NEW YORK – The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) leader DeMaurice Smith offered high praise for the league’s drug policy, calling it the ‘gold standard’ in North American sports despite balking at mandatory human growth hormone (HGH) testing for its players.
The league and players agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement in July 2011, part of which entailed blood tests for HGH — considered a major breakthrough for ridding North American sports of performance-enhancing drugs.
However it is January 2014 and the league and union have yet to agree upon suitable terms for HGH testing, although Smith said Thursday, at the NFLPA Super Bowl press conference, that the two sides are close to a deal.
“The drug policy is overall 98 percent done. We both agreed to conduct a population study for HGH. We agreed that the results of that population study would set a decision limit, with scientific rigor, about a level of normal HGH in our players’ body. We agreed upon what the fines or disciplines would be. The only two remaining issues is in the area of neutral arbitration.”
The players fought hard to have neutral arbitration, however the league is opposed to a neutral arbitrator on two instances: (1) a player has been adjudicated criminally or civilly as violating the drug policy or (2) where the suspension is not based on a positive test but based upon evidence that the player has violated the drug policy. In other words, if a player has been charged with performance-enhancing drugs outside of the league and has been deemed guilty, then the NFL has enough evidence where they — and not a neutral arbitrator — can take disciplinary action.
Smith used the example of Major League Baseball’s handling of the Alex Rodriguez doping case to further the union’s position.
“Both sides went into a full due process. The union represented the player. The league defended their position. And a neutral arbitrator came out and upheld a portion of that ruling. Bud Selig came out and commended the advantage of neutral arbitration. I believe neutral arbitration cases like that make our system better.”
Even still, Smith said their drug policy, that will soon be in place, has ‘championed’ a variety of essential areas.
“It has championed transparency, it’s championed following the science, it’s championed coming up with a specific standard as it relates to football players and it also envisions a world where we can constantly update or modify that and that is something, quite frankly that you don’t see in any other policy.”
The NFLPA and Smith have been skeptical that testing is foolproof. In March of 2013 a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the case of Estonian cross-country skier Andrus Veerpalu lifted his three-year ban, citing “procedural flaws” in the limits established by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to determine a positive test. The union has remained stoic in their persistence of not being bullied into HGH testing. WADA believes the union and its players are stalling.
“I would expect the [NFL] players association to take a stance which is extremist,” WADA general director David Howman said.
Smith took the opportunity of being on the grand platform that both the Super Bowl and New York City offers by taking a shot of his own to WADA.
“You certainly don’t see it with WADA’s policy because I’m not sure they can use the word transparent.”
Regardless of any dispute, Smith is looking forward to a world where ‘all of our players can rejoice that their collectively bargained drug process and program is in full force’.
