Austin and Mitch discuss the Season 1 arc where Smash tries steroids. They look at the science behind how they work, some of the risks involved, and their prevalence among high school athletes. Plus an in depth analysis of the Season 3 JD/Matt QB fiasco.
Sources:
ANABOLIC-ANDROGENIC STEROIDS: Mechanism of Action and Effects on Performance
FDA Advisement on Teen Steroid Use
Anabolic Androgenic Steroid Use and Abuse in Pediatric Patients
National Institute of Health
Austin and Mitch discuss the Season 1 arc where Smash tries steroids. They look at the science behind how they work, some of the risks involved, and their prevalence among high school athletes. Plus an in depth analysis of the Season 3 JD/Matt QB fiasco.
Sources:
ANABOLIC-ANDROGENIC STEROIDS: Mechanism of Action and Effects on Performance
FDA Advisement on Teen Steroid Use
Anabolic Androgenic Steroid Use and Abuse in Pediatric Patients
National Institute of Health
AUSTIN: We haven’t introduced ourselves.
MITCH: We have not. This is all gonna get cut.
AUSTIN: Oh
MITCH: I’m not (exhales) This is not a nerd podcast.
AUSTIN: I think it’s good, I like it. I like it a lot. (rattle)
MITCH: Well you can edit it then.
AUSTIN: Ok, fair. I’m Austin,
MITCH: and I’m Mitch,
AUSTIN: and this is… shit, I almost said Friday Night Lights.
MITCH: (laughing) This is not Friday Night Lights.
AUSTIN: No it’s not. This is Devil Town.
(Devil Town theme music)
MITCH: This has not been Friday Night Lights for several weeks, but it is going to be tonight.
AUSTIN: It is tonight.
MITCH: We’re back.
AUSTIN: Yes!
MITCH: We’re gonna talk about steroids. You know a lot about this topic.
AUSTIN: Yeah, because it runs in my family.
MITCH: (laughing) That’s not what I meant, but yeah.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: Here’s the deal, steroids have not been in my life very often, but they’ve, like, been life savers when they have. Because when I’ve done steroids it’s been like, “Oh, you can’t breathe because of allergies and infections? Here’s some steroids.”
AUSTIN: Whenever they’ve worked in my life, it’s been massive gains,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: massive amounts of acne, and just, uh…
MITCH: Well you had like, medically, like, too big testicles.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And your doctor was like…
AUSTIN: They were like, we’re gonna give you these, you’re gonna get really strong, but your testes will be normal. And, uh, I can sit comfortably now. (laughing)
MITCH: And when you already have crazy bacne, it’s like…
AUSTIN: Oh no, I don’t though. We gotta stop. I’ve never taken steroids unless it was like,
MITCH: I know
AUSTIN: a corticosteroid which I use frequently.
MITCH: Here’s a genuine question. I’m reading a bunch of stuff about steroids and I don’t understand any of it. When you get steroids from a doctor for, like, breathing treatments or something like that,
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: is that in the same family as anabolic steroids?
AUSTIN: So, anabolic steroids, a steroid is a steroid in terms of that, like… It’s a four ring structure, from what I understand.
MITCH: Like a circus?
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s better than a three ring, it’s a four ring. Also wouldn’t surprise me if P. T. Barnum took steroids at one point.
MITCH: P. T. Barnum would’ve made his employees take steroids.
AUSTIN: Probably made his own steroids.
MITCH: Yeah. Hugh Jackman, who played him, definitely took steroids. Watch X Men and then X2.
AUSTIN: His FFMI has gotta be just through the roof.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: FFMI is fat free body mass. Fat free mass index, excuse me, that’s what it is. His is probably really, really high. What is he, like, 6’3”?
MITCH: No, he’s short.
AUSTIN: No he’s not.
MITCH: Hugh Jackman’s short, isn’t he?
AUSTIN: I don’t think he’s short.
MITCH: Hmmm… Wolverine’s short.
AUSTIN: Wolverine’s supposed to be short, but I don’t think Hugh Jackman is. Maybe 6’2”?
MITCH: Oh shit, he’s tall. 6’3”. I was just thinking about Wolverine, and Wolverine in my mind is short.
AUSTIN: Yeah, people were pissed when he was, whatever, and that’s just kinda been in the background. Either way, same kind of family. Now, the stuff that you’re taking for androgenic anabolic steroids are usually, uh, synthetic.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Almost all of them are. They’re mimicking actual steroids.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Decadurabolin and durabolin and things like that.
MITCH: But these are mostly things that are naturally occurring?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And these are just synthesized versions?
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: ‘Cause that’s the other thing that I thought was interesting was, like, there are legitimate uses.
AUSTIN: Oh for sure
MITCH: And there are lots of people that get prescribed them for good reason.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But that creates a lot of opportunity unscrupulous, like, doctors and clinics to… Like, some people that are taking steroids in a way they shouldn’t are getting them prescribed to them.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: ‘Cause it’s not that hard to find somebody who’ll write a prescription for something you don’t actually need.
AUSTIN: It’s essentially the same shit that they’ve done with, aw shit, what’s the word I’m looking for?
MITCH: Oxy?
AUSTIN: Oxy, fentanyl, yeah. But that’s not on the streets, it’s…
MITCH: But you can’t just, like, outlaw it outright because there are a lot of people that do need them.
AUSTIN: Yeah. So, the stuff we’re talking about is androgenic anabolic steroids. I have not done a ton of research on this stuff, I’ve done enough to know, like, generally what it does. And I’ve thankfully stayed away from them my entire life. ‘Cause according to the…
MITCH: FFMI?
AUSTIN: We’re not gonna talk about that. (laughing) ‘Cause it makes it sound like I’m on the verge of
MITCH: You’re on the verge
AUSTIN: steroid usage. No, it… Based off of just pure numbers I’m sitting here thinking, oh I’ve definitely known somebody that takes them. I know somebody now actually that does take them.
MITCH: Yeah. And like, I knew kids in high school that we all talked about, like, oh he’s definitely taking ‘em. Looking at the statistics, I don’t know if we were right about those specific people, but like, I went to a 1,000 person high school. There were at least a few people who were taking ‘em in high school, statistically.
AUSTIN: Statistically. And you may not, you may not have known anybody at your school but it was probably doubled up at the one next to yours, so (laughing)
MITCH: I mean, there are a few people that, looking at, what are the symptoms or the signs,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I can think of a couple people that I’m like, oh yeah, for sure, definitely (laughing)
AUSTIN: Yeah. And there’s other symptoms and signs that I didn’t bother looking at. But it’s to look at somebody and say, oh you’re on steroids. And it’s like, ugh, obviously bacne, acne, things like that, it’s severe. Mood swings, shit like that. But then there’s this… It’s a flattening of your nipples and protrusion.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And it’s weird. Like, I don’t know why this is…
MITCH: That’s one of the most tell-tale signs, because that’s something that, you know, it is naturally occurring for some people, but if somebody doesn’t have that and then all the sudden does,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: and they have all these other changes, pretty safe bet.
AUSTIN: It may just be because your body’s getting ready for, like, an estrogen cycle.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: That would make sense.
MITCH: And then a more extreme version, it can lead to, like, full on, like, breast tissue growth.
AUSTIN: Oh for sure.
MITCH: Gynecomastia?
AUSTIN: Gynecomastia. I think that’s what it is.
