Terry Bradshaw: "I Used Steroids"
Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl Quarterback Admits Use in the 1970s
It's been stated before, and if need be, will be again. Steroids are merely 'part of the game.' That was shown to ring true once again when Terry Bradshaw admitted in an interview that he and other players on the Pittsburgh Steelers championship teams used steroids.
Bradshaw indicated during an interview with Dan Patrick on ESPN Radio that the drugs were obtained from a doctor's prescription and were used to "get away the aches and pains" and to "speed up the healing process," and that they were not taken to get "bigger and stronger and faster." When referring to the use of steroids, Bradshaw used the term "we."
During his 14-year playing career, Bradshaw suffered injuries to his neck, wrist and elbow, the latter forcing his retirement. For his careeer, the Hall of Famer threw for nearly 28,000 yards and 212 touchdowns and was the driving force behind the team's success, which included four Super Bowls. Bradshaw is currently an NFL analyst on FOX.
Steve Courson, a former teammate of Bradshaw's who died in 2005 in a peculiar tree cutting accident , stated in a Sports Illustrated article that he used Anadrol-50, Dianabol, Winstrol and Deca-Durobolin during his playing career.
Bradshaw Says It Was Just Cortisone, Not Anabolic Steroids…
…But Was That Just A Convenient Excuse?
It comes down to what you really believe. After opening up a can of worms, former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw did a little damage control. Appearing during the press conference introducing the recently retired Michael Strahan to the FOX NFL crew, Bradshaw did his best to backtrack from his comments last week during a radio interview with Dan Patrick, most likely after bunkering down with FOX executives.
“I’m not bodybuilding here,” he said. “They were not that kind of steroids. They were anti-inflammatories.” Trying to pass off his earlier comments as though he meant cortisone shots is like Bill Clinton saying that he smoked marihuana, but didn’t inhale. All athletes - even ones that come across as unintelligent as Bradshaw - know what a cortisone shot is and not call it a ’steroid,’ especially in today’s paranoid sports world.
If Bradshaw did use steroids when he played, then he would just be another in the line of many. Admitting it now would not take away from his great career. It made no sense for him to say anything about it, but he just compounded it by looking like he made an innocent mistake in classification.
To put the exclamation point on his reversal, Bradshaw even went to the extreme by stating that he has “been on steroids for about six weeks” in post-surgical convalescence from a procedure done recently to repair a broken vertebrae from when he was an active player. I suppose that he was trying to make sure everyone understood that ’steroids’ is Bradshaw’s pet name for cortisone.
