Cole Cunningham, Thomas Glenn, and Michael Vasquez
11/17/13
Jeanette Laredo
English 1320.017
Risk-Enhancing Drugs – Is Winning the Only Thing?
How far would you go to win? The culture of sports revolves around the goal of winning, this mindset forces athlete to take risk; however, does this ideology cause athletes to make bad decisions. One of the biggest issues in sports today is the use of performance-enhancing drugs as a way of “cheating” in order to get an edge on opponents. From the high school level all the way up to the professional level, men and women have been caught using these drugs, which are banned. It is easy to see the positive effects of using these performance-enhancing drugs with athletes becoming faster, bigger, and stronger; however, these athletes and there spectators don’t realize why these performance enhancing drugs are actually illegal, especially college students who are the major risk takers. Attached to the natural benefits of these drugs that make athletes feel closer to achieving their dream of winning are health risk, reputation risk, and loads of other negative effects of using PEDs. Enrolled in the University of North Texas, the authors of this paper have created a blog in order to appeal to the athletes here at UNT in order to help educate them on the exact reasons why these performance-enhancing drugs are illegal and to help persuade them against using them. In addition to reading and learning about the negative effects of PEDs, we have also included a pledge onto the page that athletes can sign to pledge not to use PEDs.
Audience
The main audience that we are trying to appeal here is the athletes of the University of North Texas. Athletes who excel in their respective sport and have made it to the collegiate level can attribute their success to their athletic ability and hard work. While college provides an opportunity for these people to continue playing the game that they love, it is also viewed as a stepping stone to a much greater level: the professional leagues. With this in mind, college athletes such as the ones here at the University of North Texas are even more dedicated and determined to do the best they can in order to make it.
Looking at these athletes as individuals, it is important to keep in mind that they are still college students and have similar values as other college students. While some may focus time on their schoolwork and grades, other college students (and especially athletes that conform to the "jockey" stereotype) also devote a lot of time to non-academic activities such as hanging out, partying, and other typical college activities. In regards to values over sports, a study over the ethics and behavior of college athletes also that as college athletes get older, they tend to show "an increase in professional attitudes associated with participation in sport"(Priest and Krause). Therefore, younger athletes are more prone to make less-professional decisions and are more prone to breaking the rules and using PEDs.
After intensive research, there has been no report of illegal performance enhancing drug use at the University of North Texas. However, as more and more reports of drug-bust coming out in other schools across the nation, it is vital that North Texas athletes resist the pressure to use performance enhancing drugs in order to improve their skills, too. Being in college and growing up with the internet, it feels as though the blog was the best way to address our audience. The blog aims particularly to target athletes of the University of North Texas who, like other athletes across the nation, face pressure to use performance-enhancing drugs. By supplying information and statistics on the argument against using drugs, we feel like this blog is a great way to appeal to these college athletes and influence them against using drugs in sports.
Kairos
The issue of performance-enhancing drug-use in college sports is a topic of wide context and great national interest. The current rules in the National Collegiate Athletic Association are very well stated in the league's drug policy and are located in the blog. Banned according to classification, the banned drugs are: "anabolic agents; stimulants, alcohol and beta blockers (for rifle only), masking agents such as diuretics, street drugs, peptide hormones and analogues, anti-estrogens and Beta-2 Agonists"(NCAA Drug Testing). This lengthy list of drug classes all pertain to enhancing or altering the performance of the athlete who takes them. Student-athletes, including those at UNT that we are addressing with this blog, can lose one full year of eligibility for the first offense (25 percent of their total eligibility) and are withheld from competition for a full athletic season. A second positive test for street drugs results in another lost year of eligibility and year withheld from competition. A second positive result for PED usage will render the student-athlete permanently ineligible. Even with all of this there is still a gap of awareness.
