Those more cynical about these things might question the timing. What better way to kick off Super Bowl hype, after all, than with a feel-good announcement about the NFL's new and improved drug testing program?
Take a closer look, though, and there's some real meat on the bone that the NFL served up during the traditionally slow media time leading up to Super Bowl week.
Sure, it may have taken a bit of prodding from some Washington politicians to get everyone moving. But give some credit to the league for twisting the arm of its always-wary players' association and coming to terms on a tougher plan.
Players will be tested more often, and it will be harder for them to cheat. When they are caught, they will fork over some of their lucrative signing bonuses as well as their weekly paychecks.
For the first time, players in a major professional sports league in the United States will be tested for EPO. And, for the first time, the league is at least beginning to study how to deal with human growth hormone, which many say is the drug du jour among NFL players.
It's far from perfect, but it's the furthest any league has gone to make sure the playing field is level and that the people who pay the salaries aren't taken in by a bunch of cheaters.
Whether fans really care is another story.
They seem to care about baseball, where the revelations about Barry Bonds have made him such a pariah that even the San Francisco Giants seem to be having second thoughts about re-signing him. And neither Mark McGwire nor Rafael Palmeiro likely will ever be in the Hall of Fame.
Contrast that to the way the citizens of San Diego acted when their quarterback-busting linebacker, Shawne Merriman, was himself busted for steroid use and forced to sit out four games of the regular season.
Merriman returned to a hero's welcome, and a stadium filled with people wearing his jersey. So much for former commissioner Paul Tagliabue's theory that the risk of public humiliation would help stop some players from cheating.
Of course, Merriman didn't really cheat. He merely ingested a tainted supplement. That's his story and he's sticking to it, though he's been strangely quiet about just what supplement it might have been or how he got it.
Whatever happened, it cost Merriman four games and, quite possibly, the award as the league's best defensive player. You will still see him at the Pro Bowl, though, where his conversations with Miami defensive end Jason Taylor should be interesting.
"You really shouldn't be able to fail a test like that and play in this league, to begin with," Taylor said last month. "To make the Pro Bowl and all the other awards, I think you're walking a fine line of sending the wrong message."
Taylor's reaction aside, the 60 or so active players who have tested positive for steroids since the NFL first began testing have largely escaped the kind of wrath that engulfed the likes of McGwire, Bonds and Palmeiro.
That may be because football players are more anonymous on the field, one of 53 on a team and identified only by their numbers. Or it may be because it's harder to relate steroid use to statistics in football.
Common sense tells you that home run totals skyrocketed for some reason. But just because a linebacker is juiced doesn't mean he'll necessarily get more sacks.
Still, the NFL deserves credit for being the first U.S. major sports league to begin testing for steroids in 1989, about the same time Jose Canseco was shooting up himself and who knows who else in the Oakland A's clubhouse and baseball was pretending performance-enhancing drugs didn't exist.
But the NFL system has always been a frail one, with players subjected to random testing on such an infrequent basis that many presumably were able to work their way around it. That became evident when the Charlotte Observer detailed how a doctor gave steroid prescriptions to players on the city's 2003 Super Bowl team.
The key to the NFL's upgraded program may be just how random the random tests are. Assuming they are truly random, every player in the NFL can be expected to be tested an average of four times during the season and up to six times during the offseason.
Add to that the EPO testing and the threat of forfeiting a percentage of signing bonuses - which are often far larger than yearly salaries - and it's hard to find a lot of fault with the league's new plan.
Sure, the suspensions could be tougher, and more substances could be tested. There could also be more of an urgency about HGH.
For now, though, there's nothing wrong with a feel-good story that feels pretty good.
