Jeff Novitzky | |
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Born | December 15, 1967 |
Alma mater | |
Occupation(s) | Athlete, current Senior Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance for the UFC |
Known for | Senior Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance for the UFC |
Jeff Novitzky (born December 15, 1967) is the current Senior Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance for the UFC, the world's largest mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion. He previously served as a special agent for the Food and Drug Administration, investigating the use of steroids in professional sports. Before April 2008 he was a special agent for the Internal Revenue Service who investigated the use of steroids for over five years. [1] Novitzky's work has been credited with "changing the face of sports." [2]
Novitzky grew up in Burlingame, California and graduated from Mills High School in Millbrae, California, in 1986. [3] [4] While at Mills High School, Novitzky high jumped seven feet, still the only high school athlete in San Mateo County history to achieve the seven-foot mark. Novitzky was the Peninsula Athletic League's (PAL's) Most Valuable Player in boys basketball in 1986. After graduating from Mills High School, Novitzky enrolled at the University of Arizona on a track and field scholarship, [5] before transferring to Skyline College to continue his basketball career. Novitzky played two seasons of basketball at Skyline but just one game in his second season due to injuries. In 1989, Novitzky transferred to San Jose State University on a basketball scholarship. For the San Jose State Spartans, Novitzky played two games as a reserve forward in the 1989–90 season, Stan Morrison's first as head coach. [6] Again, injuries limited Novitzky's playing time to those two games. [5] Novitzky graduated from San Jose State in 1992 with a degree in accounting. [7]
Novitzky first gained public notoriety during his role as a federal agent for the IRS. In a 2002 investigation which came to be known as the BALCO scandal, Novitzky was the lead investigative special agent for a raid on a San Francisco Bay Area laboratory co-operative that was supplying banned substances to dozens of elite professional athletes. The investigation is recognized as the world's most well known performance enhancing drug scandal in sports history. [8] The resulting fallout implicated many well-known athletes in cheating at various high level competitions including Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Olympic Games. Notable athletes involved included Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Barry Bonds, Bill Romanowski, and Jason Giambi. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]
Novitzky was the lead special agent on the federal perjury trial of Barry Bonds. The trial detailed the extensive history of Bonds' athletic performance enhancing drug use during his quest for the two most hallowed records in American professional sports, the single season and all-time home run marks. [15]
On May 20, 2010, the New York Daily News reported that Novitzky was involved in an investigation into performance enhancing drug use on Lance Armstrong's Tour de France teams, and that Armstrong's former teammate Floyd Landis was cooperating with the investigation. [16] In a December 2018 UFC press conference, Novitzky referred to Armstrong as "one of the biggest frauds and cheats in professional sport history." [17] Previously, Marion Jones, a track and field Olympian winner, pleaded guilty in October 2007 to making false statements to Novitzky.
The bulk of the names provided in the Mitchell Report about doping in Major League Baseball were provided by Radomski and Brian MacNamee, a personal trainer for MLB pitcher Roger Clemens, both of whom Novitzky persuaded to talk to Senator Mitchell and his staff. [18]
In his book The Secret Race, former professional cyclist Tyler Hamilton wrote that Novitzky drove a "bulldozer" through the sport of cycling in uncovering details about the pervasive use of performance enhancing drugs. [19]
Novitzky has been compared to famed U.S. Treasury Department investigator Elliott Ness. [20]
Starting in April 2015, Novitzky began working for the UFC as their Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance. Within this role at the UFC, Novitzky oversees all anti-doping efforts, as well as other athlete related health and performance initiatives within the organization. The UFC's program is widely recognized as the most comprehensive anti-doping program in professional sports. [21] [22] In both 2016 and 2019, Novitzky was nominated for the category "Leading Man" at the World MMA Awards, awarded to the leading industry executive. [23] In July 2019, Novitzky was promoted by the UFC to Senior Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance. [24] [25] [11] [13]
Novitzky has been criticized by certain defendants in steroid-related cases as being biased and unfair. [3] Novitzky, in multiple cross examinations, including during the federal perjury investigation of Roger Clemens, has been a credible government witness. [26] [27] [28]
Novitzky has appeared as a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast on three separate occasions. It was Brendan Schaub who coined Novitzky's nickname, "The Golden Snitch." [29] [30] [31]
In 2019, Novitzky appeared as a guest on Mike Tyson's podcast Hotboxin' with Mike Tyson. [32] Tyson hailed Novitzky for his contribution to keeping the combat sports community clean. In reference to Novitzky's nickname, "The Golden Snitch", Tyson stated "No, that's not a golden snitch. He is a discoverer of people that are doing devilish and wicked things. People that are hurting people physically."
