The Double Standard Between MLB and the NFL

Shawne Merriman led the NFL in sacks in 2006 with a total of 17 and a nationwide panel of writers and broadcasters voted him to the AP All-Pro team. This happened despite the fact that Merriman received a four-game suspension after he tested positive for steroids during the season.

But in the Teflon-coated world of the NFL, this hardly made news. Most reports of the All-Pro team contained one line, or less, mentioning Merriman's steroid usage. Contrast this with the reception that Mark McGwire received in his first year of eligibility for the Hall of Fame. Despite never failing a drug test, McGwire received only 128 out of a possible 545 votes.

Now, the Baseball Hall of Fame is a greater reward than the NFL All-Pro team, but it is very interesting that less than 25% of the writers felt that McGwire, a highly-suspected steroid user, deserved their votes but the majority of All-Pro voters had no problem honoring Merriman, a publicly-known steroid user.

Why is there a double-standard with steroid abuse between baseball and football players?

There's not one simple answer to that question, but rather numerous contributing factors. Perhaps the biggest reason is that the NFL seems to be ahead of the curve on the steroid issue. Before it became a national story, the NFL put a testing program in place and basically announced it had fixed the problem, all evidence of 350-pound lineman running sub-5.0 second 40-yard dash times to the contrary be damned.

The NFL banned steroid use in 1983. It was able to get a testing program in place in 1987, thanks to the winning the strike that year by playing replacement games. The league added suspensions in 1989 and instituted year-round random testing in 1990.

Meanwhile, MLB did not address the steroid issue until 1991, when Commissioner Fay Vincent sent a memo to all of the clubs announcing it would be added to the league's banned substance list. And there was no testing until after the 2002 season.