With both Adrian Peterson and Ray Lewis coming back so quickly and so strongly from their injuries, I thought I was the only one questioning if they used PEDs to do it. I listen to sports radio pretty frequently, and I can't recall one mention of this. I thought it was a legitimate question to ask, when you view 1) their age, 2) how quickly they recovered, 3) how well they recovered.

After reading this article, I suddenly felt like someone else agreed with me. I think that going forward, every time someone recovers like this, it HAS to be speculated, it HAS to be mentioned. I think it can no longer be wished away or ignored.

As a fan, what do you want to hear? Do you not want to think about these things unless they're proven?

Adrian Peterson won both the MVP and Offensive Player of the year award. Are we being rude or unfair to him by asking these questions, or wondering out loud if he used PEDs to return to such magnificent form?

If you're a fan of sports, do you want this in the conversation?

I think that if we can legally buy it then athletes should be able to use it.

I'm at the point where I'm convinced every professional, and mostly college, athletes are using something. You don't get that big/fast eating carrots. You can get very fit by exercising hard and eating right, but not to that level.

So I don't care. I say let them use whatever, but if it is illegal for me to buy then they should get in trouble with whatever league they are in and also the law.

But I can go buy deer antler spray, so I don't see why it should matter if a football player uses it.

I think if someone wants to risk destroying their future and their body in order to become the best athelete they can be then let them. Those that don't want to risk it don't have to.

But assuming we won't ever go that route then I say that the rules should be laxed up a bit as Im of the same mind as Jarimy. If I can go to the store to buy it legally then it should be allowable. If its illegal to obtain then it should be banned.

For the most part I agree with Jarimy here. However, that thought leads to the discussion of where we are defining legal to purchase. Different countries have different standards. And if you limit it to where you play (e.g. you play in the NFL so you follow the US rules of "legal") then what about those players that live in another country in the offseason? Do they have a legitimate argument that it's legal to purchase in their country when they live there so they should be allowed to purchase it? Or even if a resident of one country goes to another country to legally purchase something should that necessarily be banned? It's an interesting proposal and one that could lead to a fun discussion.
I find that as more time goes on my personal feelings about PED continue to evolve. I originally came from the school that any usage should be disallowed because it was cheating. However as more and more studies seem to show that many of the "enhancing" supplements really don't do much enhancing it creates an interesting conundrum. This issue is not as cut and dry as some seem to think. There are many layers that need to be explored and viewed from an informed background and not just from a knee jerk, emotional reaction.
I do however think it is disingenuous to state retroactively that anybody who used PED in the less exposed times was a cheat and deserves to be written out of any record books or recognition. The powers that be in charge of most major sports were more than happy to look the other way as long as money was flowing into the sport and to say that coaches, managers, owners, etc where unaware and blindsided by these revelations would be quite a stretch, in my opinion.

I'll just leave this here:

It's a bit of a time investment, but it is easily the best documentary I've seen about performance-enhancing drugs.

I think the line for the NFL is pretty cut and dried on what should or shouldn't be allowed. Since the NFL is an American Sports League it should follow Americas definition of illegal drugs.

When you have international sports thats where things get tricky. At that point Id say you take the most stringent drug list out of the participating countries and that is your anti-doping list.

I don't really know that other countries should matter if it's played in the US.

If Drug A is illegal in the US, and I go to Country X where Drug A is legal, and I use it, then I come back to the US and my job drug tests me and says "You're fired" I can't say "well I used it in Country X!" I don't see how that is relevant to the conversation. Or I should say I don't think it matters to me I guess, who cares if it's legal in another country, it's not in the sport we are talking.

As far as what PED's work and what ones don't, what ones are you saying don't work?

I mean if we are talking standard issue over the counter flaxseed oil that average Joe is taking daily, he's probably not really getting much from it. He's probably going to get the same results if he didn't take it while jogging his 5K every morning and doing 50 pound arm curls.

