Mark Cuban’s Little Shop of PEDs
Posted by rtmsf on May 8th, 2007In June’s Men’s Journal magazine, Mark Cuban has created a bit of a stir by saying that, as long as performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) do not cause harm to the athletes, he doesn’t see anything wrong with their use in sports. Maybe his reaction is a response to the Mavs’ somnambulant appearance last week during the Warriors – if anyone needed an “upper,” it was those guys – but it is an interesting proposition.
Again, the assumption here is that a PED of the future would not cause physical, mental or emotional harm to the athlete – we can all agree that any substance that does so should be banned from sports. But what about a safe substance that can be prescribed and monitored by a physician that would put an extra 2-3 mph on that fastball; or allow your vertical to increase a couple more inches? Some might say we already do this, with our GNC-driven supplements, antioxidants, and other mystical powders and analgesics. And what about treatment of injuries? Science has made leaps and bounds with its ability to get athletes back on the field or court at a high level and quickly – is that not another form of constantly evolving performance enhancement? In our view, the leap from taking an anti-inflammatory pill or cortisone shot to relieve pain in a joint (which in effect, allows the athlete to continue to play at a high level) to taking a new pill to increase your stamina and speed is not a large one, which is one reason why PEDs have become infested in every sport where size, speed and stamina matters. In other words, every sport. Jose Canseco and others have thrown around percentages of players in various sports using PEDs, and while we can argue about the exact incidence all day long, we should be able to agree that in almost every sport, PED usage is significant.
If we can safely assume that many athletes are already using unsafe PEDs to improve performance; and we also assume that we aren’t going to be able to legislate it out of our games because the risk/reward ratio is so high and the science is always ahead of the tests, then it is a natural conclusion that what Cuban said is right. We should essentially level the playing field by allowing safe PEDs to all athletes, many of whom are going to be using them anyway. If everyone is using PEDs, then those with the most natural ability are likely to rise to the top anyway, because they were closest to that point to begin with. As it stands now and for the immediate future (until safe PEDs are developed), there is a two-class system in sports (those using and those not), and the fans have to vett each spectacular performance through their own internal steroidometer to determine if the player is clean or not. (“Is his head too big? Was he named on an affidavit?”) The steroid era is already here, whether we want to believe it or not. We might as well embrace it and begin living our sports within its constructs.
Besides, genetic manipulation is already on the horizon. There are some observers who believe the 2008 Beijing Olympics will mark the dawn of the first genetically altered athletes of our times. A big head won’t be enough to give them away.
