‘Williams Wall’ Stops Suspension

National Football League Blogcast, NFL Blogcast

Minnesota Vikings defensive tackles Pat Williams and Kevin Williams stop running backs for a living. Today, they stopped the National Football League from suspending them — at least temporarily. To follow up yesterday’s post on the suspension of six NFL players for violating the league’s anti-doping policy, both Vikings DTs — Pat and Kevin Williams — were issued a temporary restraining order by a Minneapolis judge today, blocking the NFL’s four-game suspension. Hennepin County District Judge Gary Larson issued the temporary restraining order at the players’ request, saying he wanted more time to hear arguments in the case. No further hearing date immediately was set and I still don’t know if the “Williams Wall” will be uniform against Detroit Sunday. This ruling didn’t sit well with the NFL. League spokesman Greg Aiello said:

“The NFL Policy on Steroids and Related Substances is a collectively bargained program between the league and the NFL Players Association. The program and the Collective Bargaining Agreement expressly bar precisely this kind of lawsuit. All of the steroid program’s rules and procedures are established in agreement with the players’ union. In other words, the players have agreed to the rules and the procedures that they are now challenging.”

Judge Larson said he would make himself available to reconsider the issue. He also said he expected lawyers for the NFL, who participated in this hearing by phone, would take the issue to federal court in Minneapolis to get the suspensions reinstated. It appears this case is far from over.

I’m going to side with the players on this one. The league knew that a banned substance (Bumetanide) was present in the product StarCaps but chose not to share that information with the players. That’s wrong. Yes, ultimately the players are responsible for what they put into their bodies. I understand that. But if the product they are taking does not list a banned substance — like Bumetanide — as an ingredient, it’s fair to assume the product is OK to use. And if the league knows about this product being tainted and doesn’t share that information, it’s almost as if they are purposely working against the players. Sure, my advice would be to take EAS supplements and nothing else. Those products are certified as OK to use by the NFL. But if the rule says not to ingest specific ingredients and a player is taking a product that doesn’t list any of those ingredients, I believe there has to be some leniency.

Source: NFL.com