Cheatriots caught again - Ninkovich Suspended 4 Games
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This actually works out great - he was likely going to miss those games anyway, but now the Pats will get a roster exemption while he is suspended.
Nink comments: Store-bought supplement, he says
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/17450102/rob-ninkovich-new-england-patriots-says-suspended-four-games
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/17450102/rob-ninkovich-new-england-patriots-says-suspended-four-games
Part of me hopes they uncover some secret contract adjustment that heavily decreases Nink's salary the first four games that predates the drug test. Would be my favorite Belicheat.
So I am guessing the Pats win the SB, Nink retires and gets a cushy commentator job where his past "transgressions" are never mentioned.
Sign me up.
So I'm obviously not a professional football player, but I do know that a lot of these workout products, whether it be pre workout, post workout, whatever, have "proprietary blends" of ingredients where they don't explicitly list everything in there.
If my livelihood literally depended on making sure I did not put a banned substance into my body, I would avoid anything that wasn't 100% certified and guaranteed not to trigger a suspension. It's that simple. They have a full time training staff. It literally takes 1 minute to say, "hey do you think it's cool if I take this? It doesn't contain any banned substances, right?" It's literally their job to know that. Instead, players go to GNC and get whatever powder is new.
Not just speaking about Ninkovich, but any player. I believe Lane Johnson of the Eagles is facing another suspension for a banned substance that he claims he took from an over the counter product. Reshad Jones sat 4 games for Miami for the same thing.
If my livelihood literally depended on making sure I did not put a banned substance into my body, I would avoid anything that wasn't 100% certified and guaranteed not to trigger a suspension. It's that simple. They have a full time training staff. It literally takes 1 minute to say, "hey do you think it's cool if I take this? It doesn't contain any banned substances, right?" It's literally their job to know that. Instead, players go to GNC and get whatever powder is new.
Not just speaking about Ninkovich, but any player. I believe Lane Johnson of the Eagles is facing another suspension for a banned substance that he claims he took from an over the counter product. Reshad Jones sat 4 games for Miami for the same thing.
Honestly, I thought the original injury was a pretty good indication of PED use.
You're assuming you can take these guys' statements about what they got busted for at face value.
Yawn. It's a combat sport. Yammer had it right in another thread. The overwhelming majority of them are using something, by necessity, just to survive the rigors of it. The league selectively enforces it, like everything else. I have zero moral outrage over any of them using and getting caught. But the rules, however hypocritical and arbitrary, are in place, so Nink serves the suspension and moves on. I'm sure it will inspire yet another spasm of faux outrage from the usual media trolls and mouth breathers in the comments section of PFT. Who gives a shit? As others have noted, pragmatically, this probably ends up helping the Pats. Doubt he was going to be of much use in at least the first couple of games. Makes roster management that much easier.
What do you think the usage rate in the NFL is? If it's upwards of 50%, and only a few people are getting popped per year, it's not a bad risk to take for people with injuries.
According to Wikipedia, there were 54 people suspended in the 2015 calendar year. I'm not going to go through and sort out the PED suspensions, but a lot of those were marijuana and non-PED related suspensions.
Or at the very least I'd love to see a player take a small amount of whatever supplements they are taking and send them to a 3rd party to be held. It's probably not reasonable to have everything you take tested before you ingest it, but for a guy dealing with what Ninkovich is saying he is dealing with wouldn't it be a great safety net to grab those samples now and get them tested. The league probably wouldn't care, but for peace of mind and PR purposes it doesn't seem like a terribly hard thing to do.
Since they almost never get caught, it's actually pretty smart to use. I guess you could call him a dumbass for being one of the few who got caught.
Love ya Nink but it's hard to "buy into it" anymore with anyone. How many times have we heard this excuse/reason? You would think by now that everything you consume as it relates to "supplements" is cleared ahead of time. This is your job and you didn't do your job. You gambled and you lost with your reputation.
Yeah he clearly was taking something to come back from the injury. He's 32 and knew he needed to find a way onto the field. I don't blame him, but the excuses are tiring at this point.
I'd love for a player to be like, "Yup, I was injured and trying to come back because football is an extremely damaging sport and I know I only have precious little time to make money doing it."
I'd love for a player to be like, "Yup, I was injured and trying to come back because football is an extremely damaging sport and I know I only have precious little time to make money doing it."
The NFL never actually releases what they got caught for - that's why we get all these 'tainted supplement' and 'adderall' cases. It's a lot more PR savvy to say "Oh, over the counter supplement with some undisclosed ingredient" rather than "Yeah, I do steroids"
Here's why else you know it's BS: if it's something over the counter, just say what it was you tested positive for. It's over the counter, so no one is going to judge you.
Keeping it vague is obviously his way of muddying the waters to create doubt of his guilt without pissing off the league (by naming a specific OTC ingredient) and pushing them to leak what he really tested for.
