Alex Rodriguez and Rush Limbaugh faring far better than Tom Hicks and Red McCombs these days
MONDAY, 09 AUGUST 2010 18:09
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/alex-rodriguez-and-rush-limbaugh-faring-far-better-than-tom-hicks-and-red-mccombs-these-days
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
It was not a good week for two Texas moneymen whose portfolios included separate ownerships of sports teams and a piece of the ownership of Clear Channel, a radio syndicator and outdoor advertising company. Thomas O. Hicks' Hicks Sports Group hit the financial skids sometime after the economic meltdown in September 2008. Hicks purchased the Texas Rangers along with the lease at the team's Arlington stadium and land that surrounds the park from a group that included then Texas Governor George W. Bush for a reported $250 million in 1998. The Hicks Sports Group started when he purchased the NHL's Dallas Stars in 1995 for a reported $82 million. In 2007, Hicks along with then-Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett bought Liverpool FC in the English Premiership for about $430 million.
Hicks was finally relieved of his baseball team last week. Liverpool backers are hoping for the same outcome. In 2007, this reporter while in the U.K. spoke to some Liverpool fans and they said they feared Hicks and his partners would Americanize English football bringing with them luxury boxes and club seats. They did and local football supporters have rued the day that Hicks got the team. The hockey team has drawn some interest but the problem according to some in the know is that Hicks did everything right in Dallas but the team is a money loser.
Meanwhile one of Clear Channel board members, Red McCombs found out last week he may owe the Internal Revenue Service $45 million. McCombs was one of the founders of Clear Channel in 1972 when it was just WOAI radio in San Antonio and ended up owning the ABA/NBA's San Antonio Spurs, the NBA's Denver Nuggets and the NFL's Minnesota Vikings. McCombs sold the Vikings in 2002 after failing to get the Minnesota legislature to spend money on a new football facility in Minneapolis.
The Hicks Sports Group became an awful investment. In April 2009, Hicks defaulted on $525 million in loans when interest payments were missed. The Rangers franchise declared bankruptcy in May 2010 in an "effort" to speed up the process to get a deal to sell the franchise to a group led by former Rangers pitcher Nolan Ryan and Pittsburgh investor Chuck Greenberg on track. The sale of the Rangers ended up in a bankruptcy court last week with the Ryan/Greenberg group battling Mark Cuban and his partner Jim Crane for the franchise.
Ryan and Greenberg group was the highest bidder for the team.
It is interesting to note that while Clear Channel's Rush Limbaugh was again playing the role of whatever is required of Limbaugh to make people notice him and hold attention between commercials that promise to pay off debt and push erectile dysfunctional remedies, Limbaugh made no mention of Hicks problems or the allegations against McCombs. Limbaugh trotted out the same type of lines that got him in hot water while he worked as a football analyst with Disney's ESPN when he complained about Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb being protected by the media but this time applied it to First Lady Michelle Obama. Limbaugh quit ESPN on October 1, 2003 three days after he said "McNabb was overrated because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed." Limbaugh took aim at the media (it must be hard for Limbaugh to figure out what the media is since he is not one of them nor did he every cover a story) because they were not criticizing Mrs. Obama's trip to Spain enough to meet the Limbaugh standard.
"As far as the media's concerned, Mrs. Obama deserves this. Look at the sordid past. Look at our slave past, look at the discriminatory past. It's only fair that people of color get their taste of the wealth of America too," he said on his Friday show.
Hicks was still part of Clear Channel in 2003 when the wrath of the NFL came down on Limbaugh. McCombs is still very much a part of Clear Channel. Silence is golden for Clear Channel executives when it comes to Limbaugh.
Limbaugh must be getting stale as he is recycling old thoughts instead of using that talent that was allegedly on loan from a higher authority. Limbaugh is heard locally on WABC in New York and WPHT in Philadelphia.
Hicks, as the Vice Chairman of Clear Channel, never stood in the way of Limbaugh's daily utterances. Limbaugh, the highly paid carnival barker, was putting a lot of money into Clear Channel's coffers or was he? Limbaugh was paid handsomely by Clear Channel but Clear Channel as a business which included Hicks and McCombs on the board was eight billion dollars in debt.
