Terry Bradshaw....former juicer?

Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw admitted that he took steroids while playing football in the 1970s, according to several reports.

Bradshaw said on The Dan Patrick Show on Thursday, "We did steroids to get away the aches and the speed of healing. My use of steroids from a doctor was to speed up injury, and I thought nothing of it. ... It was to speed up the healing process, that was it. It wasn't to get bigger and stronger and faster."

over 3 years ago Nelson... 5 comments 0 recs |

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Bradshaw

Isn’t that the same reason cyclists us EPO and other illegal performance enhancing drugs? Just cause you don’t use them to get stronger doesn’t mean they are used legitimately. If you gain an advantage, i.e. recover faster so you can play the next week at closer to 100%, than you are cheating. I have never really cared for Bradshaw, but his attitude on this makes me dislike him even more. As some one still around the game today he should know that there is no difference in what he did and using to get stronger. They are both CHEATING!

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by sduncan24 on Jun 25, 2008 6:07 AM CDT reply actions

Why is it cheating?

As a society, we need to look at this. You wouldn’t say Bradshaw was cheating if he took an antibiotic to recover faster from a bacterial infection. Why then is it cheating to use steroids to heal faster? Why is it cheating to use steroids to become stronger or bigger. Instead of treating steroids like black-tar heroine and insider trading combined, we should really look at the issue. Is LASIK cheating. Every sport requires good eye-sight. The better your eye-sight, the better you can perform. It is medical performance enhancement. Why is that ok but steroids aren’t? I propose that athletes are constantly attempting to enhance performance and declaring the use of steroids as a method that is cheating strikes me as arbitrary. I say let athletes dope up to the hilt. I don’t care if it “taints” the records. Records can only really be measured within their own eras anyway. You can’t compare Jerry Rice to a hall of fame receiver from 1947, so why compare a juiced player to one from an era where there was no steroids?

Fire at will.

by HutHut on Jun 25, 2008 1:05 PM CDT reply actions

Cheating

(I will start of by saying it is only cheating is only because it is against the rules, and that is with any sport, so I will use the words cheating and wrong somewhat interchangeably. Because it is seen as wrong, it is against the rules and thus cheating). The main point is that steroids are harmful to the user. This, in my mind, is important because you cannot, should not, ask players to use drugs to harm their body to gain an advantage. If you allow steroids in professional sports it will soon become necessary to use them to keep up, to keep a level playing field. So now you are making players harm their body with drugs to keep their job. I think that is wrong, morally, and thus a form of cheating to use steroids.
I believe that steroids are seen as a negative and immorally thing in sports by our society because part of the draw and intrigue with professional sports is that the game is played by people just like us. Although, they are obviously more physically skilled, “that could be me” kinda attitude plays into our interest. We play football every Thanksgiving because they do, and we want to be like our favorite players.
Lastly, where does it end? They do it in the pros to keep up, so do college players start doing steroids only once they get to the pros or do they start in college to stay with the program. You can obviously carry that logic all the way down to the high school and pee-wee. And if you think that people wouldn’t do that you are crazy. If it means there kid has a better chance of getting noticed in high school and in college to make the pros they will start with steroids at any time.
As for your reference to laser eye surgery, it doesn’t fit with me. Steroids have an ultimately harmful effect, vision correction doesn’t.

Just my humble opinion on the subject.

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by sduncan24 on Jun 25, 2008 9:45 PM CDT up reply actions

Somewhat agree

I don’t disagree that steroid use in pro sports will trickle down to college, h.s., and younger. But that happens anyway. As to the harmful effects of steroids, those are up for debate. But that’s beside the point, really. Now don’t get me wrong… I’m not saying I think kids should be juicing. Kids should not, as their bodies are still developing and their judgement is suspect.

But to the question “Why is it cheating”? The arguement that potential longterm adverse affects make steroids different than LASIK doesn’t fly. Both improve your physical abilities through medical means. Athletes take cortisone shots all the time for bulging disks and whatnot. The potential adverse effects of those are well documented whereas adverse longterm affects of anabolic steroid use has yet to be shown. Potential harm isn’t why people consider it cheating.

However, I appreciate you humble opinion on the subject and enjoy the civil debate.

by HutHut on Jun 26, 2008 9:53 AM CDT reply actions

Cheating because

society sees it as morally wrong. That is why people, myself included, think it is wrong. And I do believe that some of the long term adverse affects have something to do with that. I do believe that there is some medical research out there to show long term side effects of the drug. The bottom line to me is that the rules in sports are made to reflect societal opinion, and I believe there is enough people out there who think steroids are wrong for professional sports to have banned them, and thus called it cheating.

I like you point on LASIK though, I really do. It just goes back to morals and public opinion to differentiate that and steroids from cheating. Following that logic though, wouldn’t any medical procedure be cheating? If you come back stronger than before after surgery to repair an injury, would that be cheating too?

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by sduncan24 on Jun 27, 2008 5:32 AM CDT reply actions