Come on, let's do this thought experiment.

I don't mean to ask: Would it be a good idea to allow doping? That's a sensible and important question, but we'll leave that to another forum (or thread). For now, just focus on what would happen if these drugs became ubiquitous. What would it be like to be a sports fan?

How would it affect football, basketball, hockey, tennis, ping pong? What would happen to the Olympics? Which records would be broken, and which would remain? Would sports become more or less popular? Would athletes still get sponsorship deals? Would we get used to the drugs? Would they one day seem to be as natural as taking vitamins or drinking gatorade?

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Good question.....I think that all sports would be impacted, positively at first, but then negatively. Numbers would go up: Football -- Rushing yards, sacks, touchdowns, etc. but, this would probably be the least impacted sport, as some form of enhancements have no doubt been going on. BAseball -- homeruns, hits, innings pitched, etc. Basketball -- defense would start to take over (takes more energy to play defense, so that aspect would improve most)..... Players would at first be able to play longer.

But, after a few years, the adverse health consequences would start to take over...think Lyle Alzedo x 100. Not pretty.

Also, it would really trickle down to High School kids....Let's face it...no one cares about adult athletes, as they make their own choices. It is kids that need to be protected.

I disagree. I think that the medicine and technology would evolve to allow athletes to stay healthy and keep breaking records. You will invariably get some athletes that overdose, burn out, etc., but you get that now anyway. The bottom line is that athletes have every incentive to stay healthy and in the game, and to avoid unecessary risks.

No matter what we think now, I think it's legalized doping is going to happen anyway, at some point. Maybe not now, maybe not soon, but we're moving in that direction. With better genetic understanding and research, plastic surgery, pacemakers, the ubiquity of mental-health promoting drugs etc, people are slowly becoming more comfortable with and modifying their bodies.

I think it would destroy whatever sport allowed doping first. You think a strike is bad for a sport? Try open use of steroids and see where your sponsors and fans go. Who wants to watch athletes who most people regard as overpaid anyway, cheat? You'd hear about athletes beating their wives, killing them like that wrestler. You'd see more unsportsman like conduct on the fields. Lets say for whatever reason all the big sports allowed it at once Would college sports allow it? If they did, would high school sports? Would the cut off be 18 year olds? If you want to make it into the majors you'd need to get a jump on everyone else, so you'd see kids doping. Going out for a college track and field team? You'd need to be doping in high school. Lets face it, there is always bleeding of age restricted substances a few years below the actual age requirement. Its not hard for someone in high school to get smokes. Its not hard for a college freshman to get booze. Of course you'd see a ton of records broken in sports. You'd probably also see more injuries in contact sports like hockey and football. There is some natural characteristics that steroids can't help such as reflexes and hand eye coordination. That and everyone's skull would become freakishly huge. Who would want to watch real life bobble heads play?

Football would be ruined. Football puts a premium on agression anyway. Add legal steroids to the mix and heads may, literally, roll. Send juiced players down the field at full speed on a kickoff or punt and see someone get seriously injured. Real football fans don't want to see such injuries.

Injuries in all sports would increase, as steroids have a tendency to stregthen some muscles, but not all, and they have no effect on the bones. I think of the SNL skit where a weightlifter rips his own arms off, or of Sammy Sosa throwing out his back by sneezing. Look at Bonds' recent injuries. McGuire retired shortly after his home run record chase.

You wouldn't see much change in football, since most of the players (at least at the big-time college level and beyond) are already juiced. Think of the increase in recent years in tendon-from-bone separation injuries (ruptured Achilles', bicep avulsions, tricep avulsions, etc.) - these are almost certainly due to players using steroids to strengthen muscles beyond the tensile strength of the tendons anchoring them to bone.

And lest you say "but they're all being tested," this is exactly the kind of area in which the technology for cheating is always one step ahead of the technology for detection. In other words, it takes a while after the development of a new designer steroid for us to come up with a test to detect artificial administration of that steroid; e.g., we still don't have a really effective test for human growth hormone. So in other words, most players will continue to juice, but only the ones using less up-to-date methods will get caught.

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but high school players are already doping in response to the pressures/rewards involved in college athletic scholarships and pro contracts.

I think that the overall effect would not be striking in a lot of sports, for the simple reason that drug testing is an area in which the technology of detection has always tended to lag a step behind the technology of cheating. In other words, most of the athletes from some of our high-profile sports have been juicing from day one, but only the ones using outdated methods of cheating get caught. Look at Barry Bonds; he has as much as admitted to unwittingly using steroids, and yet he has not shrunk noticeably from his pre-testing days. Likewise Giambi, Sosa, and the others who were under suspicion back then. Faced with regular testing, they did their research and found sources of non-detectable performance-enhancers. I think we can be fairly certain that a large proportion of NFL players do the same, given the superhuman physiques and high frequency of tendon-from-bone injuries in the sport these days (the expected result when muscle strength exceeds the tendon's capability for anchoring said muscle). And it's not just baseball and football; hell, biathletes sometimes get busted for stimulants used to boost concentration. So I think the across-the-board effect would be fairly small, although possibly larger in sports whose low financial stakes previously made the risk/benefit calculation fall in favor of playing within the rules.

On a larger scale, I could see the general public getting used to the idea of their athletes taking these drugs, and I could see a generation of overzealous parents lining up at doctors' offices to get prescriptions for just the right cocktail of drugs to make Johnny an All-American. But ultimately I think that this kind of perception of athletes will diminish them in the eyes of sports fans and make them seem less physically than pharmacologically gifted. Perhaps a bit of the worship that goes with being a professional athlete would diminish. And the more I think about it, the more it seems that this would be a good thing for athlete and spectator alike.