Phil Sheridan: Eagles' Hanson snared in NFL drug net

Welcome to the snare, Joselio Hanson.

The Eagles cornerback was suspended yesterday for testing positive for a diuretic after the NFC championship game in January. A diuretic is not a performance-enhancing drug. It isn't a steroid and it isn't human-growth hormone. It is a drug that makes you urinate.

It is banned by the NFL and other organizations because steroid users take diuretics to help clear their urine of the evidence of cheating. Evidence of masking, the logic says, is evidence of cheating.

According to his attorney, Hanson's diuretic is evidence only of General Tso's Chicken.

The problem with Hanson's Chinese Food Defense is that it follows in the long tradition of absolutely ridiculous excuses offered by cheaters. Ben Johnson said someone spiked his ginseng energy drink. Floyd Landis blamed Jack Daniel's. Tyler Hamilton came up with an involved story involving a stillborn twin. German runner Dieter Baumann claimed someone dosed his toothpaste.

It remains a mystery why someone bloated with Chinese food would take a pill that made him go No. 1 instead of No. 2. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether Hanson is telling the truth or lying. The policy isn't meant to put an end to PED use. It is there to catch the statistically inevitable handful of players who make stupid mistakes every year.

Hanson made a stupid mistake. Diuretics are banned. He used a diuretic. Now he's suspended for four games.

He became the second Philadelphia athlete to be suspended after playing in a championship-round game. The Phillies' J.C. Romero was suspended 50 games for testing positive for androstenedione, even though Major League Baseball acknowledged the substance was not listed on the label of an over-the-counter supplement.

Like Hanson, Romero made a mistake. That doesn't mean either player is innocent of more advanced cheating. It doesn't mean either player is guilty. It just means they got caught up in their sports' efforts to appear tough on cheating.

Unless you're unbelievably naive or you haven't been paying attention, you suspect large numbers of professional athletes are using HGH, as well as designer steroids of the kind discovered by accident in the Balco case. The players are too big and too fast, the money too tempting, and the testing too inadequate to reach any other reasonable conclusion.

None of the major pro sports leagues tests for HGH. For the most part, players know when they are going to be tested and can tailor their drug regimens to avoid coming up positive. When you get down to it, the tests are really IQ tests. If you're stupid enough or arrogant enough to get caught, you get suspended.

Look at the big names linked to steroids. Most of the baseball stars were found out through paper trails and testimony generated by federal investigations. The few stars who actually tested positive for a banned substance - Manny Ramirez, Rafael Palmeiro - were simply careless. Otherwise, baseball has caught and suspended mostly second- and third-tier players.

The NFL has caught some stars - Shawne Merriman, Rodney Harrison, Julius Peppers - but it strains credulity that its policies are as effective as the league likes to pretend. The sheer size and freakish physiques of many players stand as testament - just as the muscle-bound specimens in baseball told your eyes before the testing started - that something fishy is going on.

David Cornwell, the attorney whose prepared statement is for now the only word from Hanson, also represented players suspended in the so-called StarCaps case. Five players from the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints tested positive for a diuretic contained in, but not labeled by, a supplement called StarCaps.

Those suspensions have been on hold since a judge ruled that the Vikings players' lawsuit, challenging their suspensions under Minnesota workplace laws, had to be settled first.

The Eagles seem upset that Hanson was suspended while five other players have been allowed to compete after testing positive for essentially the same substance. But the circumstances are very different.

Cornwell represents the Vikings players as well as Hanson. He also represented Merriman when the San Diego defensive end was suspended two years ago. At that point, Cornwell was widely quoted trying to downplay the presence of Nandrolone in Merriman's urine test.

Nandrolone is about as anabolic as steroids get. Merriman served his suspension, and deservedly so.

He was the rare big fish to get caught in the NFL's carefully constructed net, which only proves that a big fish isn't necessarily a smart fish.

Contact columnist Phil Sheridan at 215-854-2844 or psheridan@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/philsheridan.