Peyton Manning’s denials and defenses of the reports of HGH use need to get more convincing. His words need to get more direct. His defenders need to start hacking away at the message instead of the messenger. The source had better get thoroughly debunked rather than just ridiculed.
Because now, still less than a day after the accusations in Saturday night’s Al Jazeera report, it’s too easy to believe Manning did it.
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In fact, Manning could make a much better case for why he would do it, not why he wouldn’t. When it comes to HGH and similar performance enhancers, a player like Manning is practically the ideal client.
Even if he wasn’t one of the best quarterbacks who ever played, he’s still an aging, beaten-up veteran playing a brutally physical sport, who, in 2011, was coming off surgery that sapped the strength from the arm that made him a legend. Back then, the NFL and NFLPA hadn’t nailed down a testing plan. He didn’t want to stop playing. Here was a way not to. Career saved and image protected.
That’s believable. Not to say that Manning is not. But that’s the choice we have now. Any other argument you’re hearing is a pump-fake.
The Broncos and Colts are defending him . So are his agent and his new crisis expert, Ari Fleischer. The words are angry and passionate. The most definitive ones, though, come from the Broncos, oddly: “These are false claims.” More of that, and fewer emotions, platitudes and testimonials, would help Manning’s case to the public.
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He’s getting the benefit of the doubt, when it’s not obvious that he deserves it yet.
Many in his legion of supporters are taking the completely-expected shots at the messenger, making baseless claims due to the Arabic title, Al Jazeera. That’s good enough for some small-minded people to discredit the story.
If that’s not, then they’ve presumed Al Jazeera is some cut-rate TMZ-style tabloid set-up. Not true.
And the sources of the story itself have targets on them . Let’s not act as if we haven’t been down this road before, too. Pharmacist Charlie Sly and disgraced runner/undercover snoop Liam Collins are oily, slimy and otherwise unsavory.
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Their story is even more convincing because of it, though.
It’s a trait of all the great snitches in sports PED history. Jose Canseco. Kirk Radomski. Brian McNamee. Anthony Bosch. All had a high “ick” factor. It didn’t automatically brand any of them as liars. Nothing has yet proven that they were.
Wanna call “bull” on something Sly said? Call it on his video retraction. That little routine was way less credible than what he’d said in the hidden videos in the report.
Otherwise, think about the picture they paint: 35-year-old star dealing with potentially career-ending neck surgery sits out a year, returns and plays better than ever, putting up record-setting numbers.
Tales like that got Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and a generation of baseball players on the nation’s doping radar, and they played a sport that took far less of a devastating toll on their bodies.
In fact, a handful of baseball players named in the report have gotten far less than the full-court press defense that Manning has. The same goes for the other NFL players named. Just a shrug.
There’s time for Manning to make his case. Because he hasn’t completely made it yet.