NFL Tilts Stupidly At Stupid Windmill

The NFL has exciting new plans to implement a test of dubious efficacy for a substance of uncertain benefits. Whatever. We've been through this before, so I'll just note two things:

1.) At last check, the HGH blood test had returned a single positive out of thousands of extractions, and that one was a targeted test administered only after anti-doping authorities received a tip. (The rugby player who was caught, Terry Newton, later killed himself.)

2.) Pro Football Talk smartly says drug testing is "more about public relations than anything else," then bafflingly says the NFL "deserves kudos." What? I don't mean to pick on PFT, but this sort of sentiment seems to be an awfully common one among the Serious Football Media, and it gives off that unctuous, suffocating, Politico-y air of grading human events on their effectiveness as brand management — i.e., we all know workable drug testing is an impossible dream in a world where the quacks with the test tubes are always at least five steps ahead of the fellows with the piss cups, but kudos to the NFL for successfully demagoguing the issue, right?

HGH testing part of new CBA; testing expected to begin this season [PFT]