Drug raids test whether NFL too big to fail: Opinionline

Dave Zirin, The Nation : "The recent raid on five NFL teams by the Drug Enforcement Agency to see if teams were doubling as illegal painkiller dispensaries has little to do with concerns about (players). The real story here is that these raids happened at all. The NFL employs 26 full-time lobbyists and spends about $1.5 million per election. ... Commissioner Roger Goodell's league has long carried itself like the sporting equivalent of Goldman-Sachs, simply too big to fail. Those days of anti-accountability are over."

John McMullen, The Sports Network : "The investigation is believed to focus on potential distribution of drugs without prescriptions or labels ... stemming from a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in May by more than 1,300 retired NFL players. ... This is really only a wink from the DEA in an attempt to alert the league to not be so overt with its dirty laundry, far from a real attempt to clean up the profession. After all, the DEA already has both anecdotal and concrete evidence that this behavior has been going on for years."

Robert Silverman, The Daily Beast : "After decades of treating everyone that pulls on a helmet and pads like so much disposable meat, could this be the scandal-du-jour that proves to be the tipping point? Will the viewing public come to realize that football isn't really an all-American national pastime, but more closely resembles a bloodsport that leaves an ever-growing list of casualties in its wake?"

Will Leitch, Bloomberg : "The raids represent something new and ominous for the league. The fact is, almost nothing in the NFL is a secret anymore. ... This is a league that's so profitable, with a public so thirsty for information, that it's over-covered from every possible angle. ... But these raids stunned everyone. ... It was a level above what anyone could have anticipated, and even as the public has focused on football, Washington, responsive to a different sort of public opinion, is still paying attention."

Ben Shapiro, Breitbart : "The sports networks were predictably outraged about the revelation of the NFL's nefarious connections with illicit drugs, just as they had been with regard to revelations about steroids in baseball and brain injuries in football players. Shock always replaces self-reflection for the media elite, who make millions off the physically crushing billion dollar sports they cover. They then act shocked when others break the rules in order to enter the world of those billion dollar sports."

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