By all accounts, Hicks was a model owner with both the Rangers and Stars. He signed Alex Rodriguez to baseball's most lucrative contract ever in 2000. He literarily built a youth hockey program in Dallas by constructing ice rinks in the Metroplex while the hockey team became an NHL power. There will be players joining the NHL in years to come because of Hicks and his Stars President Jim Lites endeavours. Hicks was the 1996 co-chair of the "Dallas Jewish Coalition for the Homeless "Vogel Alcove" project, and received the 2000 "Henry Cohn Humanitarian Award" from the Anti-Defamation League.
Yet Hicks is one of the people who allowed Limbaugh and his tirades to fill up the airwaves on hundreds of stations nationally. To be fair, Clear Channel also employed Randi Rhodes who is just as distasteful from the liberal side. CBS (WFAN Radio in New York) and MSNBC fired Don Imus after some banal name calling about the Rutgers women's basketball team. It is hard to tell why someone gets fired for saying something stupid while others get suspended and others skate free. Limbaugh is the darling of the media in that he knows how to get attention and probably still has a sizeable portion of listeners while Imus was fading in the ratings. The question of why anybody takes any of these people seriously needs to be examined. Drug addicts, gamblers, adulterers, political operatives and yes, even criminals set the political discussion and most of these people have no basis to command that type of respect. Yet Limbaugh is given credit as the head of the Republican party. Limbaugh is a genius that he has fooled so many esteemed journalists and politicians or the esteemed journalists and the politicians are not very smart and fall for the circus performer(s).
Talk radio on the AM dial has been a savior for some radio stations that could not compete with the FM dial and then satellite radio. But most of AM talk radio is inane conversation featuring babblers whose sole job is to inflame people and hold their attention between radio commercials.
Clear Channel stations and programming have had a desultory impact on society. The strategy of narrowly targeting an audience is nothing new in radio but the problem is that other media take radio talk show hosts seriously when most of them are just performers with no journalistic background and play the role of courtyard bullies. Ironically, the Clear Channel sprint to the top of the radio industry was made possible by one of Limbaugh's most frequent targets, Bill Clinton. In 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications Act which allowed Clear Channel and Infinity to gobble up as many stations as they could. Before the 1996 legislation, a company could only have 14 AM and FM stations and only one AM and one FM per market. The two companies did buy and buy and buy but neither company has had financial success and the two companies have put thousands of professional disc jockeys, reporters and other radio staff out of work by consolidating operations. Infinity, CBS or whatever name that CBS is using these days corporately owns New York's two news stations, WINS and WCBS, and WFAN along with a number of FM stations including WCBS-FM.
In terms of profitability, neither Clear Channel nor Infinity has done well. In truth, the entire 1996 Telecommunications Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton, was a fiscal disaster for all except a few like Limbaugh.
The still financially struggling Clear Channel and the company's partner Premier Networks have Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Jim Rome, Ryan Seacrest, Bob & Tom, Delilah, Steve Harvey, Blair Garner, George Noory, John Boy and Billy, Big Tigger, Dr. Dean Edell, Elvis Duran, Jason Lewis, Randi Rhodes, Kane, Nikki Sixxon the roster and distribute FOX Sports Radio. Clearly, this is a company that only cares about selling commercials to numerous demographics more than content. Critics contended that Clear Channel was too close to the Bush Administration and pushed for support of the Iraq War. But the truth is, Clear Channel has no ideological agenda and just like Rupert Murdoch, the company was looking for a niche were they could get the most money from advertisers. There is one ideology in radio and TV.
Get as much money as possible in ad sales.
Hicks' baseball legacy will not get him into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Despite having Alex Rodriguez on the roster (and paying him $252 million to boot---some of ARod's money was deferred and may be in play in the aftermath of the bankruptcy), Texas was never a major player for a title. Hicks never developed the land around the Arlington baseball stadium while ARod was with Hicks' Rangers as planned. Part of the reason ARod signed with Hicks besides the money was that Hicks would develop the acreage around the stadium with ARod as his signature employee and possible spokesman. It never panned out.
Hicks' hockey team won the Stanley Cup in 1999 and he is reviled in Liverpool.
Hicks has left MLB and had Alex Rodriguez wondering about his back pay. Limbaugh and Beck never talk about the people who give them a platform. They should show they are more than just one dimension cartoon characters whose sole purpose is to fill time between selling your gold and sleep deprivation spots. But if they did, they might blow the cover on what radio talk shows are all about, no nothings who scream the loudest and call people names like schoolyard bullies.
