Friday, June 17, 2005

Travels with the Merry Pranksters, Big Red and Ricky

First off this is my first post on this blog site, so bear with if I tend to go off on a tirade. I tried to post something yesterday but in the confusion of trying to post something I was led to a S&M blog site that told me only to blog if I was a bad boy and needed a spanking. So here goes.

My big beef this week is with the NFL and the drug police that they employ. Now I am not really a big fan of Ricky Williams and think that he fucked up in getting out of football, but giving the poor man 10 drug tests a month seems a bit ridiculous. First off, as any good ex-pothead knows, Marijuana stays in your body for around 2-4 weeks and even with the best cleansing agents it is hard to get rid of it after a week. Maybe Paul Tagliabue and the drug czars of the NFL should actually read up on the reliability of drug tests and when they are effective. I think that Ricky should be tested once a month. Are we going to ask him to instead of doing a TD dance piss in a cup when he scores a TD? Just seems like the NFL is trying to make an example of him and is counting him out even before he gets on the field.

I hope that Ricky stops off in Denver on the way to Miami. I would be happy to take him to the Widespread Panic show at Red Rocks where I am sure the herbal remedies and holistic medicine will be flowing down the mountain.

Another question that I pose is do you think that Bill Walton could have passed a drug test during the highlights of his career? Even if Big Red didn't smoke pot (which I highly doubt), the sheer volume of contact high from all of the Dead shows that he travelled to see would make him test positive even today. And why is it that we stress drug testing (non-steroid) now in sports when it wasn't really a factor in the 70s, 80s and early 90s.

3 comments:

MJ said...

I agree that 10 tests a month is beyond stringent and totally unneccesary. Also, unless the NFLPA signed off on this, Ricky's arrangement is a violation of his rights under the collective bargaining agreement's drug testing policy in that it is over-officious and seems like arbitrary justice against Ricky. No other repeat offenders have to piss in cups every 3 days.

Besides that, however, I can totally understand why the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL would have strict drug policies in place. Owners want to protect their investment in these players so I don't see it as unreasonable that an owner should demand that his employees not be high on pot, MDMA, cocaine or heroin while under contract. If you were paying someone millions of dollars, wouldn't you want to know that they'd be healthy enough to come to work every day?

Gutsy Goldberg said...

MJ is right - basically, the players sign the contracts, and subject themselves to all of this testing in exchange for millions. So, I don't have any sympathy for these guys.

Onterrio Smith was being tested almost as rigorously as Ricky Williams will be (or is?). Of course Onterrio got a "Whizzinator" to beat the system AND still failed the test (the 3rd time he failed)! Yes, it may be a waste of drug tests to do it every 3 days, but the NFL can do what it wants to its players in terms of drug testing.

B. Hutchens said...

I am not disputing the fact that NFL players should be subjected to drug testing. It just seems that the number of tests that Williams has to undergo seems like a major overkill. It seems that they are singling him out because he is Ricky Williams and what he did last year. I don't think that the NFL wants Ricky to play. On another note, where was the NFL in dealing with LT? His football career and later professional wrestling career seemed to be fine when he was draining 5 grand a week up his nose.