Last month, Al Jazeera shocked the sports world with a report connecting multiple professional athletes to performance-enhancing drugs. For the NFL, the biggest name attached to the report belongs to Peyton Manning, whose wife allegedly received multiple shipments of HGH from the Guyer Institute in Indianapolis.
The NFL has said it will investigate the situation, Manning has said he welcomes it, but it remains unclear whether and to what extent the league will probe the matter as aggressively as it explored Tom Brady’s involvement in and/or knowledge of the alleged deflation of footballs by the Patriots. While it’s not unusual for an NFL investigation to occur discreetly, #DeflateGate was sufficient open and obvious to make Patriots fans expect a similar approach.
Those who wonder whether the NFL will simply brush the Manning situation under the rug will be intrigued by the latest development in the story, from T.J. Quinn of ESPN. Quinn reports that Major League Baseball and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency are collaborating regarding the alleged involvement of baseball players. The NFL, per Quinn, declined.
“Our review of the matter continues,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told Quinn. “We do not comment on specifics of ongoing reviews.”
McCarthy is accurate, as it relates to the normal, run-of-the-mill case. But without a full-blown independent (or “independent”) investigation with a vow to make all findings public, the likely outcome is that the NFL will simply never say anything about the investigation, with no commentary on what was done, what was learned, and what if any conclusions were drawn regarding what the league decided was or wasn’t “more likely than not.”