Steroid Nation

Professional hockey (NHL) lays off dope testing in playoffs

The National Ho Hockley League, not known for steroids or doping will lay off steroids testing now that the playoffs are on-going.  In fact, the NHL will lay off dope testing for over 5 months.  Some experts say that is a ridiculous policy in 2009.  To the Columbus Dispatch:

...the NHL doesn't test for performance-enhancing drugs during the playoffs. For all the prices paid to hoist the Stanley Cup, a fear of being caught taking banned substances is not among them.

The NHL's performance-enhancing drug policy, enacted three years ago by the league and players union, does not permit testing during the playoffs and off-season. It's a five-month window in which the only enforcement against doping is the honor system.

Doping experts do not endorse that approach:

"You would have to be an idiot to get caught under a system like that -- an absolute moron," said Charles Yesalis, a Penn State University professor who specializes in the use and impact of performance- enhancing substances. "To me, you have to go far beyond that testing system to have a true sense of whether players are not doping."...

National doping experts say the NHL policy is "woefully inadequate" and too flawed to allow a judgment on what percentage of players might be using steroids, stimulants or other banned substances.

"I think most people in professional sports wish the problem away," said Dr. Gary Wadler, a New York official with the World Anti-Doping Agency and an expert on drug use in sports. "They tweak their programs to take the heat off, but there hasn't been any heat on hockey."

Under current policy, an NHL team can receive up to three no-notice tests a season. The Blue Jackets were given the league maximum last season but only one test this season.

Is there a doping or steroids problem in the NHL?

Since the drug policy went into effect, only one player, former NHL defenseman Sean Hill, tested positive for a banned substance, in 2007. Hockey's doping record stands in contrast to the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the Olympics and other international sporting events in which cheaters routinely are caught.

So, are hockey players that honest or is the policy that ineffective?

"I'd say we're that clean," said Nash, who added that he has never considered using banned substances and would support a year-round testing program. "I have been here for five or six years, and I haven't seen anything once."

The Dispatch conducted an anonymous survey of the Jackets, and not a single player thought that the league has a doping problem.

Obviously NHL hockey players could use steroids to bulk up in the long off-season, then slip by during the sparsely monitored playing season. Problem or not?

Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock noticed a change in body types in the mid-1990s, and it wasn't a subtle one. Hitchcock coached minor-league hockey then and recalled marveling at the physical transformations on the ice. "Guys changed over the summer in a huge way," Hitchcock said. "Small guys became big. There was a time maybe 15 years ago that you thought, 'What's going on here?' 

Read more of the comprehensive report at the Dispatch's site.

Still obsessed with pink in the Hawkeye State

A few years ago an adjunct professor of law got in a snit about the legendary pink locker rooms at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, installed by Hayden Fry.   She is still seeing red over pink.  (The Wizard of Odds is Pretty in Pink too)

Seems when Iowa remodel Kinnick stadium, the AD kept the pink: pink alls, pink showers, pink potties.  How dainty.  Perhaps this decreases testosterone levels. (From the Daily Iowan)

A former University of Iowa law professor wasn't too happy two years ago about the pink-clad visiting locker rooms in Kinnick Stadium. At the time, she grumbled mightily.

The athletic department followed up those protestations with an $86.8 million renovation that included a new and improved locker room: Instead of just pink walls, the facility now has pink metal lockers, carpeting, sinks, showers, and urinals. Sorry, not pink, "dusty rose."

Further incensed, the law professor is starting up her campaign once again, the Daily Iowan reports, and is planning to file a Title IX complaint against the school. "I want the locker room gone."

Pink sometimes works it if is the right shade, and sometimes pink makes Floyd more angry.  Color Matters has this to say:

Can pink make strong men weak? Do pink jail cells create a calming effect? Is it true that football locker rooms (the ones for the visiting/opposing teams) are painted a certain shade of pink to weaken the players?

Yes and no! Here are the facts and some opinions...

...Prisoners did respond and calmed down, as hoped, initially. Major goof: If they hung around too long, they became even more violent. Why? The reasons are so very very clear

So the pink may have a paradoxical effect.  Perhaps that is why with a bowl bid on the line Iowa (6-6) lost at home to a 3-7 MAC team, Western Michigan.  Pink was not the link that time.

