, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith said , we `` should also avoid the temptation to legislate in this area . Football -- like soccer , rugby and even basketball and baseball -- involves contact that can produce injuries . We can not legislate the elimination of injuries from the games without eliminating the games themselves . '' This is a familiar refrain . Back in 2005 , when several committees investigated the use of steroids in baseball , numerous sports officials warned this was not an issue with which Congress should concern itself . Yet insisting on a firewall between sports and politics ignores the long-standing relationship between these two parts of American society . At the state and local level , sports teams depend on government assistance . There have been a large number of public subsidies , ranging from appropriations for stadium construction to the placement of public transportation near stadiums to tax breaks which the sports industry has depended on for growth . At the federal level , sports owners have also benefited from government . In 1922 , the Supreme Court exempted baseball from the antitrust laws . As a result of this , baseball owners
Princeton , New Jersey -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- When baseball slugger Mark McGwire admitted he had used steroids in his record-breaking 1998 season , he recalled refusing to talk about the subject in his 2005 testimony to Congress . `` After all this time , I want to come clean , '' McGwire announced . `` I was not in a position to do that five years ago in my congressional testimony , but now I feel an obligation to discuss this and to answer questions about it . I 'll do that , and then I just want to help my team . '' McGwire 's admission come as the House Judiciary Committee has been investigating the problem of brain injuries to football players , following heated discussions October 28 , when the committee aggressively questioned NFL officials to figure out why the league had done so little to curb this well-known problem . Any government inquiry of this kind draws the familiar charge that politicians should stay out of the business of sports -- even though the NFL and NCAA have in fact responded to congressional pressure by instituting rules to protect players from brain damage . Still