Ron Cook: '70s Steelers are Guilty Like Bonds

Mike Webster


[Mr. Cook fails to point out the fact that steroid use was not illegal during the 1970s...as it is now. Thus, a difference between Bonds and those football players of the 70s can certainly be found.

Is there really any knowledgeable football fan out there who didn't know that some of the Steelers' offensive linemen were taking steroids back in the 70s?

I agree with Mr. Cook that Steve Courson's book is very interesting...I also recommend it. I guess it could be construed as problematic that Steve Courson was one of my favorite Steelers at the time.

I recently read Mark Madden's piece suggesting that Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire weren't cheating when they set the single-season homerun records because steroid use was not against MLB's rules at the time. I might suggest that such use was against the law of the land and a compelling case for cheating may be made as a result. - jtf]

Cook: '70s Steelers are guilty like Bonds
Sunday, March 27, 2005
By Ron Cook, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It's so easy to look at Barry Bonds as a fraud. We don't like him. We never liked him, going back to his first season with the Pirates in 1986. We don't want to believe he hit those 73 home runs legitimately or that he'll ever be the true home run king no matter how many more home runs he hits than Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron. It has to be the steroids.

But it's a lot harder to come down on the Super Steelers. They were our heroes. They won four Super Bowls. They made us proud. It wasn't the steroids. It was all talent and hard work. That's our story and we're sticking to it.

You know what?

We're hypocritical as heck.

Bonds and the Steelers of the 1970s became uncomfortably linked last week when New Orleans Saints coach, former NFL player and Avalon native Jim Haslett shared his thoughts on steroids use with the Post-Gazette's Ed Bouchette. Haslett admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs when he played and estimated that 50 percent of the NFL players in the 1980s -- including all of the linemen -- were users. He also said he believed the rampant use of steroids started with the Steelers of the 1970s, a contention that instantly made him something of a pariah in his hometown. The backlash was so sudden and so acute that Haslett felt the need to apologize the next day for mentioning the Steelers.

How sad.

The man merely spoke what he believed to be the truth.

For the most part, he was right.

Steroids use in the NFL didn't start with the Steelers. It was around for more than a decade before they won their first Super Bowl after the 1974 season. But there's little doubt the success of those Steelers teams helped to popularize performance-enhancing drugs. Haslett wasn't wrong about that.

It's understandable why Dan Rooney, who went so far as to question Haslett's sanity, wants to protect the Steelers' legacy. For the same reasons, he wants you to believe the NFL's current steroids-testing plan is an enormous success even though the experts will tell you the players always have and always will find a way to beat the system because their chemists are one step ahead of the league's testers. It makes it easier to sleep at night. Steroids make everyone feel so dirty, especially now that they are under so much scrutiny because of Bonds and Mark McGwire.
But not even Rooney, probably the most powerful and respected man in the NFL this side of Paul Tagliabue, can rewrite history.

Go to one of the old book stores. See if you can find Steve Courson's "False Glory," published in 1991. It was a fascinating read then and is even more fascinating now. Courson, who played for the Steelers from 1977-83, detailed his and his teammates' steroids use.

If you're looking for another Jose Canseco tell-all book, you're going to be disappointed. Courson did not name names. He didn't out teammates the way Canseco did to McGwire. The purpose of his book wasn't so much to make money as it was to shine a light on a long-standing NFL problem and maybe, in the process, educate a few young athletes about steroids. He had made national headlines six years earlier by admitting his steroid use to Sports Illustrated.

Courson exonerated the Steelers' defensive linemen -- "In those days, few defensive linemen did [steroids]," he wrote -- which is why L.C. Greenwood could go on a national radio show the other day and say, with good conscience, that Haslett's assertion was the damnedest thing he ever heard.

But Courson wrote that 75 percent of the Steelers' offensive linemen took steroids at one time or another and would sit around as a group discussing their usage the way other men might discuss their wife or girlfriend, a night at the bar or a good hunting trip.

"Disgruntled players throughout the league called us the 'Steroid Team,' as if performance-enhancing drugs were the sole reason for our success," Courson wrote, adding how maniacal the Steelers' linemen were in the weight room.

"The fact is, our [steroids] usage was the same -- give or take -- as most of the NFL teams at that time."

Rooney's contention the Steelers didn't have a steroids problem because Chuck Noll preached against their usage is almost laughable if you believe Courson's book.

"Chuck never encouraged steroid use on the Steelers, but he conveniently and most definitely turned his head to it," Courson wrote. He cited an example of Noll calling him out in front of the team and screaming -- "All you want to do is body-build and take steroids!" -- after his hamstring was pulled in training camp in 1983. "That was a full two years before I admitted my steroid usage in Sports Illustrated," Courson added. "Evidently, [Noll] was not as blind or ignorant of the steroid issue as he would have the politicians and public believe."

If that's true, that doesn't make Noll a bad guy. It just makes him the same as any other coach who isn't against an edge that might help his team win a championship. It also makes him the same as the baseball owners who really didn't want to hear about steroids as Bonds, McGwire and Sammy Sosa were hitting home runs and bringing fans to the ballparks.

Sadly, it also leaves us with a conclusion we'd just rather not face:

If Bonds' achievements are tainted in any way by steroids, then so are the Super Steelers' triumphs.

We can't have it both ways.

(Ron Cook can be reached at rcook@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1525.)