How can you say there is a strict direct testing policy?? Do you know the stats and how it stacks up with other sports. Can I find the following sort of info which I can find for athletes tested at IAAF meets or tennis players, look up a chart that provides the following sort of info;
Tom Brady 18 tests between x and y dates
7 blood tests and 9 urine tests
6 in competition and 12 out of competition test
4 specific test for HGH
3 specific test for EPO
This is the sort of info you get from the sports bodies i mentioned above. I doubt you know if the NFL actually catches more than some other more and better tested sports. They might be more tests than AFL but I doubt they get even close to what some Olympic sports do. The 2 big drugs in NFL would be steroids for power and strength and HGH. I have little confidence HGH tests will catch players. No positive between 1980 and 2010 world wide and about a dozen since. Every Olympic year there is a shortage of HGH worldwide.
The NFL is about turning a blind idea as much as any other sports. Enough people know its rife but they keep quiet about it. NBC or Fox are not going to mention drugs in their Super Bowl coverage. No better example of this that when Baltimore Ravens star Ray Lewis in mid October 2012 at the age of 7 tears his triceps - one I think off the bone. He goes to an alternative Sports Medicine Lab and supposedly tries Deer antler spray. I'm sure he used other stuff and makes back for the play offs in January and eventually plays in the winning Super Bowl a few weeks later. A miraculous recovery. But still most of the media and fans turned a blind eye at such a defying recovery. How many times was he tested between mid October and January and then the next month he played?
The only positive thing I will say about US sports and PEDs, is that if they decide to go after someone who is blatantly cheating or they believe its too important to let the uncertainty hang around, then they can throw as much resources as they want to at the investigation and get the right people to do the job as opposed to an Oz government agency.
Case in point is MLB going after Alex Rodriguez and the Miami clinic scandal in 2013 and early 2014. But Commissioner Bud Selig learnt from the BALCO/ Victor Conte dramas of the early 2000's and how that dragged on with Conte's clients Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and the Sammy Sosa and Roger Clement cases etc that took several years and went thru the courts and Jose Canseco coming out and saying who used drugs, freely and happily admitting he used drugs and even wrote a best selling book about it. As I wrote a few pages back Commissioner Selig said do what you need to do to his COO - because he never had the balls to do this 10 years earlier and MLB took a massive hit and has paid dearly for it. Selig and his COO showed what can be done when you don't **** around at the crematorium and actually want to get to the truth and not run away from it because it migh hurt your image - like Andy D and his pals have done for a couple of decades.
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/hot-topic-drugs-and-afl.972243/page-119#post-36834511
"At the Manhattan headquarters of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred had his sights on Bosch. A lawyer by training, Manfred runs Major League Baseball as the chief operating officer. Commissioner Selig told him to do what he had to do to get to the bottom of the scandal.
Manfred hired the former director of the United States Secret Service and a number of retired FBI agents--more than 30 investigators in all. In the underworld of Miami, word got around. And a call came to Major League Baseball. Turned out there were more documents from Bosch's Biogenesis clinic."