N.F.L.'s Drug Testing Will Be Rigorous and Frequent - Ingles

The N.F.L.’s new drug-testing program includes provisions under which all players will be tested for human growth hormone at least once a year, and possibly many more times, the league said Saturday.

Tests for growth hormone require a blood sample, and the N.F.L. will be the first major American sports league to carry out blood testing at the major league level. League officials also said Saturday that this season, for the first time, drug tests would be conducted on game days.

Under the drug policy, there is no limit to how often players can be tested for steroids and H.G.H. during the season, the league said. In the off-season, the limit is six times. All players are tested at least once during the preseason.

The N.F.L. spokesman Greg Aiello publicly announced details of the program Friday night and Saturday morning on Twitter, and elaborated on the plan in a telephone interview. Some details of the drug-testing plan — which is part of the collective bargaining agreement — remain under negotiation between the league and the players union, but both sides have said publicly that they expect to resolve all matters and begin testing by the Sept. 8 season opener.

In an article in Saturday’s editions of The New York Times, the testing plan for H.G.H. was inaccurately described as requiring only one test per year. The article included criticism from anti-doping experts that such a plan was grossly inadequate.

While one reporter for The Times had the additional details, the reporter who wrote the article with experts assessing the details did not.

“We know that we have a good test and what we set up will be a good test,” said Adolpho Birch, the N.F.L.’s senior vice president of law and labor policy. “It is one that it will preserve the integrity of our game and the health of our athletes.”

The players union did not immediately respond Saturday to a request to corroborate the terms of the testing plan as described by the league. Birch declined to share a copy of the policy, saying that some details remained under negotiation.

The drug-testing programs conducted by the major American pro sports leagues have long been criticized by independent antidoping experts for having what they describe as loopholes that enable athletes to cheat.

David Howman, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said he and the N.F.L. had been in contact for years about ways to strengthen the league’s antidoping program.

Referring to the league’s plan to test for H.G.H., Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said: “It’s certainly a significant and important advancement in deterring the use of dangerous and sought after performance-enhancing drugs. But putting it in place is one big step and evolving it to be most effective is another.”

Asked Saturday to comment on the N.F.L.’s plan in light of the new details, Tygart said the league should be even more stringent.

“What would be a Super Bowl win for clean athletes would be unlimited in-season and out-of-season no-notice testing, and anything less is not a clear Super Bowl victory,” Tygart said.

“If they have the ability to have unlimited, no-notice testing, that’s basically the WADA code and that’s a huge victory — if that really is the case. But until we see the documents, I can’t comment any more on that.”

Birch, the N.F.L. executive in charge of the testing program, said that all parties had agreed to “a bulk of the new drug-testing plan,” which includes implementing H.G.H. testing, but that some of the details were still being worked out.

He said, though, that there would be annual H.G.H. testing, meaning that “you know when it’s going to be, but you still have to do it,” and random testing throughout the rest of the season, for which players would be chosen based on a computer draw.

There will also be blood testing during combines and during the season based on reasonable cause, but he said he could not yet give the details of that testing because they had not been determined.

At least half of the drug tests administered during the season — the league said it conducted 14,000 tests on 2,500 players each year — would be blood tests, he said.

Birch said that because of the negative perceptions that stemmed from the league’s failure to test on game days, the N.F.L. would begin game-day testing — which the league already has the right to do — but the logistics of that testing were unclear.

Only a handful of players will receive notice of a drug test, following the last drug-testing policy, he said.

“The percentage of our players that receive any notice is under 5 percent,” he said. “That’s only in very unique situations, where you have to get to Montana to test someone and we have to know the player is going to be there. But the vast majority, 95 percent, have no idea they will be tested at all.” (source New York Times)