Color Matters also reports:

In summary: The status of pink football locker rooms today

University of Hawaii associate head coach George Lumkin was a member of the 1991 staff that saw visitor locker rooms at Iowa and Colorado State painted pink in the belief that the color made players passive. Now the WAC has a rule that a visiting team's locker room can not be painted a different color than the home team's. In other words, it can be pink, black or any color of the rainbow, as long as both locker rooms are the same color.

So pink is punk...

New angle on Benoit's rage: dementia (psychosis) caused by brain damage

ABC News, among other media outlets, carries a story on the Benoit situation.  As we all remember Chris Benoit started the summer of steroids rolling by committing a heinous homi-suicide when he killed his wife and 7 year-old son, then hung himself in his home gym.  The bizarre ritualistic nature of the killings -- bound his wife's hands and legs, put bibles by the bodies, then waited a day before snuffing himself -- promoted many to wildly speculate about causes.

The Benoit debate implicated 'roid rage, other drugs in his system (Xanax and narcotics), chronic multiple concussions, and psychosis.  The logical conclusion to such a bizarre episode is that Benoit was indeed psychotic, a psychosis brought on my multiple factors, none more important than others, but certainly a lethal mix.

Today's information, adds to the complexity of the story.  However, given the superficial one track nature of public thinking (there must be ONE cause), this story can be misleading too.

Benoit's brain was analyzed by a neurosurgeon (Dr. Bailes) at West Virginia, who is concerned about chronic concussions.  He found evidence in the postmortem, that the brain suffered from traumatic brain injury (TBI):

Bailes and his research team took samples from Benoit's brain postmortem and compared these microscopic brain scans to those of a healthy brain.

They found that Benoit's brain showed an advanced form of dementia that appears on the brain scan as brown clumps or tangles. These brown spots are actually dead brain cells, killed off as a result of head trauma, said Bailes.

In Benoit's case, the damage was found in every section of the brain  — all four lobes and deep into the brain stem.

"It was extensive throughout Chris' brain," Bailes said. "This is something you should never see in a 40-year-old."

The damage is proof, Bailes said, that Benoit suffered multiple, probably chronic, concussions over the course of many years.

Dementia is a behavioral syndrome when loss of orientation, memory and intelligence occurs.  In the early stages, there may be subtle loss of mental function.  However, the condition must be documented behaviorally and psychologically.  We are  unsure of this in Benoit's case.

If the brain showed signs of chronic damage - traumatic brain injury - then Benoit could clearly suffer psychiatric symptoms such as a psychosis based on the TBI...this would be called a Personality Change due to TBI, or a psychosis brought on by chronic head trauma (note the references).

To make this complex situation even more complex, Benoit's murderous behavior, uncharacteristic for him, was likely due to a number of factors, of which anabolic steroids figured in.  He was suffering from traumatic brain damage causing behavioral, psychological, and psychotic changes.  He exacerbated those problems with a mix of psychoactive drugs like Xanax and narcotics.  And he added to the aggressiveness with anabolic steroids.

"Bonecrusher' Kyle Williams gets 37 years in the slammer for assault

Several years ago, Kyle 'Bonecrusher' Williams came out of Bollingbrook Illinois as one of the top outside linebackers in America.  He was slated to start school at Iowa, and move right into the weak-side OLB spot his first year with the Hawkeyes.  Bonecrusher lasted all of one week in pre-season football camp, then hightailed it out of Iowa City.  He later ended up in West Lafayette, where he compiled an 'outstanding' year for the Purdue Boilermakers, on the field.

Off the field was another story.  Bonecrusher attacked, and attempted sexual assault on at leas 2 woman in West Lafayette.  Yesterday Indiana courts sentenced Williams, who left Purdue after his freshman year to 37 year sin prison for the assaults.  Story here in the Indy Star.

A former Purdue University football player who randomly attacked and beat up two women on campus was sentenced Thursday to 37 years in prison.

Kyle D. Williams, 21, of Bolingbrook, Ill., was convicted by a jury in April of one count of attempted rape, and two counts each of battery and confinement in connection with the attacks, which occurred 90 minutes apart the night of Nov. 29, 2005.

Williams faces further charge sin his native Illinois for more attempted sexual assaults committed while he awaited trial for the Indiana assaults:

While Williams was free on bond awaiting trial, according to authorities in DuPage County, Ill., he carried out a similar attack on another woman in a parking garage there. He still is awaiting trial on those charges.