It wasn't a good week for Hicks and McCombs, two people who are never in the spotlight but should never be ignored as they are the deciders of how we think and how we are entertained whether it is in sports or on the radio.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label alex rodriguez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alex rodriguez. Show all posts
Monday, August 9, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Cycling’s Dirty Tricks: The Latest Chapter
Cycling’s Dirty Tricks: The Latest Chapter
By Evan Weiner
May 23, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- When it comes to dirty tricks, cyclist Floyd Landis apparently can teach the masters a few lessons if the whispers coming out of Los Angeles are true. Allegedly Landis told the Anchutz Entertainment Group (AEG) that if he was not invited to this year's Tour of California bike race, somewhere around day three or four, he would start naming names and tell the world who was doping.
AEG didn't take kindly to Landis' threat and told the cyclist hit the road.
Landis apparently kept his word after AEG did not invite him to race this year and a few days into the race he accused fellow cyclist Lance Armstrong
of not only joining Landis in using performance enhancing drugs but added that Armstrong showed other cyclists how to beat the system (drug testing) and allegedly Armstrong paid the former president of the International Cycling Union to keep a failed test quiet.
Armstrong has denied all of the accusations.
AEG knew Landis was going to go public and decided to roll the dice to see if he would actually go ahead with his threat.
He did.
In a sense Landis, because he was not invited by AEG to this year's event, has become the Jose Canseco of cycling. The former Major League Baseball player Canseco went public and named names and more often than not, Canseco was right. Landis doesn't have a book to sell at the moment but seems to be singing to anyone who is listening. Landis has not just set his sights on Armstrong. There is a list of people he is accusing of doping.
Some have already come out against Landis’ charge.
Landis has admitted that he was blood doping years before he won the 2006 Tour de France. He was stripped of his title after the results of a test showed that he had used synthetic testosterone.
Landis was banned from cycling for two years between January 30, 2007 and January 30, 2009 because he was a cheater. He has served his time and wants back in.
There is a difference between being a cheater and being user of an illegal substance. Illegal substances can put you in prison for a while. The sports industry has not as of yet acknowledged the difference. Just ask International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge about what he thinks of athletes using banned substances. Rogge tried to explain to Italian authorities before the 2006 Turin Winter Games that the IOC should police the Olympic Village not Italian authorities for illegal substances such as performance enhancing drugs because using the drugs was cheating not illegal.
An Olympian, track and field gold medal winner Marion Jones, was sentenced to six months in prison in January 2008 for lying to federal investigators about the BALCO steroid ring and for lying about a check-fraud scheme involving her ex-boyfriend, the Olympic sprinter Tim Montgomery.
Jones did not go to jail for using steroids. It seems athletes have Teflon when it comes to breaking the law using drugs.
Maybe it is because the world puts athletes on a podium and there is more shame in cheating than breaking the law.
In the BALCO case, Victor Conte, Greg Anderson (Barry Bonds trainer) and Patrick Arnold were sent to prison. The athletes who testified in the case with the exception of two athletes who went to jail Jones, Tim Montgomery and one coach Steven Riddick (all on non-drug, money laundering charges even though Jones, Montgomery and Thomas all admitted to using PEDs) were given a scarlet letter and received scorn from baseball writers and some fans but pretty much went unscathed. That list included Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire among others. A track and field coach, Trevor Graham, was barred for life from participating in training US Olympians because of the number of athletes who received PEDs from him including Marion Jones. He faced criminal charges for lying to criminal investigators and received house arrest.
It seems not too many people in the sports industry or even government agencies are too concerned about the illegality issue. Instead there is a tendency to give out 50 day suspensions in Major League and Minor League Baseball, a four week ban in the NFL, and Olympic suspensions ranging from two to four to eight years for athletes who are caught using PEDs.
Landis got a two-year suspension.
On April 5, 2008 Olympics cyclist Tammy Thomas was found guilty by a jury on three perjury counts and one count of obstruction of justice as a byproduct of the BALCO investigation. Thomas had been banned from cycling but interestingly enough none of the charges against her including using banned substances.
Landis used PEDs and was convicted of cheating. Landis and other athletes pay a price in shame and humiliation and apparently have no problems outing others out. The list includes baseball's Rafael Palmiero who blamed his Baltimore Orioles teammate Miguel Tejada for failing a drug test. Palmiero contended that Tejada gave him what he thought was a B-12 shot.