MITCH: That’s the extreme version. But it can…
AUSTIN: Well, and lactation, and things like that.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: That is… ahhh… One of the guys I went to high school with knows somebody who started lactating. So…
MITCH: Gross
AUSTIN: Yeah. But in the show -
MITCH: Let’s talk about the show.
AUSTIN: This was season…
MITCH: Two
AUSTIN: Two
MITCH: Right? One? Dang it, I said that so confidently.
AUSTIN: I think it’s season two.
MITCH: But now I won’t rest until I know. I’ll edit this out. First season he used steroids because a college scout was coming.
AUSTIN: Oh
MITCH: Yeah, ‘cause the first season is when the scout comes and tells him, “Look, we’re gonna keep an eye on you, you’re good. But you’re just not big enough.”
AUSTIN: Ahh that’s right.
MITCH: And he starts taking them and then he gets hurt. We’re talking about season one, Smash is told by a college scout that he’s not gonna go forward in the program as long as he’s the size that he is.
AUSTIN: I forget what the guy’s name is, but it’s essentially the, the Dillon, Texas version of Dave Campbell. I don’t know if you know who Dave Campbell is, he basically does that. He ranks teams based off of…
MITCH: We’ve mentioned him before.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Not a recruiter for a specific school, he just kinda does recruiting stuff.
AUSTIN: Right. It’s just for Texas high school football. He releases this massive book every year.
MITCH: Oh, I’m aware of that, because once a year when I worked at a bookstore, a bunch of fifty year old men who would never go in a bookstore come in wanting very specific scouting books that we never carried.
AUSTIN: See, that’s not…
MITCH: And they’d get so mad.
AUSTIN: Dave Campbell’s only for Texas if I’m not mistaken.
MITCH: No, some people would want the Texas, or the Oklahoma, but like,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Every year, whenever it comes out, there would be like a line of men demanding these magazines. And I’m sitting there thinking, is this under magazines or books? I don’t know what this is.
AUSTIN: I got mentioned in it once. Once.
MITCH: What did he say?
AUSTIN: (mumbling) I don’t know… Noteworthy players.
MITCH: Ok!
AUSTIN: Yeah, I don’t know. Either way, I don’t think it says what type of… Does it say what type of steroid he uses?
MITCH: No, this is one of the things they’re very cagy on. The show does this, where they don’t want to get too specific.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: ‘Cause then it open it up to, like, is this accurate or not?
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: They don’t tell us what he’s taking. We know he gets them from, like, a gym that’s outside of the school.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: Like, a trainer guy
AUSTIN: A bodybuilding gym, something like that.
MITCH: A bodybuilding gym.
AUSTIN: I think it was a woman, actually, wasn’t it?
MITCH: There’s a man… I think there’s both.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: I remember there being a man who, like, he’s actually, like, making the deal with. And in the show, it’s only like a couple of weeks.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: He, like, immediately starts taking them, he immediately has all the signs we look for, the aggression and stuff.
AUSTIN: See, I don’t know if you’d have the aggression and stuff like that, but they are… In a lot of articles I was reading, they do say that within days you do start to see differences.
MITCH: That’s crazy.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I mean, it’s hormonal, it makes sense. But it’s crazy.
AUSTIN: Now, I don’t see… I don’t know if you would have the gains that he would, necessarily.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And, yeah, I don’t think that you would have the massive mood swings that he had at that point.
MITCH: Which, in the show’s defense, we don’t see him have massive gains in the show, because he’s an actor, he’s not actually putting on tons of muscle. And also, you know, yes, he has anger issues and mood swings, but also he’s in, like, one of the more stressful times of his life.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So it wouldn’t be unrealistic for him to be having anger issues and mood swings without steroids, like (laughing)
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Whatever we see in the show is not necessarily a symptom. But they… He takes them for a couple of weeks, he has all these symptoms, and then he gets caught. They’re injectable, what he’s doing.
AUSTIN: Yes. Not a lot of… Whenever you think of the steroid usage, it’s usually injectibles, what they’re using.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Not a lot of people use oral steroids for, like, weightlifting and shit.
MITCH: Yeah. But in the show it’s a very quick arc. It’s like two or three episodes,
AUSTIN: Very much so.
MITCH: where he, he starts, it gets bad, he gets caught by his family, coach finds out, and he gets punished, and then he’s back. And then it never comes up again.
AUSTIN: That’s it.
MITCH: Well, and I was saying, looking at the statistics, there had to be other players on that team that dabbled in it, at least once or twice.
AUSTIN: Oh for sure.
MITCH: It couldn’t’ve just been Smash.
AUSTIN: For sure. And there’s probably gonna be a linebacker or something like that, that wasn’t super athletic,
MITCH: Yeah, was just big.
AUSTIN: wasn’t super great at football, yeah, just big. There’s always those guys.
MITCH: The characters they don’t give speaking roles to on Friday Night Lights. (laughing)
AUSTIN: Honestly, the guys that barely even speak in real life.
MITCH: Yeah, that big red headed guy. I bet he…
AUSTIN: Exactly. He’s a lineman. He was one of the ones I thought about, actually.
MITCH: Smash’s thing is that he’s not big enough. But his skills as a football player is that he’s fast, and he’s quick and sneaky. He has to be bigger in general,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: but, like, is he… Would steroids help him very much? Given who he is and how he plays?
AUSTIN: If he was to get bigger,
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: in the way that steroids makes him get bigger,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: it would definitely make him have to change his running style almost completely. He wouldn’t gain a ton of weight, necessarily, right off the bat. He may, but it’s not necessarily the fact that - whenever you have those types of situations, those guys are, the guy that comes in and says, hey, you need to gain some weight, it’s not necessarily that you need to get stronger. It’s, you need to gain some weight so you don’t get crushed.
MITCH: That’s what… That’s how I interpreted it.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But like, doing a bunch of bench presses, taking a ton of steroids, getting giant pecs isn’t gonna change his game that much.
AUSTIN: No, it won’t.
MITCH: And the sad reality is, that scout’s critique was probably accurate. He needs to be bigger. But he needs to be a bigger person. Taller, heavier, like…
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Taking steroids and putting on muscle isn’t gonna change the fact that he’s shorter than most college players, and smaller framed than most college players. And when he gets hit by the kinds of guys that play college ball, it’s gonna destroy him. Like, that’s not something you can change, even with steroids.
AUSTIN: Exactly. Well, and, even then, he could definitely put some weight on.
MITCH: Oh yeah
AUSTIN: And the best way to do it is to gradually do it. So you change your diet, you ingest more, and that’s going to end up increasing your weight, in ways that you can maintain that.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And then you can gradually change whatever needs to be changed so that you can work on the things as they’re changing.
MITCH: That’s one of the things I liked about the way the show presented it, is, like, what we see of Smash, he is doing, and has been doing, everything right. That’s kind of his whole thing throughout the whole show. Like, Smash is the kind of person who is trying hard, and is doing everything exactly how he’s supposed to, and things still just don’t work out for him.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: That, like, that… You’re right about, that’s what he should be doing. But he’s a seventeen year old kid who has been doing that for years, probably more strict and with more commitment than anybody else on that team. And he still isn’t where he needs to be.
AUSTIN: See, I actually would say he’s not doing that. Now, lifting and stuff like that, definitely.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: When it comes to high school - college is different, because obviously most of the time if you’re playing college football, you have a scholarship, they’re giving you meal plans, they’re feeding you.
