Bob Knight: 'Gatorade Is a Performance-Enhancing Drug'

Bob Knight the basketball coach was never afraid to express opinions that might make people upset, whether talking to his players or his bosses or the referees, and Bob Knight the ESPN commentator hasn't lost that trait.

That's never been more apparent than it was when he talked about Alex Rodriguez on ESPN Radio.

Asked to give his own thoughts on A-Rod, Knight said this:

There are a couple of things that I've always thought about performance-enhancing drugs. You know, Gatorade is a performance-enhancing drug. Anything with electrolytes is performance-enhancing. Who decides what you can use and what you can't and on what basis is it decided? That's always amazed me. Why can you use this and you can't use that? Every time I turn on television there's an energy drink being advertised. Why isn't that performance-enhancing?

That's an interesting perspective, and one that won't be popular with Gatorade, an ESPN advertiser. But it's a perspective worth debating: When Gatorade brags on its web site that its scientifically formulated product "delivers performance-enhancing energy to active muscles," how, exactly, is that different than Victor Conte telling athletes that his scientifically formulated products will enhance the performances of their muscles?

I like Knight's outside-the-box thinking on this. I'm not sure that he's correct, but I am sure it's a perspective I haven't heard from the rest of the sports media world. Everywhere else, reporters and pundits are falling all over themselves to say Rodriguez is guilty of a heinous crime. Knight is one of the few giving any thought to how we've decided which performance-enhancers should be criminalized.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-11-2009 @ 1:58PM

abalm43 said...

I think he makes a good point. There are plenty of other things out there that are so mainstream now that they are not taken into consideration.
You could make the argument that contact lenses and laser surgery are "performance enhancing", but no one really makes a big deal about that.

2-11-2009 @ 2:32PM

mandavidl said...

As much as I detest Bob Knight as a hostile and antagonistic dinasour, I get his point re performance enhancing drugs. We live in a culture that values getting an edge in whatever we do. We take vitamins, supplements, prescriptive drugs or whatever to obtain an edge. There are no accidents that every sport uses medicine and homeopathic remedies to not only deal with illnes or injury but to get an edge. But when someone else does it, we get indignant and claim that A-Rod or whomever is illegal. I am not advocating steroids. My main concern actually is that steroids are harmful to the person taken the drug. Forget the fact that they get an edge. And it is just an edge, by the way. Don't think for a moment that anyone else could have put up the numbers that Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriquez did. Steroids did not give them the rapid eye-hand coordination to jerk a pitch out of the part. They would still have records. They are still, even considering steroids as the premier baseball hitters of all-time. Let's get rid of steroids but also get off the indignation that "they" are terrible for taking drugs when we all live in and support a drug-ridden society.

2-11-2009 @ 2:40PM

sharol o. said...

we spend too much time pointing fingers and micro-inspecting in the world of sports (using tax payer money, of course), while our economy falls apart right in front of our faces - BIG TIME!
Everyone ultimately pays for their choices/ decisions. Folks who take steroids end up where they do, often dead, sick, alone. Why does this have to be such a complicated issue?

2-12-2009 @ 2:20AM

tjdevil02 said...

Yahoo already talked about the difference. The stuff that gets cooked up in labs -- the HGH and nandrolone and stuff -- impacts your body chemistry in a way that causes disastrous side effects. Lyle Alzado got a fatal brain tumor from steroids, for example. Football players and wrestlers die of heart attacks before age 50 left and right.

Ever heard of someone dying from a Gatorade overdose? Of course not. Electrolytes and sugars are water-soluble, and therefore you have to be chugging hardcore to OD on them. They don't stay in the system for more than a few hours, and then you crash. By contrast, steroids are in the system for days on end and require hazardous dosages to be effective.

The concern here is that we have to ban these items from use, or else people would be killing themselves for a temporary plus. It's why cocaine and LSD are banned, too.

2-16-2009 @ 4:06AM

millardbaker said...

Your dubious assertions that Lyle Alzado's brain tumor and the Chris Benoit tragedy were caused by anabolic steroids have no scientific validity.

Ironically, you try to assert the safety of Gatorade by pointing out that there have been no cases of acute overdose from Gatorade consumption.

In fact, there have several documented cases of fatalities resulting from the acute overdose of "water." OTOH, there are ZERO instances of acute steroid overdoses in the scientific literature.

How's that for relative harm? One is more likely to die from an acute "water overdose" than an acute "steroid overdose".