Congressmen Urge HGH Testing, but NFLPA Wants ‘Fair System’ at BetLM

Congressmen Urge HGH Testing, but NFLPA Wants ‘Fair System’

The NFL and NFL Play­ers Asso­ci­a­tion are on the verge of imple­ment­ing test­ing for Human Growth Hor­mone fol­low­ing a meet­ing Fri­day with two con­gress­men in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Rep. Dar­rell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. Eli­jah Cum­mings (D-Md.) deliv­ered a strong mes­sage dur­ing an hour-long meet­ing with the league and union, accord­ing to sources, telling the NFL and NFLPA to “do it now or we meet again in two weeks, and it won’t be pleas­ant.” The league and union agreed, which is expected to lay the ground­work for the imple­men­ta­tion of testing.

The con­gress­men told the league and union that regard­less of any dis­agree­ments over details of the test­ing, they would like blood sam­ples to be col­lected within a week. If ele­ments of the pol­icy still need to be worked out, the con­gress­men said the sam­ples would be stored for later testing.

When the union does agree to blood test­ing for HGH, as it is writ­ten in the new col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment, the appeals process for the drug pol­icy will be taken out of com­mis­sioner Roger Goodell’s hands and go to a third party.

“We’re not guar­an­tee­ing any out­comes except there was an agree­ment to begin test­ing imme­di­ately,” Issa, chair­man of the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee, told reporters after the meet­ing. “The other aspects of what you do with the tests will be resolved over the next many weeks, and we’ve agreed on a bipar­ti­san basis to have the com­mit­tee play a role if necessary.”

Cum­mings, the top Demo­c­rat on the com­mit­tee, said he felt the two sides ben­e­fited from being called in.

“Because I think they had their own dis­putes, and it seemed like they just could not move quite past a cer­tain point,” he said.

He stressed that the law­mak­ers wanted action now: “Not get there next year — we were clear that the ball has to move down the field immediately.”

But the union didn’t seem inclined to move off its pre­vi­ous posi­tion: That it wants ques­tions answered before mov­ing ahead with a blood-testing program.

“We believe that we have to report back to our play­ers, make sure that the pro­to­col and the test­ing pro­to­cols are safe,” union spokesman George Atal­lah said, stand­ing in the same spot as the law­mak­ers shortly after their news con­fer­ence. “Once we feel that way, which we hope will be as soon as pos­si­ble — obvi­ously the chair­man and Con­gress­man Cum­mings can help us facil­i­tate that — we’ll be in a posi­tion to start test­ing as soon as possible.”

Asked if the union agreed to test­ing this sea­son, he responded, “We will begin imple­ment­ing test­ing as fast as possible.”

Later, he tweeted, “The chal­lenge for us as a league and a sport is to ensure that we have a clean game, but a fair system.”

The lat­est col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment between the league and its play­ers includes a pro­vi­sion to begin test­ing play­ers for HGH — con­tin­gent on the union agree­ing to the test­ing meth­ods. The NFLPA has asked for more sci­en­tific data to prove the most pop­u­lar test is reliable.

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• Miguel Tejada Wants a Major League Contract
• J.J. Barea Wants to Go Back to the Mavs
• BCS Wants New Sys­tem to Fos­ter Stability

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