MITCH: Yes
AUSTIN: The issue with being in high school football, you’re not getting paid to do that -
MITCH: No, I’m not saying he’s doing everything right, like he knows the best… I’m saying he’s trying.
AUSTIN: Right. Oh, yeah yeah yeah
MITCH: Like, it’s not like he’s been sitting around being lazy and then he gets this critique and he tries to cheat his way to the top.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: This is somebody who has, like, tried to figure out what he needs to do and then do it,
AUSTIN: Oh for sure.
MITCH: as well as he can, and it just wasn’t enough.
AUSTIN: It just doesn’t work out, yeah.
MITCH: They do a good job of making it seem like - it’s not a good thing, the show is not making it look like he’s right - but it’s definitely understandable why he goes there.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, for sure. To answer your question, ‘cause we’ve already kind of stated, it’s going to be - if he does get stronger, if he does get bigger, and it becomes a drastic situation where it happens very quickly, he’s not going to be able to adjust to that very well.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Whenever it comes to… If he does explosion drills, and that’s what he’s more focused on, he can get faster. He definitely can. ‘Cause that’s fast twitch muscle fibers.
MITCH: But those are also, even with steroids, those are things that take time. That would be taking steroids and also spending time, and over months having these changes.
AUSTIN: We can sit here all day and talk about how steroids give you an up, an advantage. And they do. Most of those guys that are taking steroids in the gym don’t understand the amount of work and, like, pain the people that are really taking them and seeing massive gains are going through to get to that point. It doesn’t mean that you can, like, take it easy and lift once or twice a week.
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: Those dudes are in the gym 24/7. And they’re lifting heavy.
MITCH: Yeah, somebody who takes them as a shortcut, it’s just not gonna work. You’re just gonna get the bad stuff without any of the good stuff.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: But the thing that makes it tempting, and, like, it makes sense why so many people do it, is it does work. If you are doing all the things you’re supposed to do and working hard, and then you add steroids on to there, it is gonna give you those results. They work.
AUSTIN: It will, it will.
MITCH: That’s what makes it hard to, like… The people that are trying to caution against it or, like, keep kids off of them, you can’t argue with the results.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: They do work.
15:07
AUSTIN: You can’t. So, we’re just kinda gonna do a basic overview of what steroids are. I’m kind of pulling this from an article by Thomas D. Fahey, I think that’s how you say his name. He’s at California State University, Chico, California, Exercise and Physiology Laboratory. And it’s just Androgenic Anabolic Steroids, Mechanism of Action and Effects on Performance.
MITCH: Don’t go too in depth, but like, how do they work?
AUSTIN: Ok, so, the steroids that you’re looking at using, they’re a synthetic form of a natural steroid. They’re basically introduced into the body to then enhance muscle growth, what have you. The way that they go about doing that is that, whenever you ingest it - inject it, not ingest it, sometimes you do - steroids easily go through cell walls.
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: Honestly, I studied that in college, and it probably has to do with the lipid bilayer, or some type of receptor that’s on the wall, but I could not tell you
MITCH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: what that actually is.
MITCH: It’s been a while.
AUSTIN: It has been a long ass time since I’ve studied that stuff. So it goes into the cytoplasm, and it connects to the androgen receptors. The androgen receptors basically kind of, like, connect with it, and then they see, oh ok, steroid, this is testosterone, I need to send this to the cell. They send it to the cell, and then they go ahead and it connects to the DNA and then it replicates more proteins. And so it allows you to have more protein in the body at the same time.
MITCH: Yeah. So it’s triggering the process that creates more protein and making it work more than it would naturally.
AUSTIN: Right. It’s also - I’m not too sure how it does this - there’s a possibility of it blocking cortisol buildup. Cortisol is a natural chemical that’s released by the body whenever you do have stress or things like that. It causes you to have stress, pretty much, and then it also causes your body to gain fat because you’re in a situation where you feel like you are needing to store up fat. Cortisol levels, whenever they’re heightened, you get stressed out really easy, you get fatigued, you start gaining fat.
MITCH: Ok. I knew, in the, like, in the symptoms reading, it helps you put on muscle but it also lowers… It gives you more energy, lower stress… Like, I didn’t know why.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it blocks cortisol production.
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: I’m taking something that kind of blocks cortisol.
MITCH: You’re on, you’re on mic right now.
AUSTIN: (laughing) You can get things that do that. And I do it overnight, ‘cause it helps me sleep.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: But the steroids are, like, a one track, like, ok this is a one-stop all of this shit.
MITCH: That’s also one of the things that I read that’s challenging for talking about high school kids. Androgenic anabolic steroids are pretty unambiguously illegal.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Both, like, to take without a prescription and also like, in the sports regulatory things. But there are a lot of things that are, like, almost steroids. Like, there’s a lot of…
AUSTIN: Mhmm
MITCH: Lotta things you can take that are not doing the specific thing that steroids are doing, but they’re doing similar things at a lesser amount that are perfectly legal.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Well, not illegal yet.
MITCH: Well, and it’s like a spectrum, where like, a kid could take just caffeine, it’s gonna do a little bit of the benefit of what steroids are doing in some ways, and that’s not that risky and definitely not against the rules. And then there’s like steps, like, you can do something that’s a little bit more intense than caffeine, all the way up to something that’s almost steroids.
AUSTIN: Basically steroids.
MITCH: There was, I can’t remember what it was, DFMA? There’s one that’s like a supplement that’s on the market and then - it was perfectly legal and then like four or five years ago, they did a big study and noticed that it was doing… The process it was triggering is the same thing that anabolic steroids did, that just wasn’t known at the time.
AUSTIN: Oh
MITCH: And it got, like, taken off the shelves and outlawed. But it was like, you go into a GNC or something and buy these capsules that said they were like fat burners or energy boosters or whatever, and after they, like, go through the studies to get approved and stuff, they discovered that it was doing the same thing that androgenic steroids do and they just didn’t know it.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So like there were probably a lot of high school kids that were taking that and they had no idea they were doing something
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: that we would later discover was bad.
AUSTIN: Right. So, whenever you do steroids, it attaches to these androgen receptors. Now, androgenic is basically short term, short form for male… Particularly testosterone and male sex linked hormones. That’s what androgenic mean, like, essentially. And it’s mainly for testosterone production.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Whenever you have them in your muscles, obviously, that’s gonna be a lot of where your protein synthesis is gonna be.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: The issue is, with steroids, it doesn’t know where to go. It goes everywhere. These androgen receptors aren’t just in the cells that are basically for protein synthesis or muscle building in your muscles, they’re also in your pituitary gland,
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: and in your - I think they said - the hypothalamus. In the brain, I mean. So the issue with that is, it doesn’t know when to stop, it goes wherever it wants to, and you end up getting an overproduction of hormones from your pituitary gland.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Which then forces you to have mood swings.
MITCH: Hair loss.
AUSTIN: Hair loss, all that stuff, I mean…
MITCH: All the stuff that testosterone does in people that don’t take steroids.
AUSTIN: Right, yeah.
MITCH: It’s rare for a sixteen year old kid to be having hair loss and body hair like crazy,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: but it happens. Like, those are naturally occurring things.
AUSTIN: Now, whenever you have those situations arise, obviously it’s gonna be fairly obvious, when it comes to mood swings and stuff. But sometimes you won’t ever realize that certain chemicals are releasing into your body.
21:17
AUSTIN: And that’s obviously gonna be a negative side effect. Now, one thing that I did see was, there are some doctors and researchers out there that think that steroids aren’t necessarily purely for muscle growth. And, almost, they don’t do anything to your muscle growth. What they are actually doing is it’s a psychoactive thing.
