use exemption, or TUE. The testing was to ensure the medication was completely out of his system. In a separate email, Rupp says if he has 'used a medicine that is permitted out-of-competition but is only permitted in competition with a TUE, then I will not compete in a race unless I have received a TUE or I am certain the substance is no longer in me.' Rupp adds that he has had asthma and severe allergies since childhood, 'long before I met Alberto,' and, 'at all times, my medical treatment has been for health reasons.'"

Magness one day was told to look through Rupp's lab test history:
"When Magness came to a page charting Rupp's hemoglobin, he was stunned to find a note that corresponded to a date when Rupp was still in high school: 'presently on prednisone and testosterone medication.' Magness already knew Rupp used prednisone, but various testosterone medications comprise perhaps the greatest scourge in all of sports doping, and are strictly banned save for cases of extreme medical need."
Salazar's response was that the doctor was, "'crazy and he must be mixing it up with something else.' Salazar told [Magness] they should immediately send the documents to the lab to get the matter cleared up....In emails, both Salazar and Rupp say that Rupp has never taken testosterone or any testosterone medication. Salazar says the notation was incorrect and actually referred to a nutritional supplement called Testoboost that Rupp was taking 'in an effort to counterbalance the negative effects of prednisone.' Testoboost, he says, is a 'legal supplement' that Rupp has disclosed to USADA whenever applicable.
What else do you need to know? Elite level athletes are fine tuned machines, and medication for pre-existing conditions can throw them off. Rupp told doping agencies what he was doing and it was legal.

Rupp getting Withrown'd at the 2003 Footlocker Nationals

"In the coming months, a second situation led Magness to question how Salazar was using testosterone, a controlled substance that is illegal without an appropriate prescription. Magness says he shared an office cubicle at Nike with Salazar's son, Alex, who helped work out the team budget. Alex was occasionally used as a guinea pig to test supplements and then get evaluated in the lab. In one instance, Magness says Alex told him that he was testing testosterone gel: rubbing some on, getting tested in the lab, rubbing some more on, getting tested in the lab. Magness and another Oregon Project athlete separately say the reason Salazar gave for the testing was to determine how much of the gel it would take to trigger a positive test in case a rival attempted to sabotage an Oregon Project athlete by furtively rubbing it on one of them at a race."
This sounds like an extreme case of paranoia, but it isn't that farfetched. Ever since he was in high school, many fans and competitors did not like Rupp. He was perceived to be a rich kid with an altitude tent and a private coach (Rupp's parents actually weren't that rich). There were numerous questions surrounding his eligibility at the University of Oregon and that he might perhaps be later compensated by Nike for the years he missed running professionally by running for UO. So, someone out to get Rupp wouldn't be that surprising. People always relish the downfall of those who are successful.


Further, there might be precedent for drug testing sabotage. Ben Johnson speculates that his beer in the pee room at the 1988 Olympics might have been spiked by one of Carl Lewis's teammates (Johnson claims he tested positive for a stanozolol, which he didn't take, preferring furazabol because stanozolol made him feel tight--for more on this, watch 30 for 30: 9.79*).

"In 2008, John Stiner was a massage therapist working on Oregon Project athletes at their altitude camp in Utah when, he says, Salazar called him with a special request.
The athletes had left the camp, and he wanted Stiner to clean up the condo and ship some items to him. Then, Salazar surprised Stiner. 'He said to me, 'I don't want you to get the wrong idea',' Stiner recalls. 'And he goes, 'There's a tube of Androgel in the bedroom, and it's under some clothing.' ' Androgel is testosterone medication prescribed for men who aren't producing enough testosterone naturally. According to Stiner, Salazar told him: 'It's for my heart, it's all fucked up.'" The reporters later spoke with several cardiologists who said prescribing testosterone for a heart problem would be unorthodox.
Plenty of middle aged men take testosterone medication for "low T". While I'm not a middle aged man and I don't have low T, I imagine it is a bit embarrassing. As such, it's easier for Salazar to lie and say it was for his well-documented heart problems rather than admit to having low T. As far as why couldn't Stiner just throw out the bottle and Salazar just get a refill, you don't know who's going through your trash at a place like this. Easier to avoid any questions or possible investigations by simply recovering the medication.

"At the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, Kara Goucher was in a taxi with a U.S.A. Track and Field official when she says Salazar called the official, fuming that a U.S. doctor had declined to give Rupp an IV. She says Salazar insisted he would go to a British doctor instead." Rupp was later given the drip by purportedly lying to a doctor.
Saline drips don't have any performance enhancing benefits. If having one would ease Rupp's mind, what's the big deal? It's just a placebo. Being denied the drip in the first place was a little ridiculous.

"What Kara Goucher experienced—essentially Salazar's self-appointed doctoring—violates the rules of the sport, not to mention prescription drug laws, but the Gouchers readily admit they have no smoking gun testifying to the kind of doping most familiar in distance running: blood doping and testosterone use. Still, Kara is deeply suspicious. 'I had a conversation with Galen in 2011 in the British training camp [at the World Championships] in Daegu,' she says, 'and he told me how tired he was and how exhausted he was, how he was so excited to have the season be over.' Three weeks later, Rupp broke the American 10K record.
'You don't get to the end of a long year burnt out and take two weeks off and come out and run the best race of your life," she says. 'That's not how it works. You have to rest. You have to recover. You have to start all over again.'"
Salazar is the best coach in the world and Nike gives him all necessary legal means to help his athletes succeed. Three weeks is more time than one might think to recover. Some much needed rest could have been all Rupp needed to get out and tear up the track. Sometimes the coach knows what the athlete is feeling better than the athlete himself. For a coach like Salazar, this is probable.

