Krieger: Sorry, congressman, NFL still doesn't get it

By Dave Krieger, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 29, 2007 at midnight

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Musings for a Monday morning on the NFL, Congress, compromising photographs and other sporting distractions . . .

• I mean, how else to explain this from former congressional tough guy Tom Davis: "These changes show what sports leagues and their players' associations can accomplish when they set their minds to eradicating steroids from their sports."

• Huh?

• He was talking about much-hyped alleged upgrades to the NFL policy on performance-enhancing drugs, which increased the number of tests per team and added EPO, the cycling drug, to the list of banned substances.

• It did nothing about human growth hormone, now the drug of choice in both football and baseball because neither tests for it.

• The World Anti-Doping Agency is offering an HGH test kit that requires a blood test. Gene Upshaw of the players' association says he doesn't trust WADA so he won't go for it.

• What baloney. WADA has nothing to do with it. The kits work or they don't. Reportedly, they do detect synthetic HGH, but only for a brief time after it is administered. That's not great, but it's better than nothing.

• Not only that, the NFL ignored the opportunity to increase the punishment for a first dirty steroid test, even after San Diego's Shawne Merriman made a mockery of the existing penalty by testing dirty this season, sitting out four games, then making the Pro Bowl and leading his team into the playoffs.

• The message: Do steroids, become a star!

• Davis, a congressman from Virginia who made a reputation beating up baseball over steroids, was especially impressed with a $1.2 million grant for prevention programs at the high school level.

• "It is important that they see athletes who have succeeded in reaching sports' highest rungs explaining that there are no shortcuts to success," Davis said.

• Sign me up for Merriman's speech.

• This just in: NASCAR has licensed a new line of clothing for female fans, including an "adorable" tank top that announces you are a "Pit Lizard."

• That will satisfy both my NASCAR and fashion quotas for the calendar year.

• Just wondering: If the diminution of the Avs is the inevitable result of the salary cap, why are the Red Wings still good?

• No doubt we will hear how encouraging Jose Theodore was in Sunday's 3-1 loss in Hockeytown, his first start in a month.

• This just in: Being thrilled when your $5 million goaltender doesn't blow up is a sad sort of consolation.

• Not to disrupt the bash-the-Rockies-no-matter-what-they-do party, but here's Sports Illustrated's Jon Heyman on the Jason Jennings deal: "One competing GM said he called to tell GM Dan O'Dowd he 'deserved GM of the Year, just for that,' and another said he would have taken (Jason) Hirsh straight up for Jennings, who's a year away from free agency."

• For the record, the Rocks got Hirsh, Willy Taveras and Taylor Buchholz in the deal.

• That said, I'm torn on the proposed Todd Helton deal. As a founding member of the Free Todd Helton movement, I'd like to see him play for something.

• I'm also convinced Fenway Park is a great fit. He'll stop pulling off the ball as soon as he realizes he can hit .340 playing pepper with the Green Monster.

• But the Rocks have finally worked their way through all the dead money left on the payroll by Mike Hampton, Denny Neagle and Larry Walker. Now they want to pay Helton $40 million or more not to play here?

• To get Mike Lowell and Julian Tavarez? Don't the Red Sox have a used dinette set available?

• O'Dowd did an excellent job negotiating the Jennings deal. He needs to be as firm on Helton. If the Red Sox aren't willing to give up something the Rocks actually want, O'Dowd should walk away.

• Oh, and one more thing: In light of the Larry Bigbie fiasco, it should go without saying that O'Dowd get Theo Epstein's best offer in writing, signed and notarized, preferably by a Supreme Court justice.

• Remember, if Red Sox brass hadn't reneged on a deal for Bigbie, the Rockies never would have acquired him from the Orioles, which means they wouldn't have traded Eric Byrnes, which means they might have had a center fielder last year.

• Memo to the Nuggets: Welcome back to earth. Now that you know your star power won't win games by itself, you'll have to learn to play together.

• NBA commissioner David Stern to The Wall Street Journal on what he learned from the new ball fiasco: "Episodic micromanagement is underrated."

kriegerd@RockyMountainNews.com

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