MITCH: Really?
AUSTIN: So, what they say is it’s a pos… What they think it does is it affects your mood.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: It sends you into a state of euphoria. It sends you into a state of height… like, wanting to heighten your activity. Then you wanna go ahead and lift heavy weights and things like that. Now, I don’t think that that’s the case.
MITCH: That’s definitely something that could be done… That could be… They could do a study over that and prove it or disprove it.
AUSTIN: I think that that’s involved with it. I don’t think that that’s the whole thing.
MITCH: Yeah, you just described a second ago the process of, like, what it actually does do to your cells.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I bet that that’s also true.
AUSTIN: Oh for sure.
MITCH: The things it does to your brain are going to make it to where you’re able to work out harder and more than you would have if you weren’t taking them.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: But it also does sound like it is doing things to the way your body builds muscle,
AUSTIN: Oh it is
MITCH: that are different than if you weren’t taking them.
AUSTIN: Yes. It doesn’t know - like I said - it doesn’t know where to stop. Now, you have situations where certain chemicals and things like that that are now on the market that are legal called SARMs.
MITCH: I’ve read about those.
AUSTIN: Those are Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators? Modifiers? Essentially what those do, they are able to… They are not as incredibly bad for you as steroids are.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: From what I understand when I’m reading about them.
MITCH: Yeah. What do they do?
AUSTIN: So, they are able to pinpoint areas where they can go to.
MITCH: Ok, ok
AUSTIN: Now, there’s a slew of other side effects.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: You know? I read one where this guy said that his - literally - his testicles disappeared.
MITCH: Oh no
AUSTIN: Now, all the guys I was reading about, they said they had negative side effects, were dudes that had used steroids at one point.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Or were just coming off steroids and moving to SARMs because they thought they were natural. Like, they thought they were better.
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: So, in reality, their body was probably riddled anyway. But those exist. I mean, you have - like you said - then you have things that are pretty much just chemically stepped down from steroids that people use, that act just like steroids. Whenever you do have a heightened… Your body starts to produce more testosterone. You introduce more testosterone by literally pumping testosterone into your body.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: There’s a lot of situations where if you don’t take a post cycle, or an estrogen blocker at the time of taking it, you will end up lactating.
MITCH: Because your body’s gonna counterbalance and produce more estrogen to make up for it.
AUSTIN: Exactly. Yes. And that’s exactly what your body does. Your body… We were talking about this last night,
MITCH: Well, and that’s where the long, long term side effects, it can lead to, like, stroke, hypertension, all these things. Because any time you’re messing with hormones over a long period of time, your body’s gonna do a lot of things to try to, like, counterbalance. And short term, that’s probably not gonna be a big deal, but long term, messing with hormones makes you more prone to, like, cancer and stroke and a lot of really, really serious things.
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: ‘Cause your point, yes… Any time anybody… There’s a lot of valid reasons you would need to alter your hormone levels, but it’s not a light thing. Like, that is something that is serious,
AUSTIN: Very serious
MITCH: even when it needs to be done.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It’s something you have to, like, monitor closely and really pay close attention, because it can lead to serious problems.
AUSTIN: Serious, serious issues. Like, people that are transitioning, like
MITCH: Yeah. It’s useful for a lot of things, but,
AUSTIN: their doctors are watching every move. And it’s because if you mess up once it can royally screw you up.
MITCH: Yeah. So, like, the rates of steroid use among women are way lower than among men, but for women who use them, you have the period where they have more testosterone than a biological woman would normally have, so they have much higher rates of hair loss and things like that. But also, when their body, like, counterbalances and creates more estrogen, an excess of estrogen has serious side effects. In a lot of women. Like, fertility issues, cancer. Like, that’s where it gets really dangerous,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: is down the road.
AUSTIN: Well, and that’s what’s wild is, like, once you get too much of one of those things, obviously it’s supposed to be in check, you know? Once you get too much testosterone in your body, a lot of the time you do have those issues where, hair loss, things like that. But then your testicles shrink, your sperm count disappears essentially. Like you become, you can literally take it until you’re infertile.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: There’s a reason that they are regulated. There really are.
MITCH: Yeah
26:16
(Devil Town theme music)
AUSTIN: Oh, with the cortisol, one of the big things is… With cortisol and things like that, it breaks… The catabolic, that’s what it is -
MITCH: I don’t know what that word means.
AUSTIN: It’s essentially breaking muscle down.
MITCH: Oh ok
AUSTIN: The process of breaking down muscle. WIth the catabolic response, it kind of inhibits that. So it allows you to recover much faster, and then you can obviously start working harder a lot sooner than what most people can. So that’s probably gonna have to do with your lactic acid buildup and things like that. But the issue that I’ve seen a lot of the time is that, whenever you’re on steroids, the goin’s good.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: You can lift a lot of weight, you can run as fast as you possibly can. Once you cycle off, those gains disappear.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: You cannot keep it going. And the people that are off, it’s a physical, like, you can see it.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: They are not as big.
MITCH: That’s where you have, like, in the bodybuilding world, if they’re using them to be competitive, the minute you stop you’re gonna lost all that and you can’t compete. That’s where you get the guys who end up taking them for years and years and years and really fuck up their health. ‘Cause yeah, what’s the end game there? You gotta keep taking them until you’re done.
AUSTIN: You have to.
MITCH: Because when you are done, you are done.
AUSTIN: Done done. Yeah.
27:48
AUSTIN: I mean, that’s where the, that’s the psychosomatic state, that’s what they guy called it.
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah. I’m curious about that. I’d be interested to see what studies are done in the future in that area. ‘Cause I would believe… There’s a lot of different results that would make sense to me, how much of it is psychosomatic, how much of it is biological.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It’s clearly both. I mean, from what we know so far. It seems like it’s both.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It’d be interesting to find out if we discover if it’s more one or the other, than we thought previously. ‘Cause also this is - looking at the studies I was able to find - it is an understudied area.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Like, they’re not… Androgenic anabolic steroids are a controlled substance, and they are, like, prescription only. But, like, supplements in general are not usually approved by the FDA. They’re not an area of scientific study that’s really popular. So, like, there’s a lot we don’t know about how these things work, and there’s not a whole lot of research being done to them, it seems like.
AUSTIN: No, it’s not. And most of the time, whatever the people say that make it, goes.
MITCH: Yeah, you’re going into a GNC or wherever and taking them at their word, and these are these companies’ press releases you’re reading.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And there have been many times where we’ve found out much later that something was not what we thought it was, or it worked differently than they thought.
AUSTIN: Oh for sure. Yeah. Well, and a lot of the things they have in GNC, like,
MITCH: I’m just saying GNC because that’s the name I know. You know what I mean.
AUSTIN: Yeah yeah yeah. No, I know.
MITCH: A place that sells supplements. The real sketchy stuff isn’t at those places, the real sketchy is, like, a trainer at a bodybuilding gym. But, you know, like, that’s where it’s sketchy. We have the - especially in America - we have this idea that if you go in a grocery store or a pharmacy or wherever, there are systems in place that make sure everything’s good. So when I go into a pharmacy, I don’t have to wonder, is this medicine… Has it been tested? Is it approved? Because it is. We have laws in place.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Supplements are one of the few places where that’s not true. Like, it could be anything. Nobody’s paying attention. There is no regulatory body that is checking every single product to make sure what they say is true.