What we have hear is bunch of pieced-together circumstantial evidence. None of it would hold up in a court of law. All the allegations can be easily refuted by members of the Nike and the NOP.

NFL (Finally) Takes a Stand on Domestic Violence

Hot off the newswires on this Thursday afternoon is a headline for which many of us have been waiting a long time: via ESPN NFL, "Severe Penalties for Domestic Violence."

The league's new policy -- as announced today by commissioner Roger Goodell -- includes provisions for a mandatory minimum six-game suspension for a first-time offense, with an (appealable) lifetime ban for second-time offenders.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Bryan posted about this very topic earlier this month, but you would have been hard-pressed over the past several months to find someone who agreed with the league's previous policy (or, more fittingly, lack thereof).

In an era in which disciplinary policies across all professional sports are seemingly inconsistent with common sense, this is a long-awaited suggestion that the league has its priorities relatively in order: yes, domestic abuse is worse than smoking weed, and it should finally now be treated as such by the NFL.

Bryan and I are both hoping that this new policy from the U.S.'s largest professional sporting organization helps change the status quo surrounding domestic abuse by athletes. While it has weathered criticism (deservedly) in the wake of the Ray Rice abuse scandal, the NFL's domestic violence problem might not even be the worst in professional sports.

A step is a step. Happy Thursday.

Photo courtesy of Bleacher Report

BuzzFeed and the death of Content

Warning: this is a sickeningly meta post. I apologize. My one disclaimer is I had the following thoughts long before I became a Content creator. I will also credit BuzzFeed with not using slides (looking at you, Bleacher Report).

BuzzFeed is killing the generation of Meaningful Content on the internet. An easy way to measure the value, importance, and influence of content is by the number of page views it receives, ie, its exposure. BuzzFeed figured out people love nostalgia-inducing lists and managed to turn that discovery into an Alexa rank of 110.

I told myself I was going to dedicate 10 minutes of research to post. Research here is defined as reading stuff on BuzzFeed despite my better judgement of giving it clicks. I lasted maybe 30 seconds.

Here's the problem with these lists: the author, in most cases, is not any sort of authority on the subject. If we're ranking things, I could write an article called "15 Best Lighthouses In New England", rank these lighthouses on one criterion without telling the reader what the criterion is (since I don't think I've seen 15 NE LHs, it'd probably be based on the quality of its Wikipedia picture), and then pass it off as fact. I could post a link to the story on Facebook and probably get a good amount of play from it. I didn't add anything to the world though. A good list would have broken down each lighthouse based on importance in shipping routes, age, construction quality, original materials still used, etc., and we would have an article with original research and insights. Unfortunately, readers have been taught to only care about pictures and rankings, so those insights won't even be read.

Interpolation: An example of a bad BF list
"25 Signs You Ran Track And Field In High School" (Google it, I'm not giving them a link)

• I have never stabbed myself or had a teammate stab herself while attaching a bib. To further state a safety pin would cause scarring is absurd.
• Most high school athletes had practice after school preventing them from going to the mall or whatever (ie, this is not a trait unique to T&F).
• Football players wear tights
• Steeplechase is an uncommon event at the high school level.
• Missed classes are not unique to T&F and I didn't miss many in HS
• Point 20: the picture is of the 1500m at USATF National Championships in 2010 (as is clearly stated on the scoreboard). Someone drew OMFG with an arrow pointing to the time over the picture. I'm guessing the idea here was to draw attention to the 3:50.83 and say it was a fast time. Unfortunately, the author seems to think the race is a full mile rather than an atrociously slow 1500.

I could go on, but I wont.

BuzzFeed's list form has polluted other content hosts. The Huffington Post has started pumping out lists ("15 Hacks That Make Instant Ramen Taste Fancy) and sites such as Upworthy have been popping up left and right without actually contributing anything.

As someone who struggles to create content, the amount of crap floating around really gets to me. The major reason this blog gets updated in bursts is because I want everything I write to be worth reading. If I can't come up with something worthwhile to say, I would rather say nothing at all (eg I'm not writing "17 NFL Players With Shocking Skeletons In Their Closets"...cue the Facebook post of "I never expected #12!!!"). Unfortunately, this kills my exposure, so when I do have something to see, no one notices. Luckily for me, I'm not trying to pay the bills as a writer, so I can afford to take a moral high ground and avoid posting clickbait.

But take this a step further. Readers have become so accustomed to list with no content form that a nascent commentator trying to make his break is going to have a tough time gaining readership without stooping to BuzzFeed et al.'s level. This is actually what BuzzFeed is trying to do: they gained huge readership by pumping crap and are now trying to generate content (not quite Content) with a legitimate news section. Though for me, it's hard to take an organization that has an article titled "24 Best Moments From Taylor Swift's New 'Shake It Off' Video" on its front page seriously.

One of the great things about the Internet is the availability of information and opinions. I urge users to exercise judgment with what they choose to click and read. The fewer pageviews a meaningless article receives, the lower the likelihood a similar article gets written in the future. You have the power: use it appropriately.

Bryan is Wrong: Why Pay-For-Play Isn't a Big Deal for College Football

I think paying college football players is a great idea. I think that they deserve the money because, quite frankly, they have earned it. It doesn't seem like too many people disagree with that general sentiment. Where they do disagree, however, is on the impact of pay-for-play on the college football landscape writ large.