If you test positive for something that's in something like a pre-workout powder or whatever, name the product. Whenever you don't do that, at least in my eyes, you come across immediately as being full of shit.
Keeping it vague is obviously his way of muddying the waters to create doubt of his guilt without pissing off the league (by naming a specific OTC ingredient) and pushing them to leak what he really tested for.
If you test positive for something that's in something like a pre-workout powder or whatever, name the product. Whenever you don't do that, at least in my eyes, you come across immediately as being full of shit.
According to the report the positive test was from a test administered over the summer, before the triceps injury.
I could care less about this suspension. His position has a lot of depth and he was going to miss 1-2 games anyways. The NFL is littered with people who take banned substances and get banged for them. Nink is not any different.
Upwards of 50%. You're adorable. It's 100%. Your favorite player? Juices. Your boyhood hero? Juices.
YOU TAKE THAT BACK! Except for the part about me being adorable. That can stay.
I originally had 75% in my post, but edited it down before posting. I didn't want to throw out a really high number and have to back it up with anything.
Just seems that triceps and pectoral tears/injuries happen a lot in the NFL. No quantitative data but if you buy into KFPs suspicions about PED use in the NFL I think there may be a relationship.
I thought biceps and pec tears were more indicative of steroid use. I hadn't heard of triceps tears being related, but that doesn't mean much.
I'd say 99%, because there's always the adorable little guy in every room that naively thinks no one else is cheating either.
We've been through this argument before, and I don't think it is near 100%. I think, statistically, the odds of anything being close to100% is pretty low. I think a large majority of guys have done something. Personally, I would gauge it at 75%. Even if that is adorable.
And Brady is totally clean. And hugely FUCKING adorable.
100 fucking percent. Every player on every team - including kickers and punters and "scrappy little white guys." They are all taking some mixture of PEDs, amphetamines, inappropriate prescription drugs et al. The league testing procedure is a sham. These guys establish a baseline and then can't exceed 400% of the baseline. 400%. Think about that for a minute....that is "Military experiment that we would be outraged about" level. And the Lane Johnson, Rob Ninkovich's of the world want to convince you that they are failing tests due to multivitamins.
I could not give a shit at the pro level, but unfortunately it trickles down. My wife sees instances of PED use among football players at the HS level in her practice every year, and we live in one of the strictest states in terms of PED monitoring. Blech.
Huh? The odds of 100% of people in an office building breathing are pretty good. The odds of 100% of a pro basketball team being over 6' tall are pretty good. But based on no analysis, you feel that this particular statistic is 75%, which is not near 100%.
Based on multiple conversations with college and pro players, trainers and people involved in their care, the huge growth rate in player sizes over the last 30 years, the types of injuries commonly seen, the definition of what a failure to comply is, and the psychological troubles seen in current and former players, I am pretty comfortable with 100%.
When Canseco came out about steroids in baseball he was mocked. Now?
Is there PED testing at the HS level in Jersey? Is this common place at that level? I've never heard of it but am not plugged in to HS sports at all.
Nope. Remember, the difference between kicking the ball two yards deep into the end zone and through the back of the end zone is a good chunk of money.
Yes, we were the first state to put in a steroid testing policy nearly 10 years ago. It is random and it covers football, wrestling, ice hockey, softball and a few other sports. Not a huge number of tests are administered in a year due to funding issues, and of course, steroids are not the supplement du jour (although still surprisingly common and available apparently. My son was offered some earlier this summer when playing pick up basketball). It is basically us and a handful of other states addressing this.
Of course, it is not significant enough to really stem the tide, particularly when you have parents willing to look the other way if their kid can play a year of varsity whatever.
From Ninkovich statement:
I'm sorry, but that is 100% bullshit and it's hard to believe anyone could take that at face value. The odds that he didn't know about NSF certification are zero. Just admit it and move on.
The fact that people are still naive at the usage rate of professional sports players is insane, man.
Your analysis is as good as mine was.
So, based on your multiple conversations (otherwise known as anecdotal evidence), the increase in growth in players over 3 decades (which has nothing to do with weight training gains, nutritional gains, year-round training focuses, team regimented year-round activiites, etc), your comfortable that 100% of NFL players are using PEDs.
Great. Neither is provable. I disagree with you. And your "100% of people breathe" example is so stupid it isn't even worth discussing.
Congrats on not having Sam Bradford as your Quarterback -- we can probably agree that is a good thing.
I wanted to save this for posterity in case anyone ever thought you were not a complete and utter idiot.
This response has become the template for all of these idiots. Name the supplement so that the company can take you to court and destroy you.
Blech.
It's 99%. I'm convinced that someone, somewhere isn't using, and everyone else is.
AND THAT SOMEONE'S NAME IS TOM BRADY. Just kidding. Whatever. They all use.
AND THAT SOMEONE'S NAME IS TOM BRADY. Just kidding. Whatever. They all use.
Leave this shit out from now on. He addressed your post, you are expected to do the same.
I agree with you, 99.9% of players are on something.