AUSTIN: The only time that anything ever comes of it is if it kills somebody.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: That’s pretty much the only time. And even then, you could probably sit there and say that it’s not that certain thing, because people stack.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: ‘Cause that’s what I do. I stack. I take a lot of different stuff.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: So I…
MITCH: And you’re using the best knowledge you have.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But you also have to go into it knowing that, you know, when you go into a pharmacy and get an over the counter prescription, the FDA has tested that. When you go into Supplement World and buy one of their things, they haven’t tested that.
AUSTIN: No, they haven’t. It’s all in company labs and things like that.
MITCH: And, like, hopefully those companies are doing the right thing, but like,
AUSTIN: Hopefully
MITCH: Most things that are that serious, we don’t have to have that kind of faith in those companies. But we do there.
30:48
(Devil Town theme music)
AUSTIN: Since I know that Kyle listens to this podcast,
BOTH: (laughing)
MITCH: Kyle, we’re in your old bedroom.
AUSTIN: You left some stuff here.
MITCH: What is it?
AUSTIN: It says Steroids? Question mark? No, it is Theatrim. Beyond caffeine. Advanced themolipolitic and focal catalyst.
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: Ignite and energize. Dietary supplement with theacrine. I don’t know what theacrine is, necessarily. Let’s see, ok, so we have vitamin B12.
MITCH: Love that.
AUSTIN: Instantergy, rapid absorption excitatory blend, does not tell you what it is. Infinenergy dicaffiene malate, teacrine, nature identical theacrine, caffeine. There’s so much stuff in here that it’s just, like… Was this just for energy?
MITCH: Must’ve been. Isn’t that, essentially, just what a fat burner is? Just, like, caffeine?
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: Or pre-workout? What am I thinking of?
AUSTIN: So… They’re… Both, you could do both.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Both of them have that in it. It just depends on what type of, like, where you’re getting it from. And then certain things that are thought to burn fat,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: are put in there too. Green tea extract has caffeine in it.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: But it does seem to be a low-caffeine, high fat burning molecule. The molecule itself doesn’t, obviously, but your body reacts to it like that. With this, I don’t know if this is a fat burner or if it’s just, like, ok, this is gonna give me some energy.
MITCH: It must not have worked or he wouldn’t’ve left it here.
AUSTIN: I mean, it’s almost empty.
MITCH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: Let’s see. There’s six left.
MITCH: All right, our email is deviltownpodcast@gmail.com, Kyle, if you wanna clarify, you can email us, leave a review.
AUSTIN: (laughing) Leave a review.
MITCH: all that good stuff.
(Devil Town theme music)
32:53
MITCH: All right, I’m gonna tell you a little about what I found specifically about steroids in high schoolers.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: ‘Cause, like, obviously, for anybody, these are like hard medical things that have uses, but should not be abused, and should not be used without doctor supervision.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: For a high school student, there isn’t really… For an athlete, it’s too risky for high schoolers to be using.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It’s illegal, thank goodness, but it really, it is a thing that is understudied and under-regulated, even in high schools. And some of what I was reading, in the research, was that it’s, like, it is a problem that… There is not a lot of work being done to help it, and also nobody really knows how to do that. (laughing)
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Like, there’s a lot of money being pumped into schools for drug awareness in general, DARE was a billion dollar industry when it was a thing. Steroid use among high schoolers is kind of a thing that everyone just, like, pretends not to see. And, like, it happens a lot, nothing’s really being done about it. And there probably should be, based on what we know about how they…
AUSTIN: Well, and that’s, I think a lot of it has to do with, like you said, DARE was… Whenever the war on drugs happened it was, ok, we know we gotta get cocaine off the streets, like,
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: They don’t give a shit about the stuff that actually, like,
MITCH: Well, and also, it is… One of the things I was reading.... Oh, I’ll get there in a second. The good news is, only about 22% of all steroid use is high schoolers. 78% of steroid use is people in their twenties and thirties.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: It’s, like, mostly full grown adults. Still probably shouldn’t be doing it, but, like
AUSTIN: 22% is still a lot.
MITCH: It’s still a lot. It’s hard to get real data because most of the data we have is based on, like, self-reported surveys of high school kids and that’s not a good way.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: According to the FDA, they estimate about 4.9% of males and 2.4% of females in high school have used steroids at least once in their lives.
AUSTIN: Now, is that anabolic steroids?
MITCH: Specifically anabolic steroids.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: There’s a lot of different studies and every study has its flaws, and they’re mostly self-reported, but when you look at all the studies together and try to find a general average, about 5% of high school boys have done steroids at least once. It is, by far, more common in football, wrestling, and weightlifting.
AUSTIN: Makes sense.
MITCH: Track is up there close, but like, football, wrestling, and weightlifting are head and shoulders above the rest.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: Of the people that admitted to taking them in high school, 67% of them had done it at the age of 16 or less.
AUSTIN: My god.
MITCH: And 40% of them did multiple cycles. So there were a lot of people that did it once and never did it again. Kind of like we see with Smash. Smash does it one cycle, gets caught, gets in trouble, doesn’t ever do it again. But of that 5% that takes them, 40% of them did it for an extended period of time.
AUSTIN: Well, see honestly…
MITCH: That’s not a big percentage, but that’s tens of thousands of kids.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Also, steroids are fucking expensive.
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: Like, I was looking at the prices and I was seeing, like, like, $2,000 or something like that, that I saw. It’s stupid the amount of money that those guys put into steroid use.
MITCH: Yeah. Some kid working at the Alamo Freeze, I don’t know how he’d do it.
AUSTIN: Well, it makes sense… How much did they say that he was supposed to get? I don’t remember. It was like $6-700.
MITCH: Yeah, it was like a reasonable amount. It wasn’t two thousand.
AUSTIN: No. $6-700 is still not reasonable for a supplement. If somebody tells me to spend $700 on something, I’m not doing it.
MITCH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: But, one thing that does strike me, it makes sense that younger kids do it, to me.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: They’re impatient, because they see these guys that are bigger than them, and stuff like that.
MITCH: And if you’re on the football team as a freshman or a sophomore and you’re two years younger than everybody else, and you need to get bigger to compete,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: If you’re an 18 year old and you’ve been playing your whole life and you’re on the team and you’re good, you probably don’t need them need them.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: Because you’re at your peak. A fifteen year old is gonna feel like they need it to keep up.
AUSTIN: Yeah, for sure.
MITCH: The National Federation of State High School Associations says that 13% of schools test student athletes in general for drugs. Cocaine, marijuana. Of that 13%, only 29% of that portion tests for steroids.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: It’s expensive. It’s a different test. If your school gets drug testing, it covers most things. It covers pot, meth, you know.
AUSTIN: Street drugs, yeah, that’s what they call them.
MITCH: Yeah, it covers “drugs.”
AUSTIN: Yeah, recreation.
MITCH: The test that you have to do to test steroids are easy to get around. So if your school is having a program, if you’re a kid that is taking steroids and you know that your school is gonna test, it doesn’t take super long to go off of the, pass the test, then go back on them.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And they’re expensive. They’re more expensive than other drug testing programs.
AUSTIN: They’re like $100 a test, aren’t they?
MITCH: Yeah. So 13% of the 29% of schools that do any kind of testing, that’s how few schools are testing for steroids, ever, under any kind of program.
AUSTIN: It’s probably gonna be in metro areas, too.