In his post on this topic, Bryan went in depth into the guaranteed scholarships that are (hopefully) on their way to becoming the norm in revenue-producing college sports. What I want to focus on are the other revenue streams that could possibly be putting cash in players' pockets during the next decade: stipends and video game licensing funds.

Stipends (also called "full cost of attendance" scholarships) were the main issue on the table at the NCAA Board of Directors' meeting earlier this month at which the board decided to grant the five major conferences autonomy to make their own decisions on certain key issues. The Power 5 schools -- awash in cash as they are from lucrative television contracts in football and men's basketball -- wanted the power to grant stipends because they can afford to. To schools in the NCAA's other five Division I football conferences, on the other hand, that extra $2K-$5K per-year-per-athlete hurts.

Add on top of that the reality that video game revenues are inevitably going to favor the Power 5 schools over their less prosperous brethren.

According to this month's O'Bannon ruling, schools (or conferences, more likely) that successfully negotiate with video game manufacturers to use athletes' likenesses must make $5,000 available (again, per-year-per-athlete) to pay into a trust fund that athletes can access after their eligibility is exhausted.

So tell me who's going to get the better video game deal: the SEC or the Sun Belt?

With these new developments, a highly recruited high school senior considering scholarship offers from two schools -- one in the Power 5, the other not -- is up to $40,000 richer if he takes the Power 5 offer. Sounds like the end of parity in college football. Or at least that's what Bryan thinks.

I think not.

The reality is that there is next-to-zero parity in FBS football right now anyways, and there hasn't been any in a long time. Even the 2007 season -- which Bryan points to as an example of upset-filled football heaven -- contained just one game in which a top-10 team fell to a team outside the current Power 5 (it was Appalachian State). The rest of those so-called underdogs? They're getting the same cut of O'Bannon money that 'Bama is.

But what about App State? Forget about it. App State was just enough of a taste to convince football fans that anything can happen on the gridiron. Those same fans don't seem to have noticed that it's been seven years since App State won in the Big House -- seven years in which we haven't been able to forget that game because we haven't seen anything like it. In reality, App State is the exception that proves the rule.

That's why I think the impact of the two latest Pay-for-Play rulings is overstated: top recruits are flocking to Power 5 schools now just like they always have been (last year's ESPN 300 featured just one recruit who ended up committing to a non-Power 5 school).

Maybe, as has been speculated for years, some of these kids are getting money under the table. Or maybe they just want to play for the schools that have won every FBS national championship since 1985. Makes sense to me.

So, at the end of the day, the rich are getting a little bit richer. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia and Business Insider

Progress...?

A friend of mine urged me to write about the Ray Rice fiasco (and I'll get to it here). I spent several hour staring at a blank screen attempting to say something new and significant. I had a post written but scrapped it because I didn't like it. I eventually came up with the form and message of this post, gave it another shot, and here's the result:

Thus far, 2014 has been full of significant cultural events in sports. The year started with Michael Sam coming out as gay and subsequently being selected by the St. Louis Rams in the NFL Draft. Sam's jersey is currently the sixth best selling jersey in the NFL--not bad for someone who might not even make the roster. Furthering the message of progress, if Sam doesn't make the roster, it'll be because he can't play, not because he's gay.

In April, the Donald Sterling debacle exploded with the exposure of his viciously racist comments. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver acted quickly and decisively, imposing a lifetime ban on Sterling just four days after the remarks came to light and fined him $2.5 million, the maximum amount allowed by the NBA. Sterling's ban necessitated his sale of the team, and while he tried to appeal the ban, he was stonewalled. Silver's quick action was a stand for what is right rather than hemming and hawing over the legality of banishment for private remarks.

Last week, Becky Hammon was hired as an assistant coach by the San Antonio Spurs, making her the first paid female coach in any of the four major sports (Lisa Boyer was a volunteer assistant for the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2001-2). There's no reason why women can't coach the way men can coach, and hopefully this paves the way to more women on coaching staffs and eventually a female head coach.

Just a couple of days again, Chip Sarafin, a backup offensive lineman at Arizona State, came out as gay. He is the first openly gay FBS football player.

Suddenly, the sports world is starting to look progressive. Good.

One only needs to do a quick Google search of "anti Michael Sam comments" to find ire his announcement raised. Even current NFL players (eg the Dolphins' Don Jones) couldn't keep their mouth shut.

Upon hiring Becky Hammon, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich had this to say: "I very much look forward to the addition of Becky Hammon to our staff. Having observed her working with our team this past season, I'm confident her basketball IQ, work ethic and interpersonal skills will be a great benefit to the Spurs."

Let's compare that language to the language used to describe the Milwaukee Bucks hiring Jason Kidd as their head coach. General manager John Hammond:

"When you list the characteristics that make a successful head coach, you would include leadership, communication and a competitive drive. Jason used all of those traits to become a 10-time All-Star player in the NBA, and has now translated his on-court success to the bench. We welcome him to the Bucks organization and look forward to building a Championship-caliber team with him as our head coach."

Owners Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry:

"Jason is a determined leader, a tough-minded competitor and a great teammate. We believe his focus, vision and intensity will help him work alongside John and David (Morway) to rebuild the Milwaukee Bucks as we aspire to achieve excellence over the next several years. We are excited that Jason will call Milwaukee his new home."

Hammon has a high basketball IQ and good interpersonal skills while Kidd has leadership and competitive drive. Being a "tough-minded competitor" will not cut it to get Hammon a job in the NBA.

