AsylumGuido

Just listened to an interview with Zack Strief on NFL Radio with James Lofton and Bruce Murray. When asked about Ingram, Strief said that there isn't a better individual on the team than Mark Ingram and he is sure that Ingram would never do anything consciously that wasn't allowed. He was then asked about supplements and the 24 hour per day phone service that players can use to verify than a product they are considering in not included on the banned list. Strief said that the system is broken and does not work. He said one manufacturer could have 50 products they make. Thirty of them contain a component banned by the NFL. The other twenty are not supposed to have any of those components. He said the problem is that at times there can be cross pollution in processes that could introduce a tiny trace of a banned substance into a product that is supposed to be clean. The reason why this can get by is that the supplement business is not controlled by the FDA.

So, basically, a player can call the official number and ask if a product was okay to take and he would be told "yes". Then, if he came up with a trace of a banned substance from a tainted product he would be in violation of the PED policy. You can fight it "vigorously" as a player, but you are going to lose.

Very interesting. Perhaps Strief knows what actually happened. Or perhaps he was just answering the host's question.

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill

K Major

Deuce M & Shanle (regarding Sudafed being banned) have had similar opinions over the years as it relates to the "system".

Unfortunate for MI.

AsylumGuido

That is if that was what happened to Ingram. I still believe that the way the new agent mentioned that the violating substance fell under the "permissive use exemption" indicates it was not a tainted product. I also believe that the firing of his agent almost immediately after he would have been notified of a violation points toward his believing that he was taking a substance for a valid condition that had been OK'd by the league.

Still, unfortunate for Ingram.

His legal team has exhausted the appeals process through the league, but can still call for an outside arbiter to review the suspension. That's how Ray Rice got his suspension reduced and that is also how the Saints players wrongly accused of having a "bounty program" got all of their suspensions stricken.

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill

Crusader

That is the reason why as soon as any of the Swedish teams I played for signed a US player we instructed them to stop taking any US produced supplements an to not bring any over here. The risk was just too big.