Marion Lois Jones, also known as Marion Jones-Thompson, is an American former world champion track-and-field athlete and former professional basketball player. She won three gold medals and two bronze medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, but was later stripped of her medals after admitting to lying to federal investigators about her knowledge of performance enhancing drugs.
The United States Anti-Doping Agency is a non-profit, non-governmental 501(c)(3) organization and the national anti-doping organization (NADO) for the United States. To protect clean competition and the integrity of sport and prevent doping in the United States with a performance-enhancing substance, the USADA provides education, leads scientific initiatives, conducts testing, and oversees the results management process. Headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USADA is a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code, which harmonizes anti-doping practices around the world, and is widely considered the basis for the strongest and strictest anti-doping programs to prevent doping in sport.
In competitive sports, doping is the use of banned athletic performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) by athletes, as a way of cheating. As stated in the World Anti-Doping Code by WADA, doping is defined as the occurrence of one or more of the anti-doping rule violations set forth in Article 2.1 through Article 2.11 of the Code. The term doping is widely used by organizations that regulate sporting competitions. The use of drugs to enhance performance is considered unethical, and is prohibited by most international sports organizations, including the International Olympic Committee. Furthermore, athletes taking explicit measures to evade detection exacerbate the ethical violation with overt deception and cheating.
The Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) was an American company that operated from 1983 to 2003 led by founder and owner Victor Conte.
Victor Conte Jr. is an American musician and businessman who was the founder and president of Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), which is now defunct. BALCO was a sports nutrition center in California. In the late seventies Conte played bass with funk / R&B group Tower of Power, appearing on the band's 1978 release We Came to Play!.
Greg F. Anderson is an American personal trainer, best known for his work with baseball player Barry Bonds, and links with BALCO.
Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports is a non-fiction book published on March 23, 2006, and written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle. When Sports Illustrated released excerpts from the book on March 7, it generated considerable publicity because the book chronicles alleged extensive use of performance-enhancing drugs, including several different types of steroids and growth hormones, by San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds.
Doping in baseball has been an ongoing issue for Major League Baseball (MLB). After repeated use by some of the most successful professional baseball players in MLB history, these banned substances found their way to the collegiate level. At the junior college level, due to lack of funding and NCAA drug testing, the abuse of PEDs is most common, but they are also an issue in Division I, II and III.
Trevor Graham is a Jamaican-born American former sprinter and athletics coach. Following the BALCO scandal, the US Olympic Committee barred him indefinitely from all its training sites.
Norboletone, or norbolethone, is a synthetic and orally active anabolic–androgenic steroid (AAS) which was never marketed. It was first developed in 1966 by Wyeth Laboratories and was investigated for use as an agent to encourage weight gain and for the treatment of short stature, but was never marketed commercially because of fears that it might be toxic. It subsequently showed up in urine tests on athletes in competition in the early 2000s.
The BALCO scandal was a scandal involving the use of banned performance-enhancing substances by professional athletes.
The Barry Bonds perjury case was a case of alleged perjury regarding use of anabolic steroids by former San Francisco Giants outfielder and all-time Major League Baseball (MLB) career home run leader, Barry Bonds, and the related investigations surrounding these accusations. On April 13, 2011, Bonds was convicted of one felony count of obstruction of justice for giving an incomplete answer to a question in grand jury testimony. A mistrial was declared on the remaining three counts of perjury, and those charges were dropped. The obstruction of justice conviction was upheld by an appellate panel in 2013, but a larger panel of the appellate court exonerated him in 2015 by a 10-1 vote.
Lance Edward Armstrong is an American former professional road racing cyclist. He achieved international fame for winning the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times from 1999 to 2005, but was stripped of his titles after an investigation into doping allegations, called the Lance Armstrong doping case, found that Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs over his career. As a result, Armstrong is currently banned for life from all sanctioned bicycling events.
Doping, or the use of restricted performance-enhancing drugs in the United States occurs in different sports, most notably in the sports of baseball and football.
For much of the second phase of his career, American cyclist Lance Armstrong faced constant allegations of doping, including doping at the Tour de France and in the Lance Armstrong doping case. Armstrong vehemently denied allegations of using performance enhancing drugs for 13 years, until a confession during a broadcast interview with Oprah Winfrey in January 2013, when he finally admitted to all his cheating in sports, stating, "I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times".
United States Anti-Doping Agency v. Lance Armstrong, the Lance Armstrong doping case, was a major doping investigation that led to retired American road racing cyclist Lance Armstrong being stripped of his seven consecutive Tour de France titles, along with one Olympic medal, and his eventual admission to using performance-enhancing drugs. The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) portrayed Armstrong as the ringleader of what it called "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."
Marachiara Romero Borella is an Italian professional mixed martial artist who competed in the Women's Flyweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
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