I'm not going to continue and crucify Popovich because he probably has 10 press announcements scribbled on napkins that he cycles through and it just so happened this is the one that popped up for Hammon. But there is undeniably a dichotomy in the language to used to differentiate athletes/coaches based on the way they look. Any white wide receiver in the NFL is either a "lunch-pail player", "blue collar", or a "gym rat". Black receivers, on the other hand, are "athletes". When I hear this, I think "well gee, according to the broadcasters, Calvin Johnson is a bum and Wes Welker is about as athletic as I am." Let's set the record straight: anyone in the NFL is an outstanding athlete and 95% of them work their tails off. The 5% of them who are lazy are uniformly distributed across race/ethnicity/background/whatever. Ridding the NFL (and all sports) of this language divide would be better than eliminating the touchdown -> commercial -> kickoff -> commercial -> next series sequence from TV broadcasts.

And, of course, the real motivation for this post: the NFL's pitiful suspension of Ray Rice. Much has been said on this topic, but for some unknown reason, NFL players can't help themselves when it comes to beating up their girlfriends.  From a PR perspective, the League would have been better off not suspending Rice at all. I know I had forgotten basically forgotten about the incident and I think many others had too. But, the public outcry has thrust the NFL's domestic violence issue into the national spotlight and might even effect change in the League's policy.

I have two problems with the proposed changes to NFL policy:

1. Four to six games is not enough. Give me a league full of doped up freaks (suspension for a first time PED offense in the NFL: 4 games) before a league full of wife beaters. Seriously. Spousal abuse is a far bigger issue than PED use with social implications beyond the game. As it stands, the biggest implication for fans for domestic violence punishment is how the abuser's absence will effect their fantasy team. (Just because I can't help myself: let's remember Terrelle Pryror was suspended for the first five games of his rookie season for trading jerseys and memorabilia for tattoos while he was in college)
2. This change is the result of reactionary policy making. The League didn't know its policy was screwed up until implementation and the ensuing public backlash. I struggle to believe the NFL can't find someone to read their policies once a year, find the dinosaurs, and amend them appropriately. This approach of action over reaction would lead to significant social change.

We've come a long way, but we've still much work to do.

Some thoughts on the state of the NCAA

Four year scholarships?

For the purpose of this article, I am only going to consider the case of college football. It's what I know the most about and can speak about most intelligently.

USC decided to move to awarding football and men's and women's basketball players with four year scholarships. To understand the significance of this move, we need to first examine the current renewable scholarship system.

Traditional athletic scholarships (hereon referred to simply as scholarships) are awarded/renewed prior to start of each academic year. Regardless of what peripheral clauses the agreements may have, these scholarships are awarded purely on the basis of athletic performance. The path to renewal is pretty cut and dry: play well. Even if you get thrown off your team for stealing computers, another school will probably give you an offer as long as you're good (Note: I actually don't have a problem granting second chances to players who do boneheaded things like this. I don't particularly like third chances).

Academic performance isn't Cardale Jones's biggest concern

Right off the bat we see academics and athletics at odd with one another: an athlete creates more value for the school (and will thus be rewarded for that value by way of scholarship) by performing well on the field rather than performing well in the classroom. In the documentary Schooled: The Price of College Sports (available on Netflix and highly recommended), Maryland cornerback Domonique Foxworth asserted that given the choice between staying up on a Thursday night to study for a test and compromising his performance on Saturday or going to bed, failing the test, and getting a pick on game day, the language of the scholarship strongly incentivized choosing the second option. A pick in a big spot could be the difference in keeping his scholarship for the next year and not being able to pay for school. But, if he can't dedicate the requisite time to his schoolwork to really be educated, why is he in school in the first place? (Note: NOT HIS FAULT)

This is where four year scholarships come into play. They don't need to be renewed and thus continued enrollment in the university is no longer predicated on athletic performance. If a player is struggling on the field due to off-field issues, he doesn't need to add worrying about his scholarship being revoked to the list of problems. This also means a school honoring a scholarship of a permanently injured player no longer becomes; it's just what is required.

From the athlete's perspective, I cannot find any downsides to a four year scholarship. In a way, it allows the athlete to become more a regular college student. I hope the NCAA moves to this policy in the near future.

UPDATE 8/19/14: University of Maryland announces lifetime degree guarantees for all student-athletes. As it should be.

Pay for play?

The hot topic of the day regarding the NCAA is paying athletes for their services. I have conflicted thoughts on this. On the one hand, athletes are powerful marketing tools and revenue drivers for universities and should be compensated for this. On the other hand, one of the things I love so dearly about college sports is the (blissfully ignorant?) idea that each every team is roughly equal.

Football players are supposedly limited to 20 "countable" hours per week of practice activities in season plus 3 hours of competition¹. When non-countable hours get factored in, that amount of time more than doubles. A quick look at the definition of countable vs. non-countable hours shows why this is the case: travel to/from competition, "voluntary" weight training, training room hours, and several other time sucks are categorized as non-countable.

Let's do a quick weekly hour breakdown for an in-season football player: 44 hours on football, 40 hours on school², and the doctor's recommended 56 hours of sleep. Add those up and we have 140 hours of the 168 in a week blocked off. The point I'm trying to get at it is these athletes are working two full-times jobs: football and school. They cannot reasonably be expected to pickup another job to make a little money for food³ or entertainment. The athletes are compensated for their education but resulting lack of funds from athletic commitment (which generates revenue for the school) preventing a kid from seeing a Sunday matinee with his friends is shame.

The simple argument for paying kids is as such: they generate money and publicity for the universities and the NCAA and should be appropriately compensated.

But...

