A 315 pound man with a body mass index over 36 is con­sid­ered obese, accord­ing to the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health. But if he can bench press 225 pounds 35 times, jump 32 inch­es ver­ti­cal­ly and run 40 yards in 4.8 sec­onds, he prob­a­bly plays in the NFL. And we prob­a­bly don’t care what he may have put into his body to facil­i­tate such feats.

Tonight an esti­mat­ed 110 mil­lion Amer­i­cans will watch tech­ni­cal­ly obese but sub­lime­ly ath­let­ic men con­tend for foot­ball suprema­cy. Our indif­fer­ence as to how they acquired such strength and ath­leti­cism expos­es a dou­ble stan­dard in our atti­tude toward ath­let­ic achieve­ment. We shame Alex Rodriguez and Lance Arm­strong as cheaters, but we’ll cheer on two teams whose ranks include sev­er­al play­ers who have been caught tak­ing per­for­mance-enhanc­ing drugs (PEDs) and no doubt many oth­ers who have avoid­ed detection.

On the sur­face, the NFL has been much more aggres­sive than Major League Base­ball in enforc­ing a pol­i­cy against PEDs. It banned steroids in 1983, more than two decades before MLB began test­ing its play­ers.  If ver­bosi­ty were a mea­sure of effec­tive­ness, the NFL’s most recent agree­ment with the play­ers’ union would be a citadel of integri­ty: it runs to 28 pages and begins with the asser­tion that PEDs “have no legit­i­mate place in pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball.”  The test­ing pol­i­cy does catch some play­ers. Between last year’s Super Bowl and the open­ing of the 2013 reg­u­lar sea­son, 20 play­ers test­ed pos­i­tive for what the league calls “pro­hib­it­ed substances.”

Among them was Den­ver Bron­cos line­backer Von Miller, whose effort to beat the drug test was com­i­cal in its inep­ti­tude.  He con­spired with the per­son assigned to col­lect his urine to sub­mit some­one else’s spec­i­men instead. The scheme might have worked, had not a sec­ond col­lec­tor dis­cov­ered that Miller was not even in town when the sam­ple was taken.

“He’s fast,” one source said of Miller, “but he’s not that fast.”

He is indeed fast for a man his size (6’3”, 246 pounds as a rook­ie), run­ning 40 yards in 4.53 sec­onds, mak­ing him a “top per­former” in that cat­e­go­ry, as well as in his ver­ti­cal leap (37 inch­es), stand­ing broad jump (10’ 6”) and three oth­er more tech­ni­cal categories.

Might PEDs have some­thing to do with that? We will nev­er know, but after play­ing just two sea­sons in the NFL, Miller already had flunked two drug tests. So far, so good in sea­son 3, which began with a six-game sus­pen­sion for the urine cup fias­co.  He will miss tonight’s NFL show­case event because of a knee injury, not for his use of PEDs.

When it comes to failed steroid tests, Miller has a lot of com­pa­ny on both sides of the ball. The Seat­tle Sea­hawks lead the NFL in PED sus­pen­sions since Pete Car­roll became their coach in 2010. They have 5 play­ers who have been sus­pend­ed dur­ing that time, not count­ing Richard Sher­man, who won his appeal of a 4‑game sus­pen­sion because of what ESPN calls “the botched han­dling of a leaky col­lec­tion cup.” The Bron­cos are sec­ond in the league in PED sus­pen­sions over that peri­od with 4. So this Super Bowl pits the PED cham­pi­ons of the NFC against their AFC coun­ter­parts. May the bet­ter (juiced) team win.

But it’s wrong to sin­gle out the Bron­cos and Sea­hawks. PED use in the NFL has a long and dis­tin­guished pedi­gree. The San Diego Tri­bune in Sep­tem­ber 2008  pub­lished a list of 185 play­ers who had been caught using steroids over three decades.

The list includes play­ers at every posi­tion, from every team, and from vir­tu­al­ly every year over the past three decades. There are 52 play­ers with “Pro Bowl” on their resumes, and four who have been induct­ed into the Pro Foot­ball Hall of Fame. … It also includes at least four cham­pi­onship teams that had mul­ti­ple play­ers: the 1963 AFL cham­pi­on Charg­ers, the 2002 AFC cham­pi­on Oak­land Raiders, the 2004 NFC cham­pi­on Car­oli­na Pan­thers and the 1970s Pitts­burgh Steel­ers, who won four Super Bowls from 1974 through ’80.

There are no bomb­shell names unveiled for the first time, nor is it con­sid­ered com­pre­hen­sive or pro­por­tion­al, just the best snap­shot that could be pro­vid­ed through those sources. It is believed to only scratch the sur­face of actu­al usage in pro foot­ball dur­ing that time, accord­ing to dop­ing experts.

The notion that PED use in the NFL is much more exten­sive than has been dis­closed is shared by at least some play­ers. Ari­an Fos­ter of the Hous­ton Tex­ans cre­at­ed a bit of stir a year ago when he said, “I’ve seen and been around guys who juice. I’ve seen all kinds of things. If you can’t get moti­vat­ed, you can’t get motivated.”

