This week, former-Patriot Rodney Harrison announced his retirement, along with his hiring as an NBC broadcaster for the NFL. Harrison is not the innocuous fan-favorite retired athlete you usually see hired by sports networks. More often, it’s people like Charles Barkley (TNT), John Madden (ABC), or Bill Walton (ESPN). Harrison, however, was twice voted NFL’s “dirtiest player” in an SI poll (2004 and 2006). But, more significantly, he admitted to knowingly taking human growth hormone in 2007. There seems to be a double standard in baseball and football about PEDs. You probably don’t even remember when Harrison was suspended for a quarter of the NFL season for taking a banned substance; it was only in the news for a couple days. But, now, several weeks after the fact, we’re still hearing about Ramirez’s positive drug test, and we’ll hear about it again in a few more weeks, when Ramirez returns from his suspension. Can you imagine Mark McGuire being hired by ESPN on Baseball Tonight? And McGuire hasn’t even been found guilty, tested positive, or admitted to any steroid use! To be honest, why the NFL doesn’t seem to be affected by baseball’s “Steroid Era” is beyond me. It’s not like steroids give batters a bigger advantage over their opponents than they give linebackers. If anything, a football player would benefit more from taking steroids, since strength is so important in a physical sport like football. NBC must see something extraordinary in Harrison, because—outside of New England—he has just about every reason to be hated by fans.
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