Tejada is an interesting study as well.
He was charged by Congress for lying to that august group about the usage of PEDs in Major League Baseball. But the Congressional investigators were not interested in whether Tejada used banned substances. Instead, the Washington lawmakers thought Tejada lied about talking to a teammate about steroids and human growth hormones. On February 11, 2009, Tejada pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and received one year probation. A Dominican Republic national, Tejada, was also allowed to continue his baseball career and was given a visa to work in the United States. Tejada could have been deported from the United States.
Landis may have found out something that sports insiders have known for years. Corporations are not going to stop buying tickets for sports events in the United States because of doping allegations or end their marketing partnerships, TV networks (and their Internet arms) are not going to stop showing sports events, the US government is not lifting Baseball's Antitrust exemption or revoking the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act or undoing the 1966 American Football League-National Football League merger nor undoing the major loophole in the 1986 Tax Act which spurred stadium and arena construction nationally and local governments are not stopping the funding for stadiums and arenas for teams.
Just a few people care, some sportswriters, politicians who talk a good game about drugs and the impact on kids who follow sports and glom onto athletes as heroes and some sports talk radio callers and hosts. The Tour of California is going on without Landis even with the knowledge that Landis planned to use the race as his platform to out people who he contended were doping.
Sports is a lot like the Whac-A-Mole game, hit one mole and five more come up. The next one is already on the lathe, Dr. Anthony Galea, the former team doctor of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts who had an elixir for treating injured athletes. Dr. Galea’s clients included Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, Jose Reyes, the Olympic swimmer Dana Torres and others. Landis will be forgotten soon enough and replaced by Dr. Galea as the next act opens.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, and lecturer on the "Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
May 23, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- When it comes to dirty tricks, cyclist Floyd Landis apparently can teach the masters a few lessons if the whispers coming out of Los Angeles are true. Allegedly Landis told the Anchutz Entertainment Group (AEG) that if he was not invited to this year's Tour of California bike race, somewhere around day three or four, he would start naming names and tell the world who was doping.
AEG didn't take kindly to Landis' threat and told the cyclist hit the road.
Landis apparently kept his word after AEG did not invite him to race this year and a few days into the race he accused fellow cyclist Lance Armstrong
of not only joining Landis in using performance enhancing drugs but added that Armstrong showed other cyclists how to beat the system (drug testing) and allegedly Armstrong paid the former president of the International Cycling Union to keep a failed test quiet.
Armstrong has denied all of the accusations.
AEG knew Landis was going to go public and decided to roll the dice to see if he would actually go ahead with his threat.
He did.
In a sense Landis, because he was not invited by AEG to this year's event, has become the Jose Canseco of cycling. The former Major League Baseball player Canseco went public and named names and more often than not, Canseco was right. Landis doesn't have a book to sell at the moment but seems to be singing to anyone who is listening. Landis has not just set his sights on Armstrong. There is a list of people he is accusing of doping.
Some have already come out against Landis’ charge.
Landis has admitted that he was blood doping years before he won the 2006 Tour de France. He was stripped of his title after the results of a test showed that he had used synthetic testosterone.
Landis was banned from cycling for two years between January 30, 2007 and January 30, 2009 because he was a cheater. He has served his time and wants back in.
There is a difference between being a cheater and being user of an illegal substance. Illegal substances can put you in prison for a while. The sports industry has not as of yet acknowledged the difference. Just ask International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge about what he thinks of athletes using banned substances. Rogge tried to explain to Italian authorities before the 2006 Turin Winter Games that the IOC should police the Olympic Village not Italian authorities for illegal substances such as performance enhancing drugs because using the drugs was cheating not illegal.
An Olympian, track and field gold medal winner Marion Jones, was sentenced to six months in prison in January 2008 for lying to federal investigators about the BALCO steroid ring and for lying about a check-fraud scheme involving her ex-boyfriend, the Olympic sprinter Tim Montgomery.
Jones did not go to jail for using steroids. It seems athletes have Teflon when it comes to breaking the law using drugs.
Maybe it is because the world puts athletes on a podium and there is more shame in cheating than breaking the law.
