The National Football League (NFL) is now considering giving the control of its steroid testing program to an outside agency particularly to World Anti-Doping Agency or WADA. The executive of the league issued a statement that they are now reviewing their current policies on steroid testing due to the legal problems that they are encountering right now. The Starcaps case of Minnesota Vikings Pat and Kevin Williams, which is still being fought in court, is also a test on the existing relationship of the league and the players union.

In an interview by Mark Maske of the Washington Post, the league counsel and executive vice president of labor, Jeff Pash said that the recent ruling will affect their existing steroid testing program. “It doesn’t serve anyone’s interests to have a program like this fragmented by wide-ranging state laws. If we can’t administer the program on our own, we might have to turn to an outside entity like WADA,” he said. He also added that shutting down the program is not an option since it served everyone well. There is also a possibility that the control of the testing program could be placed under a federal agency.

Recently, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Pat and Kevin Williams. Although they rejected some of the claims of the players, the court cited that the league’s policies on anabolic steroids and related substances were not in accordance with the Minnesota Workplace Law thus sending back the case to a state court. The Drug and Alcohol Testing in the Workplace Act and the Lawful Consumable Products Act were allegedly violated by the league. With this ruling, the league will be facing a difficult situation since players on one team could be subjected to a different set of drug-testing rules than players on other teams depending on what state they are playing.

The league may fail to implement its steroid testing program with uniformity and the ruling could imperil the independence of the program according to Pash. He also said that their program which was praised by the Congress during the steroid hearings is existing for some decades now. “We’ve had for the better part of two decades a collectively bargained program which I think has worked very well, and most people who have looked at it think it’s worked very well. It has been a real credit to the NFL and the NFL players,” he said.

However, Pash is not happy with the union’s failure to support it in the StarCaps case because it may compromise the program. “Now we have players being subject to two sets of rules. Who knows, six months from now it might be 10 sets of rules,” he added. The chief legal counsel is still optimistic that this issue will be resolved by the league and the union officials in their next meeting. He reiterated that the league has “a range of further court options” in handling the case of the Williamses.

The union’s assistant executive director of external affairs, George Atallah had a different view on the issue. He said that the union’s intentions were not to challenge the overall system. It is the obligation of the player’s union to protect the players from an isolated abuse and injustice from within the system. The union is still in favor of keeping the current steroid testing program intact according to the report of Maske. A new system where an independent arbitrator which will hear cases for disciplinary measures imposed by the league against erring players is also likely to be discussed in their next meeting.

The 4-game suspension of the Williamses is still on hold this season since the trial in the Hennepin state court would start at the end of the current season. The suspension was due to the presence of Bumetanide, a masking agent for steroids, was detected from the players. The players contend that they do not know that Starcaps, which is a weight loss supplement, contains the banned substance. The league also decided to postpone the suspension of other NFL players for violating their drug policies. It include New Orleans Saints defensive ends Will Smith and Charles Grant.

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