Joe Namath: PEDs in baseball much worse than Deflategate
Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath says he believes that Major League Baseball's problems with performance-enhancing drugs over the years are far worse than what the NFL is going through with Deflategate and the New England Patriots.
The NFL suspended Patriots quarterback Tom Brady four games without pay for his role in the scandal. The team was fined $1 million and will lose a first-round draft pick in 2016 and its fourth-round draft pick in 2017 after the league said it was "more probable than not" that Brady knew about two Patriots locker room staff members tampering with footballs. Brady’s ban was “for conduct detrimental to the integrity of the NFL.”
MLB's most recent high-profile scandal involving PEDs concluded when New York Yankees designated hitter Alex Rodriguez and 12 other major leaguers were suspended for their connection to Biogenesis, a now-defunct South Florida doping clinic that distributed PEDs to professional and high school athletes.
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"There are other sports where rules have been breached," Namath said, according to the New York Daily News. "Performance-enhancing drugs, to me, is a far worse issue, than what we're talking about with the ball being deflated a little bit. I don't even know that it was, mother nature does it on her own, like an automobile tire."
Namath was asked if he felt that Patriots’ punishment levied by the NFL was too harsh.
"I don't know the details of everything. I really don't know,” he said.
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