In the BALCO case, Victor Conte, Greg Anderson (Barry Bonds trainer) and Patrick Arnold were sent to prison. The athletes who testified in the case with the exception of two athletes who went to jail Jones, Tim Montgomery and one coach Steven Riddick (all on non-drug, money laundering charges even though Jones, Montgomery and Thomas all admitted to using PEDs) were given a scarlet letter and received scorn from baseball writers and some fans but pretty much went unscathed. That list included Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire among others. A track and field coach, Trevor Graham, was barred for life from participating in training US Olympians because of the number of athletes who received PEDs from him including Marion Jones. He faced criminal charges for lying to criminal investigators and received house arrest.
It seems not too many people in the sports industry or even government agencies are too concerned about the illegality issue. Instead there is a tendency to give out 50 day suspensions in Major League and Minor League Baseball, a four week ban in the NFL, and Olympic suspensions ranging from two to four to eight years for athletes who are caught using PEDs.
Landis got a two-year suspension.
On April 5, 2008 Olympics cyclist Tammy Thomas was found guilty by a jury on three perjury counts and one count of obstruction of justice as a byproduct of the BALCO investigation. Thomas had been banned from cycling but interestingly enough none of the charges against her including using banned substances.
Landis used PEDs and was convicted of cheating. Landis and other athletes pay a price in shame and humiliation and apparently have no problems outing others out. The list includes baseball's Rafael Palmiero who blamed his Baltimore Orioles teammate Miguel Tejada for failing a drug test. Palmiero contended that Tejada gave him what he thought was a B-12 shot.
Tejada is an interesting study as well.
He was charged by Congress for lying to that august group about the usage of PEDs in Major League Baseball. But the Congressional investigators were not interested in whether Tejada used banned substances. Instead, the Washington lawmakers thought Tejada lied about talking to a teammate about steroids and human growth hormones. On February 11, 2009, Tejada pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and received one year probation. A Dominican Republic national, Tejada, was also allowed to continue his baseball career and was given a visa to work in the United States. Tejada could have been deported from the United States.
Landis may have found out something that sports insiders have known for years. Corporations are not going to stop buying tickets for sports events in the United States because of doping allegations or end their marketing partnerships, TV networks (and their Internet arms) are not going to stop showing sports events, the US government is not lifting Baseball's Antitrust exemption or revoking the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act or undoing the 1966 American Football League-National Football League merger nor undoing the major loophole in the 1986 Tax Act which spurred stadium and arena construction nationally and local governments are not stopping the funding for stadiums and arenas for teams.
Just a few people care, some sportswriters, politicians who talk a good game about drugs and the impact on kids who follow sports and glom onto athletes as heroes and some sports talk radio callers and hosts. The Tour of California is going on without Landis even with the knowledge that Landis planned to use the race as his platform to out people who he contended were doping.
Sports is a lot like the Whac-A-Mole game, hit one mole and five more come up. The next one is already on the lathe, Dr. Anthony Galea, the former team doctor of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts who had an elixir for treating injured athletes. Dr. Galea’s clients included Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, Jose Reyes, the Olympic swimmer Dana Torres and others. Landis will be forgotten soon enough and replaced by Dr. Galea as the next act opens.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, and lecturer on the "Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Saturday, February 7, 2009
A Question for Sports Illustrated about Alex Rodriguez: Whatever happened to Doctor-Patient Confidentiality?
A Question for Sports Illustrated about Alex Rodriguez: Whatever happened to Doctor-Patient Confidentiality?
By Evan Weiner
February 7, 2009
5:00 PM EST
(New York, NY) – There is a huge problem that is being overlooked in the whole Alex Rodriguez allegedly testing positive for steroids use in 2003 saga that once again the media is missing. Someone violated doctor-patient confidentiality privilege by leaking the story that Alex Rodriguez tested positive after being administered a drug test. Drug testing is a medical procedure and if sports organizations really wanted to make an example of players violating United States drug laws as using steroids without a doctor’s permission is illegal, they would turn in all of the players who failed steroids tests to law enforcement officials and let the players go through the judicial system. Then they would turn in the doctor or the person on the staff who leaked medical information to the media.
Instead there have been United States Congressional hearings, which have been a mega media events, grandstanding politicians and oh yes Roger Clemens testimony before Congress which is still being fought.
There is bread and circuses for the population, fodder for comedians yet no one takes the violation of doctor-patient confidentiality privileges under consideration. That is the ethical question that Sports Illustrated and now other news organizations will not take up.
They should, they might sell newspapers or get more viewers if they treated their audiences like adults instead of a crowd at a comedy club.
