What steroids? The media sees nothing

The latest issue of Sports Illustrated has a three-page story about Tony Mandarich, the former Michigan State football player and second pick of the 1989 NFL Draft whose pro career amounted to very little. Titled "Tony Mandarich is Very, Very Sorry," the article describes how Mandarich now admits to taking steroids and why he blames them for his short-lived career. In an interesting twist, SI commissioned the same author to write this article who wrote the SI cover story (at right) on Mandarich twenty years ago.

What bothers me about the article is that as with so many other cases of athletes using steroids, there is an immediate reaction to place all the blame on the athlete and none on anyone else.

[Mandarich] lied to me. Lied to everybody. He gamed the system to his advantage. I knew he was using steroids (he now admits he also used human growth hormone), but all I could do was hint at my suspicions. I used the word drugs in the first sentence of that story, even if only referring to the large quantities of caffeine Mandarich downed before lifting. I called him "the man from tomorrow" and an "offensive-tackle creature."

Um, hello? The author, a journalist, knew that Mandarich, as well as his coach, agent, and everybody else, was lying. And yet he didn't say anything, until suddenly, two decades later, Mandarich confesses and suddenly it's okay to say this. The author's (Rick Telander) defense that he did his job by including these subtle clues is laughable. If Mandarich's unbelievable body didn't do the trick, some offhand references to 'drugs' certainly wasn't enough.

The media tends to do this. During the 1998 home run race, no one wanted to state the obvious: that these guys were all on steroids. It was too good of a story, too good for ratings, for the sport's popularity, to ruin it by doing serious journalistic work.

And then, when the truth comes out, the media tries to blame everything on the athlete. In fact, it is partly a complicit media which is responsible for letting this stuff go on.

Telander should be ashamed of himself. That was not serious journalism, and he, as well as Mandarich, owes the sports world an apology.