The National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB) have been at polar opposites of the steroid abuse enforcement world. On one hand, the NFL is known for having one of the toughest policies in professional sports while, on the other, baseball has been guilty of almost entirely ignoring the problem. Due to questions about the integrity of baseball and some of its records and players, baseball has recently become active in changing its policy. In response to the continued use of steroids, the NFL has also decided to upgrade its policies to make them even tougher than before.

NFL Policy

The NFL has been testing for steroids since 1989 and since this testing began 54 players have been found guilty of using steroids. An offender is punished by a four game suspension for a first time offense, a six game suspension for a second offense, a year suspension for a third, and a lifetime ban for a fourth infraction. Despite the NFL’s strict suspension policy, there were changes that were announced in April of 2005. The changes included reducing the testosterone to epitestosterone ratio from six-to-one to four-to-one. This would make the NFL’s policy just as tough as Olympic drug policies which are world renowned for their toughness and consistency. New drugs such as desoxymethyltestosterone (DMT), and clomiphene were added to the list of banned substances and the number of times that a player could be tested during the off-season was increased from two to six. The new policy was designed to catch more players using steroids as the number of positive tests under the old policy was approximately one half of one percent of all tests that were given. This has lead NFL officials to question whether their testing was succeeding at lowering drug use or whether players had found a way to cheat the system and avoid detection.

MLB Policy

Former MLB steroid testing policy did not penalize a player for a first time offense. Only a second offense would have prompted a suspension. However, in January of 2005, MLB steroid policy was changed in order to allow the random testing of a player at least once per year with unlimited re-testing at league official’s discretion. The new policy issues a 10-day suspension for first time offenders, a 30-day suspension for a second time offender, a 60-day suspension for a third offense, and a year’s suspension for a fourth.