The argument, of course, is that Alex Rodriguez is a celebrity and that he appeared during an interview segment with Katie Couric on the United States CBS television show “60 Minutes” denying he ever took steroids and human growth hormones and that all is fair when it comes to reporting on Alex Rodriguez. But Sports Illustrated by reporting that Alex Rodriguez failed a drug test has breeched the doctor-patient relationship as did the sources who provided the story to Sports Illustrated.
There will be a familiar cry that the public has the right to know. The public doesn’t have the right to know about Alex Rodriguez drug tests. He is a baseball player, nothing more, nothing less. An entertainer in the eyes of some. That also brings up numerous questions that have not been answered in the nearly four years since a who’s who of baseball players appeared before Congress on St. Patrick’s Day 2005.
Why are just athletes signaled out in the probe of steroids use?
In 2005, Congressman Cliff Stearns of Ocala didn’t like a piece I wrote for the Orlando Sentinel and called the editorial department to express his outage at my criticism. Four years later that criticism still stands. I wanted to know why United States professional athletes were the only ones in the spotlight and why Congress was not going after TV networks and advertisers who were using actors and actresses who clearly were on steroids and human growth hormones, particularly on soap operas.
Congress had hearings partially because they felt athletes were sending out the wrong message to teenagers back in 2005 and the hearings were directed at that segment of the populace.
I wrote, “Why is Congress concentrating solely on major-league professional sports leagues in its quest to educate youngsters about the health risks of using performance-enhancing drugs?
If the two congressional committees really wanted to go after steroid usage among teenagers, Stearns and his colleagues should have broaden their horizons. If they think it's only jocks who are taking banned substances, they are wrong. American teenagers seem to come in two varieties: those in shape and those out of shape. Both may be using steroids, ephedra and other substances not because they want to hit a baseball farther, run a 100-yard dash in record time or block better on the gridiron, but because they want to look good.
Their entire lives, those teenagers have been bombarded with ads telling them to look good to attract members of the opposite sex. Just look at beer commercials, car commercials, magazines, movies and TV shows aimed at young people. The good-looking people with the good bodies get the good-looking girls or guys.
Committees should be bringing in muscle, fitness and other magazine editors along with advertising, TV and movie executives and various image-makers to explain their messages to young people.
They should ask why young girls are taking steroids to control their weight. Some government and university studies contend that about 5 percent of high-school girls and 7 percent of middle-school girls admit trying anabolic steroids at least once, and usage has been rising steadily since 1991.
Stearns was irate and answered back but his words didn’t match his fury at me. In fact, the Congressman was rather benign in his response.
“I am a sports fan,” he wrote in the Sentinel. “I enjoy watching sports and, when I have the opportunity, I enjoy the exertion and fun of athletic competition. Every two years, the nations of the world focus on the athletic excellence of the Olympics. Sports transcend language and culture -- they are embraced by all of mankind.The performances of the great players and great teams -- their victories, records and careers -- capture the honesty and integrity of sports and heighten the ideal that sports honor success based on merit and talent.Yet, the use of steroids in sports is undermining the notion of talent in the athlete and integrity in the sport.Steroids are the tools of the cheater. Not only do these performance-enhancing drugs undermine the legitimacy and integrity of all sports, they are illegal. Their use is a misdemeanor punishable with up to one year in jail. Distribution of steroids is a felony punishable by up to five years.Our elite athletes are role models for America's youth, and these children see and hear what their heroes do. While some adults look the other way at obvious steroid use in professional sports, young athletes see steroids as a shortcut to improving their game.I held my first hearing on performance-enhancing drugs in sports in 2003. This year, I also held the first hearing specifically dealing with steroids in sports.At that hearing, we heard testimonies from medical and athletic experts who outlined the health problems of steroids and the extent of steroid use, including among high-school athletes and younger students.We listened to the testimony of a father whose son killed himself after taking steroids to improve his performance in high-school baseball.Is this an issue for Congress?Yes, the health and safety of our children and athletes makes this a federal issue, as does the fact that it is a crime.The federal government provides funding for the World Anti-Doping Agency, which monitors the Olympic sports, and we should apply the same standards to professional athletes.Since my subcommittee has jurisdiction over this issue, I offered the Drug Free Sports Act. It requires the major professional-sports leagues to adopt a single uniform testing standard modeled on the Olympic standards, as well as setting tough penalties for steroid use.The commissioners of the sports leagues and the directors of the various players' associations provided their views on my bill, which was endorsed by Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and NBA Commissioner David Stern. Approved in my subcommittee, it next goes to the full committee for consideration.Professional athletes command high salaries and attract the spotlight of public attention. By focusing on professional sports, my bill makes them the platform for enunciating, loud and clear, that taking steroids is cheating, illegal, unhealthy and can end careers. This would represent a major step in reaching athletes and students thinking about taking steroids.”