"The elements of the attacks are so similar that it appears to be ritualistic in some way," Judge Thomas Busch of Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 in imposing the prison term, just four years shorter than deputy prosecutor Laura Zeman recommended.

Busch noted that each of the attacks was planned in advance. Williams wore similar homemade masks during each incident and attacked the female victims from behind.

Before the sentencing Thursday, Williams pleaded guilty to an unrelated burglary that occurred 19 days before the attacks when he broke into a teammate's dorm room, stole his laptop computer and sold it at an Illinois pawn shop.

Williams defense might be thinking of the Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy defense, which the judge didn't buy:

Williams, who had suffered two concussions during the previous football season, had been released from his scholarship at Purdue days before the attacks.

Williams' father, Steve Williams, said the crimes were "totally out of character" for his son, who was raised in a good home. He attributed the crime spree to the brain injuries, which were not used as a defense during his son's trial.

Williams' attorney, Kent Moore, said that while the brain injuries did not rise to the level of a legal defense, the best explanation for the behavior is that "something organic happened to him."...

"There's clearly a strong element of denial, of evasion, of dishonesty in these statements," Busch said.

"I think you need to come to terms with your own mind and try to find out how this happened.

Hey, where were the steroids?

 

Former Iowa Hawkeye football player, currrent California deputy, on trial for shooting

Ex-Iowa Hawkeye wide receiver Ivory Webb stands trial for voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm in California this week.  Webb, in his job as a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy, shot an Air Force veteran 3 times last summer following a high speed chase.  The shooting shocked many who watched an amateur video of the incident.  Reports from the LA Times (reg needed) and the DailyBulletin.com document the trial which began after delays in San Bernadino.   

The Wizard of Odds carried the video last year and these comments on Webb's background (and recently here):

Ivory Webb was tied for third in pass receptions with 16 for the 1981-82 Iowa team that snapped a string of 19 straight winless seasons and reached the 1982 Rose Bowl, where it lost to Washington, 28-0.

Webb transferred to Iowa in 1980 from Long Beach (Calif.) Junior College. He is a Long Beach native. The 1981 Iowa football media guide said his major was broadcasting.

Webb's father is a police chief in Compton CA.  Interview with Webb's family here at PE.com.

The wife of a sheriff's deputy videotaped shooting an unarmed Air Force airman broke her silence Thursday, saying her husband is a caring man who has been unfairly and prematurely judged.  "What he is charged with is not who he is," A.J. Webb said...    

Webb, 45, the son of a retired Compton police chief, is the first peace officer in San Bernardino County to be charged in connection with an on-duty shooting. A resident videotaped the shooting, which received national attention. 

The trial begins, from the Times:

The man who led a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy on a high-speed chase before crashing a borrowed Corvette in Chino last year testified Wednesday that his passenger was following the deputy's orders to "get up" off the ground and had his hands in plain view when the officer shot him three times.

The former deputy, Ivory John Webb Jr., is on trial in San Bernardino County Superior Court in the shooting of the off-duty Air Force airman, Elio Carrion, who survived. The incident was recorded on video by a bystander, providing the evidence on which much of the trial has focused.

The Corvette's driver, Carrion's high school friend Luis Escobedo, testified Wednesday that neither he nor Carrion had made threatening moves and had assured the officer that they were unarmed.

During cross-examination, however, Webb's attorney questioned how Escobedo could have tracked what was happening in the darkness.

Webb, 46, is charged with attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm. Prosecutor R. Lewis Cope has argued that the shooting was unprovoked and unnecessary.

(More from the Times after the jump)

Superman Needs Steroids

Just back from the new Superman Returns flick.

First, Brandon Routh does not impress me as muscular nor athletic.  He is tall and slender.  The costume is obviously padded.  On top of that, he wears more makeup than the Lois Lane character.  At times I thought I was watching Johnnie Depp/Keith Richard/Jack Sparrow.

Reeve
Seems the director wanted to cast the character as closer to Christopher Reeve the movie Superman, than to Superman the comic book citizen.  In those 70s Reeve movies I thought Reeve himself was underpowered for a superhero.

A better actor for superman would be a true tall multi-talented athlete like former Iowa Hawkeye, current Minnesota Viking linebacker Chad Greenway.  6-4, 250 of muscle

Greenway