But athletes that are making millions, and are training on a whole other level than Joe,are not buying flaxseed oil pills from CVS. The stuff they are using very, very much enhances what it is they want enhanced, usually recovery so they can get out and play the next game/play. Have you read anything about the benefits of HGH? Athletes would not use stuff that wasn't working, especially when paying the $ they are paying for it.

I mean it seems like the best athlete of every major sport has been exposed as using PEDs. That's not a coincidence, and it's not like they are just blindly saying "yea I'll risk everything I have worked for, shoot me up with whatever!" It's all calculated risk.

And I'm not trying to be an expert honestly. I have read some stuff, and there is for sure stuff that doesn't work. But when you are speaking of million dollar athletes, they aren't doing all this for nothing.

At least IMO. Maybe I'm wrong. Probably.

I, too, listen to a lot of sports radio and one person made a great argument. Let's say there are two leagues, one where anything goes and one where the players are as clean as clean can be. Which one are you going to watch? The juiced-up freak league!

The NFL says HGH is a no-no but they just can't seem to come to an agreement on how they should go about testing for it. They've been having this "problem" for two years now. Hmmmm.

I'm generally fine with PEDs being used in any sport or related activity, as it almost always represents a definite trade-off.

Want to use anabolics so you can keep making those hits? Have fun with a drastically decreased shelf-life, horrible injuries, etc.

In particular to HGH, there is some debate over just how large the benefits are. There isn't really any doubt that there is an effect, but there haven't been any controlled tests (no real surprise I guess) with good double-blind comparisons. What studies have been done seem to indicate that there isn't a huge benefit. The caveat to these results is that these are done with HGH alone and not in conjunction with any other PED.
I don't believe that we can discount the non-empirical evidence such as "I took this and I have never played so well". That is not to say there is no benefit to these PED because as you say, these athleted know their bodies very well and if something doesn't work then it will eventually be recognized as such. However, if a particular athlete is using multiple PED I don't think that any individual PED could be noted as having a benefit which provides "X". Perhaps you need a combination of PED, perhaps one is granting the majority of the benefit and unless you isolate it then you won't know.
Like I said, it's an interesting topic and one in which I certainly don't have any strong knowledge. I only have the information that I have read and heard.

The one thing I noted in the article referenced by the OP is the "eye test". In that, I can tell when somebody has used. No, no you can't. Look at all the part-time or non-superstar players who have been caught using PED and they are quite often not of the type that you would say you could tell by looking at them.
Also, the author believes Peterson did it the natural way but Lewis didn't and his reasoning seems to come down to he likes Peterson better than Lewis. Now I personally agree that Peterson is more likeable than Lewis but that doesn't mean that that fact should be used as a basis for who to cast suspicion upon. Unfortunately, I think too many people use that as the starting point for who they suspect.

I agree, to a certain extent, that the juiced-league would be more watchable.

I'm not sure that I agree that we should allow anything legal in the game. However, at this point, I don't think I'd be against it if they did it.

I guess what I want is a level playing field. If the leagues go with "this is our list of banned substances", then the players need to agree to be tested in a manner that will be effective. If the leagues go with the "anything legal goes", I'm fine with that, too.

Right now, they're in that in-between, where they have rules that they can't enforce, and the questions that are raised just detract from the sport. Everyone seems like a really good liar, when what I want to see is a really good athlete.

On a tangent...that sounds good in theory, but I don't think so in application.

For example, if the NFL players association suddenly allowed whatever testing was needed (and the level of PED use went to negligible), I don't see a competing league of Football suddenly rising up and becoming more popular. If Vince McMahon brought back the XFL to compete with a non-PED NFL, I think it would last about as long as the first iteration.

The same with Baseball, Basketball, and Hockey.

Just to clarify, at what level? I'm assuming pro, but do you also mean college? If a parent and/or a coach approves, do you also mean High School, Jr. High, elementary?