There was no one word in there about other entertainment forums, like soap operas, which feature beefy men, like beer commercials and other ads. Nope, just about sports figures and there was nothing in their about doctor-patient privileges.
It is all very troubling. The media spotlight is on Rodriguez, he allegedly sells papers or gets attention on TV and radio. The United States media is broken and needs more than dishing dirt on Alex Rodriguez. Come to think of it, perhaps a series on doctor-patients and ethics might sell more newspapers or an investigation into other forms of entertainment and whether those performers are juiced could be a compelling story that Congress should take up. But wait, why should we go into those issues when Alex Rodriguez can be the center of attention of Joe Torre’s book or Page Six of the New York Post or fodder for late night comedians? The media is giving the people what they want, just ask Time Warner and Sports Illustrated bosses, as Don Henley pointed out in his song Dirty Laundry, We all know crap is king, Give us Dirty Laundry.
Alex Rodriguez has plenty of “Dirty Laundry” but the real question that needs to be asked has not been asked. Why is it okay for Sports Illustrated to get sources that are willing to break the doctor-patient confidentiality privilege? That needs an answer.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
February 7, 2009
5:00 PM EST
(New York, NY) – There is a huge problem that is being overlooked in the whole Alex Rodriguez allegedly testing positive for steroids use in 2003 saga that once again the media is missing. Someone violated doctor-patient confidentiality privilege by leaking the story that Alex Rodriguez tested positive after being administered a drug test. Drug testing is a medical procedure and if sports organizations really wanted to make an example of players violating United States drug laws as using steroids without a doctor’s permission is illegal, they would turn in all of the players who failed steroids tests to law enforcement officials and let the players go through the judicial system. Then they would turn in the doctor or the person on the staff who leaked medical information to the media.
Instead there have been United States Congressional hearings, which have been a mega media events, grandstanding politicians and oh yes Roger Clemens testimony before Congress which is still being fought.
There is bread and circuses for the population, fodder for comedians yet no one takes the violation of doctor-patient confidentiality privileges under consideration. That is the ethical question that Sports Illustrated and now other news organizations will not take up.
They should, they might sell newspapers or get more viewers if they treated their audiences like adults instead of a crowd at a comedy club.
The argument, of course, is that Alex Rodriguez is a celebrity and that he appeared during an interview segment with Katie Couric on the United States CBS television show “60 Minutes” denying he ever took steroids and human growth hormones and that all is fair when it comes to reporting on Alex Rodriguez. But Sports Illustrated by reporting that Alex Rodriguez failed a drug test has breeched the doctor-patient relationship as did the sources who provided the story to Sports Illustrated.
There will be a familiar cry that the public has the right to know. The public doesn’t have the right to know about Alex Rodriguez drug tests. He is a baseball player, nothing more, nothing less. An entertainer in the eyes of some. That also brings up numerous questions that have not been answered in the nearly four years since a who’s who of baseball players appeared before Congress on St. Patrick’s Day 2005.
Why are just athletes signaled out in the probe of steroids use?
In 2005, Congressman Cliff Stearns of Ocala didn’t like a piece I wrote for the Orlando Sentinel and called the editorial department to express his outage at my criticism. Four years later that criticism still stands. I wanted to know why United States professional athletes were the only ones in the spotlight and why Congress was not going after TV networks and advertisers who were using actors and actresses who clearly were on steroids and human growth hormones, particularly on soap operas.
Congress had hearings partially because they felt athletes were sending out the wrong message to teenagers back in 2005 and the hearings were directed at that segment of the populace.
I wrote, “Why is Congress concentrating solely on major-league professional sports leagues in its quest to educate youngsters about the health risks of using performance-enhancing drugs?