Unranked Stanford upsetting #1 USC

What I love about college football is that the Jameis Winston makes the same amount of money as Middle Tennessee State's long snapper. While some universities certainly have distinct recruiting advantages over others⁴, one of those advantages is not a contract⁵. Under the current rules, Alabama, despite its best efforts, can't become the New York Yankees. This is one factor that leads to the higher variability of CFB and then we get things like the 2007 season.

App State over #5 Michigan

From an organizational standpoint, I also find equality amongst teammates to be hugely important. One receiver getting paid more than another while the lesser paid receiver was more productive would be a fast track to disaster; similarly, there could be administrative pressure to keep higher paid athlete on the field despite underperformance⁶. College athletics are so refreshing because so much of this, for lack of a better word, bullshit, is non-existent. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of bullshit to go around, but this source of it is dry.

What I see is a necessity for compensation paired with a slightly irrational + emotional desire for no compensation. How can these square? I've discussed this with Fritz and we disagreed slightly.

My plan is give every Division I FBS player (scholarship or walk-on) a certain allowance. I have no idea what is fair. That should be determined by a third party (not some NCAA committee). The players can access a certain percentage of that wage at any point, no questions asked. Another percentage will be doled out in certain intervals (like a pay check). The remainder will be accessed by request through the AD's or coach's office. Anything not spent during the year will be moved to a trust⁷ which will be transferred to the athlete upon graduation. Maybe a certain percentage should be withheld from the start.

Under my system, the quarterback at one school is worth the same as his punter and is the same as the quarterback at any other school in the country. There is no discrepancy among teammates and there is no recruiting advantage between schools vis-à-vis compensation. If a five-star left tackle wants to play for his hometown Western Kentucky Hilltoppers, he's not losing out on anything new by not going to Notre Dame.

Perhaps even more important is this system will teach the athletes personal finance! If a guy blows through his cash in a week, he'll learn the consequences and (hopefully) won't do it again. Fortunately, this mistake won't be back-breaking because it's occurring in a controlled environment. When he's in the real world, he'll be able to make a budget. If he makes the NFL, he'll have a better shot at avoiding becoming one of the money broke players upon retirement⁸. I don't much bad in my plan.

Fritz disagrees with me on part: he thinks each conference should have equal pay, but pay across conferences can vary (eg players in the SEC will be paid more than players in the MAC). As stated, I prefer my plan, but I could live with this too.

I really don't know what the trajectory of pay for play is. But something is going to change soon.

Recent NCAA Violations

Let's have a little fun:

Cake cookies: NCAA violation?

• South Carolina recently self-reported an NCAA violation for "impermissible icing" on cookies. After much debate, the NCAA decided it wasn't a violation. Better safe than sorry on SCAR's part, though.
• Oregon self-reported violations including mini golf and laser tag at team dinners, accidentally responding a recruit's text message, and buying a shaving supplies for a recruit (full list of violations here). I get the violation for buying the shaving supplies: it's slippery slope from a disposable Mach3 to Eric Dickerson's gold Trans-Am (while I'm being a bit sarcastic, there is, without question, a grey area that should be avoided altogether). But the school paying for mini golf is a problem? I guess team building isn't a tenet of the NCAA.

----------------------------------------------------

¹I'm pretty curious how this is defined: is it time only spent competing? I've spent more than 5x the allotted time at a track meet in a weekend but only actually ran for < 40s.
²15 hours of class, 25 hours of schoolwork--this might be a little skewed because they could be doing work in study hall that they count as football time, but I think the 44 football hours is an underestimation.
³Thanks to good old Shabazz Napier, schools can now feed their athletes.
⁴Facilities, academic prestige, girls, coaches, etc.
⁵Let's assume everyone is cheating equally here.
⁶Eg Stephen Drew on this year's Red Sox.
⁷Or whatever.
⁸ESPN has a 30 for 30 on this called Broke. I haven't watched it yet, but every episode in the series is fantastic.

MLB Overhauls Drug Policy

In late March, Major League Baseball and the MLB Player's Association reached an agreement to reform their Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program (full text of changes available here).  The new agreement enforces stiffer penalties for violators as well as increased testing of all types.  I will briefly outline the old policy here; more in-depth coverage can be found in an earlier post.

New Penalties

Under the old policy, a first time violation of the PED policy (the agreement as different penalties for "stimulants") led a 50 game suspension, a second time violation a 100 game suspension, and the third strike resulted in lifetime banishment from the game.  Under the new agreement, players will be suspended for 80 games for one positive test, 162 games (= one season) for a second, and lifetime banishment for a third.  Additionally, an in-season violation will bar a player from postseason participation, even if his suspension has been completed before the start of the postseason.  A first time violation includes the loss of pay for the duration of the suspension.  A second time suspension also includes the loss of an entire year's worth of pay, as opposed to 162 game's worth of pay (this is important in the case of postseason play; under the former agreement, a player with a 162 game suspension, e.g. Alex Rodriguez, would only lose 162/183ths of his pay).

Increased Testing

The new agreement ups the number of in-seasons urine samples collected from 1,400 to 3,200 (a 128% increase).  HGH testing increases as well with 400 blood samples collected in season on top of the 1,200 collected during Spring Training.  The new agreement also calls for something called Carbon Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry, which can be used to detect PED use in the two weeks leading up to the test (PubMed article).  This mass spec technique is approved by WADA for the monitoring of HGH and testosterone usage.

First time offenders will be subjected to increased future testing: six unannounced urine tests and three unannounced blood tests per year for the remainder of that player's career.

Etc.