MITCH: Miami Dade County instituted a policy testing for steroids in the mid-2010s. That was pretty major, ‘cause that’s like, one of the bigger districts in the country. But it’s very few districts, in general, do any kind of testing. So it’s fully dependent, if any kid is gonna get caught, it’s gonna be literally getting caught. There is no system in place to check whether or not kids are doing it.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It’s just, do you get caught because… And, sad to say, how many football coaches are gonna look at their team and see somebody and notice that they check some of the boxes, and just choose to ignore it. The football player isn't’ gonna get in trouble. No one’s testing. So, you know.
AUSTIN: It’s helping them out.
MITCH: Yeah. I was reading some studies about, how do you approach this, for prevention and/or helping kids that are, like, going down this road. One of the things that a lot of the, like - ‘cause I was reading a bunch of sports psychology stuff - one of the challenges is, it’s… I’m trying to think of how to phrase this… Ok, I’ll go with the data that I have. There was a German study a few years ago that found that steroid use was more common among students that had more drug knowledge and education. Which is not… I mean, it makes sense with what I’m trying to say. This is a quote: “One hypothesis is that these education programs increase knowledge but don’t do anything about the underlying athletic attitudes and expectations.”
AUSTIN: That’s true, yeah.
MITCH: So you take a kid - it’s similar to what we all experienced in DARE - you have somebody come in, you have a cop come in and say, “Here’s all the horrible worst case scenario stuff about drugs. If you get peer pressured into smoking pot one time, your whole life’s gonna fall apart and you’re gonna die.” And then a year later you go to a party where somebody smokes pot and they’re fine. Suddenly it seems like it’s not that big a deal. So you have these programs that are supposed to tell kids not to take steroids, and they’re mostly scare tactics, and they’re mostly focused on the worst case scenario.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And then a kid goes to a gym where they see other people taking them and they seem mostly fine, and it works. Knowing more about it gives them some more information about, like, what are they? How do they work? And it’s hard to scare them away because a lot of things that are bad about them aren’t scary to high schoolers. Like, the downsides don’t seem that bad to a 16 year old who really wants to get big fast. So these programs that are scare tactics, programs similar to how DARE worked, don’t work for steroids, because the downsides aren’t bad enough and you’re just educating them more on what these things do.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: (laughing) Like, that’s the challenge. The real thing, though, is, there is no amount of scare tactics or education that can change it if the pressure and attitude for general athletic competitiveness is still there.
41:06
MITCH: You think about Olympic athletes, they’re like, that is their life. You think about them as being, you know, in it for the love of the game. They’re the kind of people I would imagine would not want to because of the love of the game and fairness. There was a study in… I don’t have the year. It was published in Sports Illustrated after the study came out. They studied 198 Olympic athletes, 98% of them said that they would take steroids if they knew that they would not get caught and they would win. Pretty much all of them.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Like, that attitude, it’s, you know… We can talk about the risk factors, or how they’re dangerous, or fairness and all that stuff, but if you have major, livelihood, I need to be good at this thing, everybody would. Like, literally, everybody would. If it meant you would win and you wouldn’t get in trouble. When they asked the same question to those 198 Olympic athletes and said, “Ok, you will not get caught, you will win, but you’re gonna die in five years,” 61% of them said they would take them.”
AUSTIN: I mean, honestly, yeah. That makes sense.
MITCH: These education and prevention programs don’t work because you get kids in high school, who, on a Monday, they have a, you know, a clinician come in and give them a one hour talk on how scary and dangerous steroids are, and then the next four days they have coaches yelling at them about how they have to get bigger and stronger because winning is all that matters, that definitely outweighs the scare tactics.
AUSTIN: For sure.
MITCH: Oh, this is interesting. Because of the lack of solid evidence of their effectiveness, The American Academy of Pediatrics does not support widespread implementation of testing. The way that we know how to test for steroids just doesn't work. So, like, the doctors who… The American Academy of Pediatrics does not support testing.
AUSTIN: That’s wild.
MITCH: It just doesn’t work. It’s just not effective enough for the cost. So, like, they have advice on, like, what they think should be done. And they definitely come down on the side of, like, this needs to be prevented and handled, but testing kids isn’t the way to go about it. It doesn’t work.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: We know from experience and from studies that scare tactics and prevention education doesn’t work. Really the only.... From the National Institute of Health, this was a study they published that was a round up of all the data, they say that the process of building confidence in the athlete’s ability to enhance their natural ability through continuing puberty and using an evidence based nutrition and physical training regimens is really the only advice. And the sad reality is, you have someone like Smash… If you’re presenting with a thing where it’s like, ok, the only thing that’s going to 100% work is letting time do its job, finish growing, and eat right and exercise. Well he’s already doing those things and they haven’t worked.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: There’s really no good answer there. Like, we have a system where there’s a lot of pressure on these kids, that they have to win, they have to be the strongest and the best, and not every kid can be. You’re just not gonna be. Like, there have to be some kids on every single team in every single sport in every school that are gonna be middle of the pack. Just, biologically.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Not everybody can be the biggest and the strongest. So if you are destined by your genetics to be average, but you have a lifetime of reinforcement that you have to be stronger and better so you can win, steroids are a pretty appealing thing.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And there is no way that we can prevent them unless we change that culture of expectation. (laughing) And that’s not gonna change. We’ve talked about this exact same thing when it comes to concussions, and how the only way to prevent them is to change our attitudes towards what is worth the risk.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: That’s not gonna change.
AUSTIN: No, it won’t.
MITCH: We see it in other sports, with other kinds of cheating. There is nothing you can do or say that is gonna make somebody not do these things as long as the benefits of winning are as big as they are.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And that’s a cultural thing. So that’s a little bit depressing. ‘Cause, yeah, it’s pretty widespread, the numbers have only gone up over the decades. They’re higher now than they ever have been before amongst high schoolers. And the more we study what works and what doesn’t work for controlling them, the more we discover there’s really no good way of controlling them outside of just taking the pressure off.
AUSTIN: That’s sad. God.
MITCH: (laughing) Yeah. It’s exactly the same thing we talked about with concussions our very first episode. This is always gonna be a problem as long as the sport exists.
AUSTIN: I know.
MITCH: As long as there is this pressure that you have to put your body at risk for the sake of winning, these things are gonna happen.
AUSTIN: Well, and it’s not just football in that sense.
MITCH: No, yeah
AUSTIN: It’s every sport, every sport that’s like that. Wrestling, powerlifting.
MITCH: Mhmm. Gymnastics has a problem with it. Gymnastics has a bigger problem with girls specifically, because in a lot of women’s sports having a lot of muscle mass doesn’t matter that much, but in gymnastics it does. And one of the side effects is stunting your growth.
AUSTIN: That’s good.
MITCH: If you’re a gymnast, that’s a good thing. If you’re a female gymnast, if you can stop growing at 5’2” and put on muscle, that’s what you want.
AUSTIN: Yeah, you do. I actually dated a gymnast.
MITCH: Oh boy.
AUSTIN: For a very, very, very brief amount of time in college. But she went to OU.
MITCH: Oh, like a real gymnast.
AUSTIN: Yeah, she was at OU. She transferred because she didn’t want to do it anymore. But she got a scholarship to OU to…
MITCH: To Gymnast?
AUSTIN: Gym? To gym. (laughing) I think she said that she had leg pressed like 500 pounds at one point.
MITCH: Ahh that’s crazy.
