Steroids have been around baseball for at least 30 years, maybe even longer.
Remember when Freddy Lynn showed up at spring training sporting about 15 pounds of added muscle and ripped forearms, and attributed it to "Nautilis machines"?
All those "bash brothers" on the 80s A's with those tight pants showing ripped quads?
George Brett going from a Boggs-type singles hitter to a slugger, and the way his eyes were bulging out of his skull as he threw a fit over the pine tar incident?
I even heard a couple of talking heads speculating that steroids were the reason that Nolan Ryan could throw no-hitters in his mid-40s.
Certainly, in the last 20 years, we've seen players perform at unprecedented levels into sports' version of their geriatric years.
And I would be willing to bet that the problem is 100 times worse in the NFL. Take a look at the playing weights of the guys in Canton, who played in the 60s and 70s, and compare them to linemen's weights today. Do you realize that John Hannah only weighed 265 pounds? Mike Webster weighed less than 250. Today there probably isn't a starting lineman in the entire NFL who weighs less than 300 lbs. You have guys like Ogden and Pace who weigh in closer to 400 lbs than 300
Most division 1-A college teams have offensive lines that average over 300 lbs. Are we to believe that this huge disparity in the space of one generation is the result of mama's home cookin' and better training regimens?
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