Avoid tainted meat, too

The MLB is allowing (mandating?) teams to supply certified supplements to their players year-round.  This is to prevent the "tainted" supplement excuse whereby a player either "didn't read" the label of a supplement, the label did not list a particular compound, or a banned substance snuck its way into the otherwise legal supplement during manufacturing.

Reaction

The most important facet to this story is that, from my understanding, the push for change came from the players and the Players' Association.  The players want stiffer testing and want the game to be cleaner.  Baseball--perhaps more than any other sport--is obsessed with the "integrity of the game" and any reasonable sports fan can agree that PEDs hurt the integrity of any sport and the spirit of competition.  It is refreshing to see a group of players take this sentiment to heart and do something about it.

This reform still leaves something to be desired.  Eighty games for a player making $20 million a year for six years is a drop in the pail.  If that player got his fat contract in part due to his doping regime, he won't have any regret about his drug use.  The first time penalty is certainly stiffer, but it is not a massive deterrent to doping.

The IAAF recently returned to a four year ban from competition for a first time "serious" (their words, not mine) doping offenses.  For a runner, a four year banishment could span the entire prime of a career and I would argue is roughly half of an athlete's competitive career (Lagat is an exception to this).  Returning to high level performance is no small feat: maintaining training for four years with
only distant goals in sight is an immense mental battle compounded with the emergence of younger competitors looking to replace the old guard.  Dwain Chambers and Justin Gatlin are unique in their returns to competition, especially as sprinters.  The point I'm trying to drive home here is 80 games for a first time offense does not in any way derail the career of a baseball player in the same way that it might for a runner.  Baseball careers are longer than running careers yet the penalty for a first time offense is only half a season.  If I'm a AAAA player trying to make my break or a borderline star trying to get to the next level and cash-in, I'd think long and hard about the benefits to of starting a doping regime compared to the relatively few costs.

This leads to my next point: annulment of contracts upon a positive test.  As I've argued before, drug-inflated numbers leading to a fat new contract is equivalent to lying on one's resume.  If I lie on
my resume and get caught, I get fired.  In baseball (and other sports), if a player lies on his resume, his pay gets suspended for half a season but the team is still on the hook for the rest of his contract, which they might have offered under essentially falsified numbers.  The ultimate deterrent to doping--especially in baseball--would be to allow teams to void a player's contract if he tests positive for PEDs.  The annulment does not have to be compulsory, but the team should have the option.  Unfortunately, the Players Association would never agree to such a provision, but in the world of contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, such a clause would be devastatingly effective in fighting doping.

There was also no mention of increased off-season testing.  A truly comprehensive doping code has stringent out-of-season testing in addition to in-season testing.  Relaxed off-season doping control means guys can go crazy with their workouts, recover with PEDs, and reap the benefits in-season (I've talked about this previously).  Additionally, injured players could dope up to hasten their recovery process.

In all, a good step forward by baseball by tightening their policy into what is likely the strictest doping code in the four major American sports.  That said, there is still work to be done.

Tyson Gay gets a year...kind of

Last July, Tyson Gay and a handful of other sprinters tested positive PEDs in what some called a watershed day for the sport of athletics (it wasn't).  Gay got popped for testosterone, HGH, and "two other banned substances" that he acquired from an anti-aging specialist.  At the time of his ban, he said, "I don't have a sabotage story....  I basically put my trust in someone and was let down."  Gay was originally sentenced to a two year ban from the sport under IAAF doping code at the time (the IAAF last summer was pushing to move to four year bans but it doesn't appear as though that change was made).

I would also like to point out that Gay was enrolled in the USADA's "My Victory.  I compete clean" program.  Best I can tell, all this means is that he promised not to take PEDs.  In fact, anyone can sign up for its successor program TrueSport here.  I'm not really sure what signing up buys you or any other athlete.  Somewhat related, Asafa Powell was enrolled extra drug testing to prove has cleanliness before his positive test, which is a different display of cojones to sign up for a legit anti-doping program while you're on the juice.  In the summer of 2011 I called into The Big Show on WEEI and said that if I were a doper and knew I wasn't going to get caught, I'd do the same thing to show the world that I was clean.  I wouldn't say I was torn apart for that view, but the hosts didn't exactly follow my logic.  My point is, if an athlete is 95% certain he isn't going to get busted, it is beneficial to enroll in such a program to buy public support.

In the past week, Gay's ban was reduced to one year because he played nice with the USADA in its investigation of his offenses.  In exchange for passing along information about potential other dopers, Gay's suspension was reduced under WADA code 10.5.3.  Not only has his punishment been reduced, but the penalty began last June when he originally failed the drug test.  It's been determined that he started serving time before his official penalty was announced and he is thus being rewarded.

So what's this all mean?  Gay can start competing again right when the European circuit gets going this June.  He got a slap on the wrist and, in essence, was told to take a 10 month break from competition for training.  He has elected to return some prize money and his silver medal from the 4x100m at the 2012 Olympics, but he can win the money right back.  Who wouldn't be interested in seeing what Gay can do in his first couple of meets back from suspension when he's supposedly clean?  The appearance fees he'll command will be as high as ever.  Additionally, I'd guess Gay was dropped by some sponsors, but those will come back.  He's marketable, and America loves a redemption story.

I have two criticisms of how this case has been handled (aside from the reduction in penalty): the first is that the IAAF needs four year bans.  Gay was less than a month away from turning 31 when he got banned.  Slap a four year ban on and he's almost 35 when he comes back.  His career would be over, as should be the case for cheaters.  He could, feasibly, come back a month away from 33 and still be competitive at the elite level.  This argument is nothing new to anyone who's been reading my posts.