The NCAA as specific as it is and UNT with its rules clearly defined are inconsistent with penalties, and lack a clear message for athletes. College athletes must sign a form saying they won't use drugs, will commit to being an amateur athlete, will accept the educational responsibility placed on them and by the time they're done have signed their name nine times. The paper is supposed to deter athletes from using enhancers, yet it's just another form for the student to sign going into college. The message is undermined, unenforced, and ineffective this is why we believe our blog to needed. Our blog is an attempt to re-commit that pledge to not use PED's, it's an awareness of what these drugs to them not just a slogan of "just say no", and it is a focus on drugs not just diluted by paperwork.
Commonplaces
The commonplaces of our UNT athletes on the use of performance-enhancing drugs are mostly against their use. Everybody knows that the use of performance-enhancing drugs is illegal in sports, and nobody knows better than the athletes themselves that have to go through the pressures of not using them.
There are several ideologies involved when it comes to the commonplaces of PED usage. There are a lot of different views in regards to performance-enhancing drugs that people may have as athletes at UNT and these views are also shared by fans and coaches. Some may see them as what they are: a health hazard and a shortcut to succeeding at a level where all players should be on an equal playing field. One authority named Sharon A. West, an associate professor of sport sciences and director of the athletics-training-education program at the University of the Pacific, tried to explain why some athletes have the ideological viewpoint that these drugs are okay. She says that the reason they are used is "very simple: They work, and they work very well and very fast. A lot of athletes feel that the only way to compete at the college level, or to get to the professional level, is by getting bigger, stronger, and faster"(Wolverton). Others might have the ideology that they should be made legal. They may say that they enhance the sport, allow for better competition, and can lead to lower risks. Overall, our audience’s main commonplace in regards to training in sports is to do whatever it takes to get an edge over their opponents. The question is whether or not they are willing to engage in an illegal activity to do so.
Our blog is designed to address the commonplaces of these athletes whose main goal is to succeed and make it to the next level. We feel like addressing these athletes while they are in college is the most opportune time to begin enlightening them about the risks of using performance-enhancing drugs. To appeal to these commonplaces, our blog features posts that hit home with these commonplaces of doing whatever it takes. It also features quotes and examples of sports figures that our audience can also relate with when reading our blog.

Ethos
In order to further our cause against the use of performance-enhancing drugs, the blog we have created looks to draw on our own ethos, the views of authorities and their positions, and also looks at our audience’s hostility. Our audience being that of University of North Texas athletes, we as the creators of this blog found it easy to relate to and speak about this topic due to our ability to relate. Being on the same campus and of the same age, we found it easy to put ourselves in our audience’s shoes and view it from their perspective. Us as college students face a lot of pressure about our futures and what we’ll be doing in ten years. We as the authors also have played sports before as well, and know the pressure that athletes face when it comes to winning and doing all that it takes to win. This being said, we constructed the blog to appeal to our audience as college students. We implemented a color scheme that of our school colors to appeal to the school spirit of the athletes. We also chose to use similar fonts that you would see on things like ESPN and other sport networks in order to appeal to this athletic community. Also included are sport related pictures and pictures of Mean Green athletes in order to further relate to the members of our audience.
The blog content itself draws on the ethos of community and proximate authorities, and tries to use their positions as a rhetorical strategy to appeal to our audience. Some authorities we have selected to portray in this digital artifact are the United States Anti-Doping Agency, the NCAA league commissioners, major athletes and even some doctors. They all share the belief that PED use is wrong and shouldn't be allowed in sports. For example, two former collegiate and professional athletes shared their thoughts about PEDs, saying they could perceive the difference in there plays style and that this cheated them of a fair game (Halter). Overall, these groups or people have high knowledge and reputation in regards to our subject of PEDs and we believe they will help influence our UNT athletes who view our blog.
By analyzing the views and commonplaces of our audience, we believe that the audience is mostly amenable and that our blog can greatly influence their views. Athletes in college are reasonable and intelligent, and we believe that their opinions regarding performance enhancing drugs can be changed to be against them if they were not already.