If the two congressional committees really wanted to go after steroid usage among teenagers, Stearns and his colleagues should have broaden their horizons. If they think it's only jocks who are taking banned substances, they are wrong. American teenagers seem to come in two varieties: those in shape and those out of shape. Both may be using steroids, ephedra and other substances not because they want to hit a baseball farther, run a 100-yard dash in record time or block better on the gridiron, but because they want to look good.
Their entire lives, those teenagers have been bombarded with ads telling them to look good to attract members of the opposite sex. Just look at beer commercials, car commercials, magazines, movies and TV shows aimed at young people. The good-looking people with the good bodies get the good-looking girls or guys.
Committees should be bringing in muscle, fitness and other magazine editors along with advertising, TV and movie executives and various image-makers to explain their messages to young people.
They should ask why young girls are taking steroids to control their weight. Some government and university studies contend that about 5 percent of high-school girls and 7 percent of middle-school girls admit trying anabolic steroids at least once, and usage has been rising steadily since 1991.
Stearns was irate and answered back but his words didn’t match his fury at me. In fact, the Congressman was rather benign in his response.
“I am a sports fan,” he wrote in the Sentinel. “I enjoy watching sports and, when I have the opportunity, I enjoy the exertion and fun of athletic competition. Every two years, the nations of the world focus on the athletic excellence of the Olympics. Sports transcend language and culture -- they are embraced by all of mankind.The performances of the great players and great teams -- their victories, records and careers -- capture the honesty and integrity of sports and heighten the ideal that sports honor success based on merit and talent.Yet, the use of steroids in sports is undermining the notion of talent in the athlete and integrity in the sport.Steroids are the tools of the cheater. Not only do these performance-enhancing drugs undermine the legitimacy and integrity of all sports, they are illegal. Their use is a misdemeanor punishable with up to one year in jail. Distribution of steroids is a felony punishable by up to five years.Our elite athletes are role models for America's youth, and these children see and hear what their heroes do. While some adults look the other way at obvious steroid use in professional sports, young athletes see steroids as a shortcut to improving their game.I held my first hearing on performance-enhancing drugs in sports in 2003. This year, I also held the first hearing specifically dealing with steroids in sports.At that hearing, we heard testimonies from medical and athletic experts who outlined the health problems of steroids and the extent of steroid use, including among high-school athletes and younger students.We listened to the testimony of a father whose son killed himself after taking steroids to improve his performance in high-school baseball.Is this an issue for Congress?Yes, the health and safety of our children and athletes makes this a federal issue, as does the fact that it is a crime.The federal government provides funding for the World Anti-Doping Agency, which monitors the Olympic sports, and we should apply the same standards to professional athletes.Since my subcommittee has jurisdiction over this issue, I offered the Drug Free Sports Act. It requires the major professional-sports leagues to adopt a single uniform testing standard modeled on the Olympic standards, as well as setting tough penalties for steroid use.The commissioners of the sports leagues and the directors of the various players' associations provided their views on my bill, which was endorsed by Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and NBA Commissioner David Stern. Approved in my subcommittee, it next goes to the full committee for consideration.Professional athletes command high salaries and attract the spotlight of public attention. By focusing on professional sports, my bill makes them the platform for enunciating, loud and clear, that taking steroids is cheating, illegal, unhealthy and can end careers. This would represent a major step in reaching athletes and students thinking about taking steroids.”
There was no one word in there about other entertainment forums, like soap operas, which feature beefy men, like beer commercials and other ads. Nope, just about sports figures and there was nothing in their about doctor-patient privileges.
It is all very troubling. The media spotlight is on Rodriguez, he allegedly sells papers or gets attention on TV and radio. The United States media is broken and needs more than dishing dirt on Alex Rodriguez. Come to think of it, perhaps a series on doctor-patients and ethics might sell more newspapers or an investigation into other forms of entertainment and whether those performers are juiced could be a compelling story that Congress should take up. But wait, why should we go into those issues when Alex Rodriguez can be the center of attention of Joe Torre’s book or Page Six of the New York Post or fodder for late night comedians? The media is giving the people what they want, just ask Time Warner and Sports Illustrated bosses, as Don Henley pointed out in his song Dirty Laundry, We all know crap is king, Give us Dirty Laundry.
Alex Rodriguez has plenty of “Dirty Laundry” but the real question that needs to be asked has not been asked. Why is it okay for Sports Illustrated to get sources that are willing to break the doctor-patient confidentiality privilege? That needs an answer.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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