The second, more grave, criticism I have is the precedent WADA is setting here.  You can dope, get caught, snitch, and get a greatly reduced penalty.  Ready for what's worse?  Sean Ingle of the Guardian writes: "Under Wada's new code from January 2015, athletes who cheat could get a full amnesty and complete anonymity in exchange for information – and keep their prize money too."

WHAT.

WHAT.

WHAT.

LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT: Someone can drug himself to the gills, get caught, rat out his easily replaceable supplier that he probably didn't care about in the first place, and get off scot-free?  Excuse me?  This isn't counterterrorism; this is anti-doping.  Who defines what sufficient information is to be granted amnesty and anonymity?  How far does a nice chunk of change from a sponsor go for reducing that minimum?

TAKE IT ALL

If I were an elite, I'd see this as a green light to load up on everything in the pharmacy, walk over to vet's office, and load up on everything in there.  I'll run super fast and roll in the cash.  Maybe I piss hot, maybe I don't.  If I do, I rat out my doctor, and no one will ever know about my positive.  I keep my sponsors, I keep my prize money, I keep my medals, I keep my reputation, I keep everything.  

This is absurd.  We all know the dopers are ahead of the testers, so if someone's testing positive and is willing to talk, how much new information are we going to get?  If they had some super secret undetectable drug, wouldn't they have taken it so as to not get popped?  Sure, we could see marginal increases in information, but nothing groundbreaking.  But you know what would be groundbreaking?  Banning a star for four years.  Ruin their career and their reputation.  Destroy their livelihood.  Strike the fear of god into the athletes.  It's the only way we're getting a clean sport.

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After reading this post, one of my friends asked me if I thought this new rule was legislated to protect the sport of track from a potentially dirty Usain Bolt.  Given that it is a WADA rule and not an IAAF rule, I don't think it was written with Bolt specifically in mind.  It could, however, incidentally protect NBC's chosen Olympic heartthrob come 2016.

Fritz vs. 'Them'

I would like to begin this post by apologizing to my mother for the headshot that appears in Bryan's last post. To any readers who don't know me personally: I promise I don't usually look like that.

My current thinking on the NCAA is fairly well-captured by a column that Bryan and I ran in the Middlebury Campus newspaper last week, and what I want to get into here is essentially an expounded version of that piece. For posterity: let it be known that Bryan and I penned the column before the NCAA changed its policy on feeding athletes. Call us game-changers.

The NCAA's (from henceforth, 'them') most basic orientation to its athletes is two-fold: to make sure that we are brand ambassadors for the national organization (see Bryan's post) and to ensure that we behave in a way that reflects positively on the brand. The latter point is, in my view, a vehicle to a deeper sort of criticism of how they conduct business.

Consider three anecdotes from my weekend in Lincoln:

1. In the athlete hospitality room, there was a staff member (Tyrone) on hand to ensure that we did not take an unreasonable number of snacks.
2. The championships featured an elaborate and fairly confusing credentialing system. There were certain areas designated for spectators, for athletes, coaches, media folks, etc. There were scores of staff stationed at choke-points to ensure that no one was in violation.
3.When we wanted to go to the field house to warm-up on Friday, they assigned us a volunteer to supervise as we waited for the bus. His name was Alex. I'm not sure what exactly he was looking out for, but I was probably the only athlete who spoke with him all weekend. This show was surely just as dehumanizing for the scores of "volunteers" as it was for us.

The point here is simply that they treat their athletes like children. This point isn't in itself that damning; many 18-22 year-olds probably deserve to be treated like children, and I happen to have the privilege to be part of an athletic program that trusts its athletes to drive college-owned vehicles, host recruits and do their own homework.

It is a bit suspicious, however, that this paternalistic attitude is paired with indulgence. When you're at the championships, they pay for everything: travel, hotel, meals, snacks, gear. I got the sense that all of this expense was supposed to make us feel important, like we were being celebrated for all of the hard work that it took just to qualify for the meet. For most of my teammates, this effect was realized; it just left me feeling like I was being manipulated.

Mark Emmert doesn't stand a chance.

Here is the part where I wave my English-major flag a bit. There is a word in literary criticism for this sort of indulgence that is used to cover up a less fun reality: carnivalesque. The idea comes from Mikhail Bakhtin, who thought of the carnival as a way for those in power to keep their subjects contentedly suppressed. The carnival presents a warped version of reality in which traditional standards and power structures are temporarily put aside and subordinates get to feel like they run the show, if only for a short while. Think Mardi Gras or, in a lesser sense, Halloween.

The NCAA championship doesn't feel like real life. It feels like a slightly altered form of real life in which people are constantly showering you in attention and free stuff, asking in return only that you abide by a few rules that easily go unquestioned in the face of so much free stuff. Bakhtin's point, and mine here, is that we should try to look past such a system to see what is really going on.

What is really going on at NCAA championship events is that athletes are being combed to be NCAA spokespersons who return to their real lives after a weekend of "carnival" to show off their flashy new gear and tell stories about how amazing it all was. As long as that system is working and we all continue to "participate" (their favorite word, but not in the way that Bakhtin uses it) in the big show, no one is likely to ask questions like "What does the NCAA do for me?" and "Why does all of this exist in the first place?" (or, if you are a Division-I men's basketball player, "Where is all this money going?") When people start to do that, they realize, it will mean an end to all the fun and games.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Tacit approval of what we don't approve of

Last month, I qualified for and Participated in the NCAA Division III Indoor Track & Field Championships.  While the weekend in Lincoln, NE, and the frantic fortnight leading up to the event could be the subject of decently-lengthed short story perhaps of interest to a non-trivial number of people, I'd rather use this space to talk about my first personal experience with the NCAA; specifically, the manner in which the NCAA uses its student-athletes as advertisements for itself.

