The Leader

If football and baseball are ESPN’s children, then the NFL must be a momma’s boy. How else can one explain ESPN’s online coverage of steroid abuse in the two sports? ESPN repeatedly and relentlessly demonizes the MLB for any steroids related story that develops within the sport. When it comes to football, however, ESPN treats steroid news with angelic objectivity and professionalism.

Last year, San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman earned the NFL’s defensive rookie of the year honors. This year, Merriman has terrorized opposing offenses proving last season was no fluke—then he tested positive for steroids. Instead of working itself into a tizzy, ESPN noted that Merriman can and will appeal the test results and then went on to run an article by Len Pasquarelli that focuses more on how this will affect the Chargers as a team if their star linebacker gets suspended.

Luckily for Merriman, he is a linebacker and not a designated hitter. When Rafael Palmeiro tested positive for steroids, ESPN went crazy over the story. They did not wait to hear what Palmeiro had to say, ESPN immediately started damning Palmeiro. Granted, Palmeiro had recently testified under oath in front of a grand jury that he had never taken steroids, so there was more to talk about in this particular instance.

In order to make a fair comparison between ESPN’s coverage of football related steroids problems and that of the MLB, there needs to be a better example from baseball. Interestingly enough, baseball has never had a big name player test positive for illegal steroids other than Palmeiro—remember, Bonds has never actually tested positive. Even though ESPN’s intense steroid reports focus on baseball, the MLB and NFL have an equal-sized problem concerning this issue.

Consider this hypothetical: St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols, whose early career dominance compares to Merriman’s, tests positive for steroids in his second year. How do you think ESPN would handle this news? I will tell you how—they would go completely ape-shit. They would publish stories about how the MLB is a dirty sport. They would write about how young baseball fans have no role models. They would probably even link all of this to Pujols’ ex-teammate Mark McGwire before they had any proof.

I know this is just a hypothetical situation and I have no hard evidence to suggest that ESPN would have handled that story the way in which I portrayed. Maybe I even sound a little hypocritical for accusing ESPN of jumping on baseball players before all the information is in, but then I jump on ESPN for some hypothetical scenario.

But the bottom line is this: when someone utters the phrase “steroids in sports,” 99.9% of people within earshot will get an image of Barry Bonds in their head. Even though Bonds has never tested positive and has testimonials from the likes of Ken Griffey Jr. proclaiming he is clean, Bonds is still the face of the issue—not the likes of Shawne Merriman.

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