Williams Wall Has Yet to Crumble, Yet

Another day in the StarCaps drama brings us a little closer to the end. Today with the courts getting invovled it is looking a little more promising for the players to play this weekend, but probably not beyond that. It seems as though there are three main issues at hand.

According to an article from ESPN, via the Associated Press (see link below)

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3747957

the result of the case will boil down to three main points that the judge will consider. The first, coming from the players side and like we talked about yesterday, is that they were not fairly warned by the NFL that the StarCaps pills contained the banned diuretic Bumetanide. According to the NFLPA league officials knew that StarCaps contained the banned substance but withheld this information from players. In addition, the label on the bottle never mentioned it contained the banned substance.

The other point that we can take from the AP article is that the NFL says the burden is completely on the player to know what they are putting in their body. The league says that the collective bargaining agreement "does not require the league to issue warnings about specific products and argues an effective steroid policy requires players to be responsible for what they ingest." (taken from http://www.twincities.com/sports/ci_11137136?nclick_check=1http://www.twincities.com/sports/ci_11137136?nclick_check=1)

The final blow that will probably win it for the NFL is the statement issued by them in 2006 that said, "Balanced Health Products, the distributor of StarCaps, had been added to the NFL's list of banned supplement companies." (also from the above Pioneer Press article)

So it remains to be seen what will happen, but that last statement from the NFL seems pretty incriminating for the players. If the league issues a statement banning all products from a certain company why would a player ever use a product from said company, especially a professional athlete with so much on the line? I thought they had a chance, but if that 2006 statement is true then I can't blame the NFL for suspending the players. Maybe we will add it to the list after all.