But we found out Friday night that Harrison has been going about his business (for the last couple of years at least) with some illegal help. He was suspended by the National Football League for four games for violating the league's policy on performance-enhancing substances, reportedly for use of human growth hormone.
The Patriot public relations machine, an estimable force that includes a substantial number of people who speak into microphones and send words into cyberspace, will be in overdrive working Harrison's defense over the next month.
Let's face it: No one who roots for the Patriots wants to acknowledge any wrongdoing by Harrison because everybody loves the guy - with good reason. And so there will be carpet-bombing commentary about how Harrison did not actually take steroids and how everybody else is probably doing the same things. We'll be told Harrison used banned substances only to "get back on the field," that this is a one-time thing, and that he did it only to help him recover from injuries. It was not about gaining competitive advantage - Rodney told us that himself.
Unfortunately, that's a smokescreen. "Getting back on the field" is, by any definition, a competitive advantage. More than that, HGH also makes you bigger and stronger. It increases muscle mass. And it's against the rules.
It's easy to understand why Harrison would take the stuff. He's a 34-year-old safety in a league of 24-year-old defensive backs and he's suffered a couple of devastating injuries the past two seasons. But try for a moment to imagine the reaction around here if it was Alex Rodriguez who got caught. For that matter, how does this make Harrison different from Barry Bonds, the man we love to scorn?