AUSTIN: Massive, massive legs. Do you have anything else on steroids?
MITCH: No, I think that’s all I have.
AUSTIN: It’s depressing.
MITCH: (laughing) I mean, it’s not a huge problem. It’s definitely not every single kid in high school taking ‘em. It’s a relatively small number of people are doing them in general, and most of those people are adults that are… That’s their business.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It’s a little bit depressing knowing that it’s a problem that there’s no change in sight in the future, like,
AUSTIN: I know
MITCH: Nobody knows what to do, and nobody’s trying anything, really.
AUSTIN: That’s ‘cause it’s not a big enough problem.
MITCH: Yeah, it’s not a big enough problem to fix.
AUSTIN: And whenever you have a situation… Kids really want those things to change and want their body to change now
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: they don’t give a shit about the things that are gonna happen later on in life.
MITCH: The other silver lining is, for most kids that take them, they don’t take them enough to really get those negative repercussions.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: There are definitely people who take them for years, multiple cycles, and have major health issues, but most high schoolers that ever try steroids do them once and then never do them again.
AUSTIN: Well, I mean, we were talking about this before. Again, it would be kinda hard to sit there and say, ok all of this outweighs the good things that can happen with it. You have these serious, serious side effects of taking them long term. And primarily it’s… The worst ones that come up, it’s death.
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: And suicide. So you have, like, Chris Benoit, who, CTE and steroids caused him to go into this, like, literal, like manic-depressive mode and he killed his family and himself. Eddie Guererro, he ended up dying of heart failure. Not suicide, but heart failure when he was, like, 30s.
MITCH: Yeah. But those are people that - the same way as looking at the Mr. Universe, that level of body building - those are people that probably know the risks, and to do what they want to do, they have to.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Well, you have those, and then you have Tim Lambesis, who didn’t kill anybody, but hired a hitman to kill his wife.
MITCH: Yeah. I mean, as long as the sport they’re doing exists, how can you not?
AUSTIN: Tim Lambesis was a singer.
MITCH: Oh, I didn’t know who that was.
AUSTIN: He was the lead singer of As I Lay Dying.
MITCH: Oh yeah yeah yeah, I remember.
AUSTIN: He went to jail for hiring a hitman.
MITCH: Yeah. But in baseball, in professional baseball, when they had their steroid controversy. In football, in bodybuilding. And the same with cycling. Lance Armstrong got all the headlines,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: but they found out that basically all of them were doing it.
AUSTIN: Everybody does it. It was a big deal…
MITCH: If your options are “Don’t do this because it’s dangerous and wrong, and you’re not gonna be a professional and make a career out of this,” or, “Do it so you can win.” You gotta.
AUSTIN: There was one guy who was - I think it was on, I think it was on Bleacher Report, maybe - but it was an interview they had with a man that had never used steroids or blood doped in his entire life and won the Tour de France, once.
MITCH: That’s impressive.
AUSTIN: But after that, Lance Armstrong came in and won how many times?
MITCH: Yeah. There are always exceptions. You have Ken Griffey Jr., at the peak of the steroid era,
AUSTIN: I don’t think that he actually did it.
MITCH: and he probably didn’t. It’s possible. But it’s the same way I feel about football in general, just like, as a phenomenon. Most kids that participate in it at the high school level, it’s not gonna be what does it for ‘em.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And in high school there is so much money and time and energy put into it, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Like, have hobbies and stuff that you do. But when you’re doing things that are, like, really endangering you for something isn’t gonna give you much in return, that’s a cultural problem.
AUSTIN: Oh for sure, yeah.
MITCH: There are healthier ways to get the benefits, that don’t have the risks of concussions and steroids.
AUSTIN: Yeah. But it’s, it’s my muscle mass and I need it now. J.G. Wentworth shit. It’s, I want it to change as quick as possible.
MITCH: Yeah. That is all we have about steroids.
AUSTIN: Yep. That’s all we got.
(Devil Town theme music)
51:35
MITCH: I have a football question for you.
AUSTIN: Oh yes.
MITCH: ‘Cause I watched a lot of Friday Night Lights over our winter break.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: In season 3, episode 4
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: we have JD McCoy and Matt Saracen,
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: we’re in the playoffs. Coach cannot decide who he wants to play. He had the whole episode where it’s like, oh it’s gonna kill Matt if I bench him but JD’s God’s gift to football.
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: He runs alternating QBs, every other play.
AUSTIN: Every other play?
MITCH: Every other
AUSTIN: Series?
MITCH: Yeah, but I feel like he switches mid-series sometimes.
AUSTIN: Probably does.
MITCH: They do I formation and a spread formation.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: Does anybody do that? Have you ever seen anybody switch out quarterbacks over and over and over, all game long? Like, every other turn, alternating?
AUSTIN: It happens every once in a while, and usually happens at the beginning of the year. Mainly because it’s hard to find out who needs to start and who doesn’t.
MITCH: They do it in season 4, too, to find their quarterback.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: They put a bunch of people in at quarterback in the first two games. But this is at the end of a season. Both Matt and both JD have both played several games. He just can’t make a decision so he decides to do both. (laughing)
AUSTIN: I would say that Matt shouldn’t’ve played.
MITCH: JD fucked the game up, though.
AUSTIN: I understand that, but Matt shouldn’t’ve played.
MITCH: I know. Ohhh I hate that answer.
AUSTIN: Because
MITCH: That wasn’t the question, I was asking if that was a realistic thing to do. Could you see a high school coach doing that?
AUSTIN: So, uh, no. Maybe, but probably not. And… So what you could end up having, say you have a really good passing quarterback and a really good running quarterback,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: That could be the case, but your ideal is to have one guy to be able to do everything.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Because at that point you’re tipping your hand.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: You send somebody out, “Oh, they’re running the ball.”
MITCH: And that’s the problem they face in the game.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: What is I formation and spread formation?
AUSTIN: So, I formation is gonna be more of a power run set up. You’re gonna have probably six to seven down linemen, and you’re gonna have two running backs. So, say you have seven down linemen, that’s gonna be a center, two guards, two tackles, and two tight ends. You then have a quarterback, a full back, which is what what’s-his-name is.
MITCH: Tim Riggins?
AUSTIN: Tim Riggins. And then you have a running back. So that’s gonna be ten, and you’ll have a wide out, on either side, whichever. Sometimes they have them up on the line, too, kinda like flanker, but…
MITCH: Why is that called I.
AUSTIN: They’re lined up straight behind the quarterback.
MITCH: Oh ok ok ok
AUSTIN: I formation. Now, spread is when you spread out the ball, like, spread it out. You can have tight ends in that set, too. Most of the time it’s in shotgun.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Most of the time you’ll have a running back out to the side, or it can be an empty set where you don’t have a running back in the back field, you just have the quarterback.
MITCH: Is that more of a passing setup?
AUSTIN: Yes. You do have a lot of situations where that will open up the field a lot. You can actually run very well out of the spread, as well.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: The I formation, you can throw out of it, it’s not as pass happy. You’re not gonna get a ton of deep threat shots. You’re not gonna be able to throw the ball all around the field, most of the time.
MITCH: I think, if I remember right, he had Matt in I and JD in spread.
AUSTIN: Makes a lot of sense, because Matt couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.
MITCH: Matt could throw ok. Matt made some good passes. He made some good passes.