The league and play­ers union, under­stand­ably, push back against such asser­tions and note that they test play­ers for PEDs. But it is odd that after years of nego­ti­a­tions, they have yet to reach agree­ment on test­ing for human growth hor­mone (HGH), a very com­mon per­for­mance-enhanc­ing sub­stance. Asked this week about when the union would come to terms with the league on HGH test­ing, DeMau­rice Smith, who heads the union, said that the agree­ment is “98 per­cent done.”  In the mean­time, play­ers have been get­ting away with HGH use 100 per­cent of the time.

Not that test­ing is any panacea. One of the most reveal­ing bits of infor­ma­tion in Alex Rodriguez’s law­suit con­test­ing his recent 162-game sus­pen­sion is the suc­cess of his efforts to beat the league’s drug test­ing pro­gram. The court fil­ings include the text of the arbitrator’s rul­ing, which in turn repro­duces the detailed instruc­tions to Rodriguez from Antho­ny Bosch, who admit­ted to sup­ply­ing A‑Rod’s PEDs. The instruc­tions called for dai­ly sub­cu­ta­neous injec­tions of HGH, twice dai­ly trans­der­mal appli­ca­tions of two dif­fer­ent testos­terone creams and a sub­lin­gual testos­terone lozenge known as a troche “pri­or to game as need­ed” (pp. 5–6).

Under baseball’s test­ing pro­gram, play­ers can be ran­dom­ly test­ed after each game, so such a reg­i­men would seem risky for any play­er. The arbitrator’s rul­ing includes this account of an April 2012 text exchange in which Bosch advised Rodriguez on beat­ing the test.

“If by any chance they make you piss, wait the longest you can and don’t use the pink [a testos­terone cream] until after.” When Rodriguez indi­cat­ed he would not be required to “piss” until after the game was over (until around “11pmish”) and asked whether he could use “pink before the game,” Bosch told Rodriguez he had “no wor­ries” and was “good to go” [pp. 8–9 of Arbitrator’s Report].

From the sum­mer of 2010, when his rela­tion­ship with Bosch began, through August 2013, when his sus­pen­sion was announced, the league test­ed Rodriguez a dozen times for PED use. He passed every test [p. 13].

A‑Rod is now a pari­ah in his own sport, suing the com­mis­sion­er for order­ing his sus­pen­sion and his union for poor­ly rep­re­sent­ing him, while alleg­ing that the arbi­tra­tor who ruled against him demon­strat­ed “bla­tant par­tial­i­ty” [p. 2 of Rodriguez com­plaint]. The Commissioner’s office, mean­while, trum­pets Rodriguez’s down­fall as evi­dence that it is clean­ing up the game.

Hard­ly. The league’s test­ing pol­i­cy now looks ludi­crous in light of how sound­ly Rodriguez beat it. Base­ball only caught Rodriguez (and 12 oth­er play­ers)  by hap­pen­stance, as the arbitrator’s rul­ing details. Rodriguez might nev­er have been caught had it not been for a falling out between Bosch and a man named Porter Fis­ch­er, a client of Bosch’s who became a dis­grun­tled investor. Some­time in late 2012 or ear­ly 2013, Fis­ch­er stole Bosch’s note­books that con­tained detailed infor­ma­tion about the PED reg­i­mens of A‑Rod and oth­er play­ers. When Bosch refused to pay the $4,000 that Fis­ch­er believed he was owed, Fis­ch­er turned the records over to an obscure pub­li­ca­tion known as the Mia­mi New Times [p. 9 of arbi­tra­tor ruling].

The publication’s sto­ry about Bosch set off a bid­ding war between Rodriguez and MLB Com­mis­sion­er Bud Selig for Bosch’s alle­giance. Rodriguez won the ear­ly rounds.  He promised to pay Bosch’s legal bills and coaxed him into issu­ing a press state­ment in which he denied any asso­ci­a­tion with A‑Rod [p. 10]. In exchange, A‑Rod paid Bosch’s attor­ney $25,000.

Then Selig’s team entered the fray. After Fis­ch­er refused the Commissioner’s $125,000 offer to pur­chase the records, the league found anoth­er man who was will­ing to turn them over for that same price [p. 11]. Final­ly, in June, the Com­mis­sion­er obtained the coop­er­a­tion of Bosch, in exchange for pay­ing his legal fees, $2,400 per day for “per­son­al secu­ri­ty” and any dam­ages that Rodriguez might obtain against him in a civ­il suit [p. 12].

Thus did the Com­mis­sion­er claim his scalp. His test­ing pro­gram, mean­while, has been exposed as inef­fec­tu­al. So long as there are peo­ple like Bosch will­ing to sup­ply play­ers with PEDs and coach them on how to avoid detec­tion, play­ers will use.

That is as true of foot­ball as base­ball. The dif­fer­ence is that, while the pub­lic and the lords of base­ball have shunned some of the great­est stars of a gen­er­a­tion – Bar­ry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rodriguez among them – pro foot­ballers who cheat suf­fer few last­ing consequences.

Fans tonight will be cheer­ing on play­ers on both teams who have failed drug tests.  None will be called a cheater or com­pete under a cloud of shame.  A‑Rod will no doubt be watch­ing the game too, ban­ished, ostra­cized and won­der­ing why ath­letes in oth­er sports don’t share his fate.