Logos
Our blog also hopes to use logos such as data, facts, and statements from authorities in order to show the reasons why UNT athletes should not engage in the use of PEDs. One way we choose to do this is to show the medical risk of using PEDs in one of our posts. According to one study on the effects of steroids on the heart, an echocardiographic study results showed that people who use steroids have smaller left ventricular dimension with thicker walls, impaired diastolic function, as well as higher peak systolic strain rate. It also showed disturbance of the banding pattern of the cardiac muscle fiber with disintegration, loss of striations, dehiscent intercalated disc, and interrupted Z-bands (Hassan, et. al.).Athletes who use performance enhancing drugs while their bodies are still developing are also at risk of liver damage, increased heart rate and blood pressure, higher risk of strokes, heart attacks, and cardiac arrhythmia. In addition to negative health effects that users suffer directly, another study showed that they also have other negative effects in regards to other substance abuses. This study compared substance use behaviors of male student athletes who reported using performance enhancing substances during college to those who did not. The results were astonishing, showing a consistent pattern of higher substance use rates among PED users compared to non-users, including heavier drinking, higher prevalence rates of cigarettes, marijuana, amphetamines, narcotics, and a variety of permissible and impermissible dietary supplements (Buckman).
Also on our blog we look to use proximate authorities from other people who have use PEDs in order for our athletes in the audience to be able to relate to them. Such authorities are featured in an interview of PED users conducted by Evdokia Pappa and Eileen Kennedy. In the interview the anonymous users shared their experiences of using PEDs and revealed some of the consequences they had to face, such as "pains in my muscles and bones", "hypoglycemia", and "severe acne"(Pappa and Kennedy). The overall goal of logos in the blog site is to get across the message of risks taken when using enhancers through statistics citing the amount of students using illicit drugs, medical facts associated with each type of enhancer, and the psychological risks taken when using. Through facts and medical reports student athletes may understand that there are much higher risks than simply being kicked off the team.
Pathos
The way that we chose to appeal to the emotions of our audience is by referring to fatherly/motherly emotions and by referring to the spirit of the game. Besides the pressures of being college students and winning games, athletes at the University of North Texas also have to assume the pressures of another aspect: being a role model. Every athlete that has made it to the collegiate level has accomplished a dream shared by young athletes everywhere. A child's dream to play for the school of their dreams, and UNT has many of these dreamers show up decked in green and white attire at any and all sporting events. Keeping this in mind, it is essential that athletes at the University of North Texas realize the amount that they are looked up to my not only younger kids but also college students too. If caught using performance-enhancing drugs, these players will not only bring themselves down, but also the entire population of people that look up to and admire them. It may also persuade younger athletes that it is okay to use performance-enhancing drugs because their favorite athlete used them. By some of the posts in our blog, we hope to appeal to these athletes’ responsibility of being a role model and to persuade them to make good judgment.
In addition to appealing to these emotions, our blog also aims to appeal to the spirit of the game. Sports have been around for centuries, and some of the major sports for the most part have kept the same rules and traditions throughout the many years. College athletes in the past never had access to these performance enhancing drugs, yet were able to play the game at an elite level without them. With this in mind, we hope that the UNT athletes will feel obligated through our blog to keep the spirit of the game and not use PEDs.
Conclusion
The overall purpose of the blog is to influence the athletes of the University of North Texas to be more invested on the entertainment of the game and their fans. Through this blog, we attempt to incorporate ethical values of fairness, moral responsibility, and servitude into the values of our fellow UNT athletes. We also make an attempt to enlighten players on the matter of entertainment and its true value in collegiate athletic performance. Unfortunately, this approach focuses largely on an appeal focused largely on Ethos and Pathos, with little logos (at the moment). This blog would serve best if incorporated into a college website or a segment of an online community, where athletes can become more aware and even sign a petition of no PED’s. This would also help in our attempt to close the division between players and their fans, allowing players to actually hear what fans have to say, and understand the sport as they do. This would not only support our ideas on the use of performance enhancement but also make that message clearer by enforcing the authority that the fans hold over the sport. It needs to be made clear to competitors and specters of the sport that performance enhancing drugs are more than a simple boost, that PED’s risk more than a simple ineligibly that these risk the life of athletes.

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