AUSTIN: Ehhhh
MITCH: I will say, that was season 3, episode 4. The next episode, when they’re in, like, the playoffs, is where he just full on starts JD. And JD just gets destroyed and he pulls him at half. That’s some of my favorite football in the whole show, ‘cause they just, like, rail on JD McCoy. It is harsh.
AUSTIN: If I remember right, it wasn’t even his fault necessarily.
MITCH: No. I mean, he wasn’t playing well.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But it was not his fault. It was just like… It’s a whole sequence of -
AUSTIN: I think it was more of a team morale thing.
MITCH: It was.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s not necessarily his fault but his team was not behind him.
MITCH: And that’s the one where they bring Matt in and Matt has the game of his life, and they get inches away and just barely miss it.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And lose. So he loses the game, but JD had been fucking up everything and Matt came in and played the best he ever played and it just wasn’t quite enough.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Matt had played with them for a long time, he has a rapport with them. That’s gonna be a lot… If that’s the case, like, it is hard to say that JD McCoy should’ve started.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: You know? It’s hard to say that.
MITCH: After watching the season again, I am on the side of, Coach should’ve handled that at the very beginning, not letting the narrative be JD is this blessing that we have been graced with who is here to save our team. JD should’ve always been treated as a freshman who needs a year to learn and become part of the team and get stronger and bigger so that he will be the starter the next year, no question. Matt is our starter, JD needs a year to get there.
AUSTIN: Eric tried to talk himself into that,
MITCH: But he didn’t.
AUSTIN: the entire season that JD showed up, but he never did.
MITCH: I mean, he had JD’s dad steamrolling everything. Like, it plays out how it plays out.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I think a big part of it is the team morale. I also think JD, like, JD’s a great passer, he’s a great quarterback, but he had not had that many times in playing where he was just getting rocked by a big team. And he was little. He was small, and, like… I think it was a combination of that, I think it was he was playing in the rain, which he didn’t have a lot of experience with.
AUSTIN: Passing’s gonna be… yeah
MITCH: He was scared, and he gets in his own head, and his dad stuff.
AUSTIN: For sure. Well, and… One of the biggest pet peeves that I’ve had with the JD McCoy saga is they talk about how he was so touted coming out of middle school.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: Eighth grade, I think they said that he threw for the most yards, he set records in eighth grade.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Nobody gives a shit about yards in middle school.
MITCH: That’s what I’m saying. The conversation should always have been, like, JD’s got a lot of promise,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: but it makes… I feel like the - we don’t ever see much talk about JV there, but I feel like in schools that I’ve… Like, when I was in school, the normal thing that would’ve happened was, he would’ve been the starting quarterback for the JV squad so he could have a whole year being the starting quarterback to get ready.
AUSTIN: Yeah, he would.
MITCH: That would be a normal… And it wouldn’t even be, like, a bad thing.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And they come into it like, we know he’s a freshman but he’s so good, there is no option other than he is a starter forever.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And that’s just ridiculous to me.
AUSTIN: We had freshmen, JV, and varsity.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: But yeah, it’s… Whenever you come out of middle school, nobody’s gonna sit there and say he broke all these records passing and stuff like that, because counts that shit in middle school.
MITCH: (laughing) Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: Nobody does. They look at the score and that’s it. You don’t even have playoffs in middle school. That doesn’t exist. And especially in Texas.
MITCH: I think that’s a lot of Joe McCoy coming in with his own personal coach and, like. I think Eric did the thing that Eric does a lot, where he just avoids a problem because he doesn’t want to deal with it until it blows up in his face.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: If it had been a normal player, Eric would’ve just started Matt, trained JD, everything would’ve been fine. He was not prepared for a dad like Joe, or a personal coach like the new coach that came in.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And he let ‘em sneak up on him. He let it go too far before he did something about it.
AUSTIN: Oh for sure.
MITCH: But that’s Eric Taylor.
AUSTIN: A lot of offenses now, say in college and high school, are gonna run a spread, that’s just how it works.
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: Some will run the I if you’re in a goal line setting, which is basically within like five yards of the endzone. And then like short yardage, if you have like one yard to go and third down or something.
MITCH: Last question about this,
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: this is a quote from Eric Taylor,
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: McNulty’s the other team they’re playing against.
AUSTIN: All right
MITCH: “It’s not gonna work if McNulty knows about it. So you’re gonna have to ride herd over the team.” Is that an expression that exists in real life?
AUSTIN: I don’t think so.
MITCH: I didn’t either.
AUSTIN: I’ve never heard of it.
MITCH: He said it so confidently in the show.
AUSTIN: Ride herd over the team?
MITCH: Does he mean like a sheep dog, and they’re all sheep? Is that what he means?
AUSTIN: Ride herd.
MITCH: Like a cowboy with a bunch of cattle?
AUSTIN: Who is he talking to?
MITCH: He’s talking to JD and Matt. He’s saying this is only gonna work if it’s a secret so you’re gonna have to ride herd over the team. I watched it with subtitles.
AUSTIN: I don’t even know what he means by that.
MITCH: (laughing) You know Eric talk, like, whenever Eric’s serious he says everything in the exact same tone of voice.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: And it doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not, he just says it all.
AUSTIN: (Eric impression) Ride herd over the team.
MITCH: (Eric impression) All right it’s not gonna work if McNulty knows about it so you boys are gonna have to ride herd over that team.
AUSTIN: You’re gonna have to ride herd over that team.
MITCH: Got it?
AUSTIN: Got it?
MITCH: Get outta here.
AUSTIN: Get outta here. (laughing)
MITCH: (laughing) I love Eric Taylor. That’s all I have, that’s my question.
AUSTIN: (Eric voice) It’s always in this, this, uh, very, very
MITCH: I love that character, I love that that’s what he does whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Like, when the worst thing in the world happens that’s how he talks, when the best thing in the world happens he talks the exact same way.
AUSTIN: And it’s also the same cadence with Tami, too. Whenever he’s in trouble and they’re in bed,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: and she says “I can’t believe you did this!” and he’s like, “Darlin’ I’m sorry.” (laughing)
MITCH: Yeah. My favorite examples of it are when it’s a good thing. When, like, when like, someone will win and everyone else will be jumping and screaming and he’ll be like, “Look at me. That was a great game of football. You worked your ass off. Get outta here.” Or like when Matt’s crying in a shower with his clothes on ‘cause horrible things have happened, he’s like, “Matt,”
AUSTIN: “You are worth it.”
MITCH: “You’re a good person. Now I’m leavin’. Goodbye.”
AUSTIN: “Take a cold shower.”
MITCH: “You take care of your grandmother.”
AUSTIN: “Dry off first. You’re all wet.”
BOTH: (laughing)
MITCH: “Get outta that damn shower.”
AUSTIN: “Turn that water off. No, I’m gonna do it. Don’t touch that thing.”
MITCH: All right. Oh, I love this show but I can’t watch that scene ever again.
AUSTIN: Why does he do that?
MITCH: He’s an idiot. He’s a Texas football coach idiot.
AUSTIN: Ahh god.
MITCH: You can email us at deviltownpodcast@gmail.com,
AUSTIN: I’m gonna let you do all this because I fucked it up last time.
MITCH: You fuck it up every time.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: You can find us on twitter @deviltownpod, @a_greenameyer, and @organzapleats. You can find notes and links to all the stuff we talked about at deviltown.buzzsprout.com. I think that’s everything.
AUSTIN: That’s it.
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: Cool. I’m Austin
MITCH: I’m Mitch
AUSTIN: and this has been Devil Town.