Briefly, some background.  I qualified for the meet running the second leg of Middlebury's 4x400m relay.  Fritz Parker, blog co-contributor, ran the first leg.  Middlebury also qualified one guy in the mile, a women's DMR, a woman in the 400m (she ran the 800m leg on the DMR), and a woman in the high jump.  We arrived in Omaha, NE, on a Thursday night and left before dawn on the following Sunday.  The Championships were on the intervening Friday and Saturday.  In terms of performance, my relay came in 12th (out of 12, but saying we were 12th in the country sounds a lot better than last), but we also entered the meet seeded 12th (again, last).

F. Parker             B. Holtzman             A. Nichols               P. Hetzler

As I mentioned, this weekend was my first direct experience with the NCAA.  Prior to my Participation, I had perceived the NCAA as two factions: the governing body of big-time college football (and basketball, but I don't follow CBB the same way I do CFB) and as the name of the national meet which I had spent four years trying to qualify for (much in the same way that, back in my day, Nike Indoor Nationals was the namesake of the national T&F meet run by the NSSF).  I never gave much thought to its governance over other sports and student-athletes.  The NCAA had never affected me before so I never considered it in that context.  The only NCAA regulation I ever cited was its ban on gambling as an excuse to get out of playing poker for money while home on school breaks.

That said, I have historically been a skeptic of the NCAA in regards to how it treated its high-profile athletes and teams.  I always thought the organization was out to get the odd athlete or program instead of protecting those athletes and programs (some examples, and it would be irresponsible not to mention that Oklahoma had to self report an NCAA violation because a few players ate too much pasta.  Thanks in large part to comments by Shabazz Napier, schools can now feed their athletes).  This historical skepticism was recently compounded by a renewed interest in the NCAA manifest largely by reading numerous news articles both criticizing and defending it.  With this in mind, I undoubtedly--perhaps subconsciously--approached my experience with disdain for the NCAA.

The NCAA Experience is one of continuous overstimulation.  Everywhere I looked, the NCAA was present.  From being constantly babysat to the countless number of blue logos emblazoned around the track, there was no escaping the watchful eye of the NCAA (nor the constant reminder that we were at UNL: popcorn isn't just popcorn, it's Husker popcorn; the time on the clock isn't simply just time, it's Husker Time, which, it's worth noting, was incorrect).  This made me uneasy.  Forgetting to wear my Participant badge made me feel like I was accumulating an NCAA infraction for each minute I was without it.

The NCAA has, in a sense, adopted the "everyone gets a trophy" attitude towards the championships.  By qualifying, I will eventually be sent an NCAA pull-over I can proudly wear around telling the world I Participated in an NCAA event, a drawstring bag, and a commemorative medallion.

(Side note--really wish I could do foot/endnotes on this blog: I am usually stoutly against the "everyone gets a trophy" attitude, but not in this case.  For example, I did not receive an All-American trophy by simply Participating, so there was some separation between the winners and the Participants.  Additionally, the commemorations are a nice reward for the accomplishment of qualifying.)

Right at the door to the track was an ad hoc gift shop selling shirts, sweatshirts, and hats with the NCAA logo and the event printed on them.  Items were flying off the shelves, appealing to the athlete's desire to be marked as a Participant when they return to their respective institutions (I'm guessing they don't have to wear a badge at school labeling them as a Participant).  I am guilty of purchasing apparel: I bought a quarter-zip sweatshirt and an Under Armour technical shirt.

Wearing my gear makes me uneasy on two fronts: first, I feel kind of obnoxious by showing such an outward display of my accomplishment.  Realistically, nobody cares that I Participated in the meet.  I also separate myself from my teammates; they don't need a reminder that we went to NCAAs--they all know we did.  Second, by wearing my gear, I passively tell the world I support the NCAA in whole when I staunchly do not.

We are Participants

The second point is what really gets me.  At most schools around the country, some segment of students (athletes?  student-athletes?  Participants?) are wearing NCAA sponsored apparel.  Here at Middlebury, I see students who have NCAA patches sewn on their backpacks, students carrying NCAA water bottles (officially sponsored by Powerade), etc.  Even when you're not at an NCAA event, the NCAA is present and ever-looming.  We Participants are propagators of its presence and the NCAA knows this.  It knows the Participants will display their free mementos and commemorations creating a walking advertisement out of every Participant.  When you add up EVERY athlete in EVERY sport in EVERY division, this number becomes quite large.  I'd wager 90% of them will show the world a piece of their memorabilia with some frequency.  This reminds everyone who sees such memorabilia a. that the NCAA exists and b. that Participating in an NCAA event is good.  To the second point, if one qualifies for NCAAs in something, one is obviously good at what they do.  The association of NCAA = good is immediate.  Unfortunately, there is not much depth to this association.  The achievement of making NCAAs is remarkable, but the associated approval of the NCAA--either by the wearer or viewer--is not questioned when it should be. 

This brings me to my concluding question: how can the accomplishment of competing in an NCAA event be separated from the NCAA (and thus tacit support of the NCAA)?  Students should not feel even the slightest amount of guilt about showing the world a memento of their accomplishment.  They should be proud of their accomplishment.  I am proud, damnit.  But I cannot, in good conscious, show my pride.  This, to me, is unfortunate and is a slight to every athlete in the country.