NFL coach admits taking steroids as a player

[ALinChainz]

March 24, 2005

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - New Orleans Saints coach Jim Haslett admitted taking steroids during his days as a player for American football's Buffalo Bills .

The Los Angeles Times and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspapers reported the revelation came during the NFL owners meetings this week in Hawaii and just one week after US lawmakers conducted an 11-hour hearing in Washington on the impact of steroids in Major League Baseball.

"I didn't think it (steroids) was very good for you," Haslett told the Times. "I was hyper all the time. Got bloated, a fat face.


"But if you didn't (take steroids), you weren't as strong as everybody else, you weren't as fast as everybody else.

"That's the only reason to do it. Everybody's looking for a competitive edge."

The former linebacker played for the Bills from 1979 to 1985. The NFL began to suspend players for steroids in 1989 and introduced random testing a year later.

First-time offenders are suspended for four games and 44 such banishments have been handed down. No player has tested positive more than once since the bans began.

Haslett said that "all the offensive and defensive linemen, linebackers" were steroid users during his career and specifically pointed his finger at the Pittsburgh Steelers , who won four Super Bowl titles in six years in the 1970s.

"It started, really, in Pittsburgh," Haslett told the Post-Gazette. "They got an advantage on a lot of football teams. They were so much stronger (in the) '70s, late '70s, early '80s. They're the ones who kind of started it."



http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=afp-amfootnflsteroids&prov=afp&type=lgns

[Bill Lumbergh]

Guess the steroid's are starting to affect his brain too. What a shitty coach.........can't believe he still has a job.

[ALinChainz]

Been all down hill since the playoff victory over the Rams.

Talk about a honeymoon.

[ALinChainz]

I think he did apologize for the "It started in Pittsburgh" remark.

Good thing.

[MAX]

Fuck,

I immediately thought of Mike Tice. lol. Friggin' jarheads.

[rustoffa]

Man, it's gonna be like hands across america if every professional athlete that juiced fesses up......

[Va Beach VH Fan]

I'm not going to be that naive and "homerish" as to believe that it's not possible that some of them were on the 'roids....

But for him to specify THAT team during THAT timeframe, that's what I have a problem....

[vanzilla]

Check it out VA - Apparently Jimbo thought twice about his remarks.
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NEW ORLEANS -- New Orleans Saints coach Jim Haslett apologized to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday for saying that team's use of steroids during its Super Bowl championship seasons in the 1970s popularized the drug in the NFL.

"I have a lot of respect for that team, that organization and Mr. (Dan) Rooney," Haslett said. "That's just what we believed when I played. And, later, one of their players admitted using steroids. But I didn't mean to cause them any harm."

The admission by Steve Courson, a part-time starter on Pittsburgh's last Super Bowl title team in 1979, was one reason Haslett felt rumors about the Steelers' steroid use were true.

Courson has blamed a heart condition on steroid use. Courson also said that teammates such as Jack Ham and Jack Lambert adamantly refused to use them.

Steelers owner Dan Rooney, who ran the team during the 1970s, denied the Steelers pioneered steroid use in the NFL.

"This is totally false when he says it started with the Steelers in the '70s," Rooney told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "(Then-coach) Chuck Noll was totally against it. He looked into it, examined it, talked to people. Haslett, maybe it affected his mind."

Haslett who played in Buffalo from 1979 to 1985, and finished his career in 1987 with the New York Jets, admitted Wednesday that he experimented with steroids, believing he needed them to keep up with the many players he felt used them. The acknowledgment and his comments about the Steelers came in Hawaii, where he had been attending NFL meetings.
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I have some new questions to ask Jeff Fisher. See ya soon!

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Kinda surprising, I mean, Haslett is from the 'Burgh....

[ALinChainz]

From the Rumor Mill.


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POSTED 9:40 a.m. EST, March 26, 2005



HASLETT TAKES MORE HEAT FOR 'ROID TALK



On Thursday, former Bills offensive lineman Kent Hull lashed out at Saints coach Jim Haslett for strongly implying that Hull juiced it up in the 1980s.



Now, former Bills guard Joe DeLamilluere is taking Has to task for his recent admission that he and others were using steroids.



"I never took one in my life, and if Haslett took them like he said he did, he must have been getting placebos because I played against him and he wasn't that strong," DeLamielleure said Friday on Sirius NFL radio.



"And to make a statement like that — I coach high school kids and I'm a personal trainer now and I do some other stuff — it sheds a bad light on you. I've never taken them and I know a lot of guys who played in that era and they never took them."



That ain't what we hear, Joe.



In the wake of Haslett's recent statements, we've heard that "hundreds" of players used steroids in that era. In fact, some league insiders believe that Haslett 'fessed up about his juice use because he feared that someone was about to blow the whistle on him, linking him to far more extensive usage than he admitted.



And we frankly don't know what the big deal is. The NFL didn't ban steroids in the 1980s because no one was using them. Under that reasoning, the league also might have banned Midol and Tampax.



There's a strong belief that many, many players used steroids in football. Hell, there's a strong belief that some (or perhaps many) still use substances that are a step ahead of the current testing procedures.



The thing that continues to amaze us on this whole issue is that the league's semi-effective efforts to eradicate 'roids from the game has enabled pro football to stay under the radar in connection with the current brouhaha engulfing baseball.



And if Haslett is guilty of anything, it's stupidity in the first degree. With the NFL deftly avoiding the spotlight at a time when baseball and its greasy-haired commish are taking all of the heat on this one, Has decides to dig a knife into 20-year-old scars that, previously, the media and the public had overlooked and/or forgotten about.



Then again, perhaps scrutiny is inevitable. Several Raiders have been linked to the slowly-unfolding BALCO clustermess in the Bay Area, and the Charlotte Observer is reporting that several Panthers have been spotted in the past at a pharmacy 100 miles south of Charlotte, to fill 'scripts written by the South Carolina doctor who might or might not be linked to dispensing 'roids to current and former Carolina players.



And that story won't be going away any time soon, since 60 Minutes plans to do a story on the link between Dr. James Shortt and the Panthers.



For Haslett, the practical consequence is that the much-beloved former Bill likely has delayed if not destroyed his chances of ever coming back to Buffalo as the head coach -- especially if this whole issue continues to get play as more and more former players try to 'splain that they didn't use steroids, regardless of whether they did.


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Roids are fun, aren't they?

[POJO_Risin]

Well...

as far as the roids go...it is interesting how many Steeler players have gone bonkers since they retired...or left the game...

Webster...Hasselrig...and someone else more recently...