Aging & Wisdom Quote by Jim Sensenbrenner

"These days" is doing a lot of quiet political work. Sensenbrenner isn’t just remarking on locker-room reality; he’s announcing a crisis narrative that justifies oversight. As a longtime Washington lawmaker, he frames steroid use less as an isolated moral failing than as a systemic pressure cooker where the market (scholarships, contracts, fame) has outgrown the guardrails. The line’s blunt engine is inevitability: the "temptation" is now "too great", which implies that individual willpower and old-school coaching ethics can’t compete with modern incentives. If the problem is structurally baked in, then regulation, testing regimes, and punitive enforcement start to sound like common sense rather than intrusion.

The subtext is paternal and strategic. "Young athletes" shifts attention from millionaire stars to minors and hopefuls, turning a performance-enhancing debate into a child-protection issue. That move widens the moral coalition: parents, educators, and taxpayers can be recruited without needing to litigate whether some pro league quietly benefits from spectacle. It also sidesteps thornier questions about why sports culture rewards risk-taking in the first place. The sentence places blame on a diffuse "these days" rather than on schools, leagues, brands, or policymakers who profit from ever-higher performance standards.

Contextually, Sensenbrenner’s era in Congress overlaps with the late-1990s/2000s steroid scandals and the broader shift toward “tough” governance: when institutions appear unable to police themselves, lawmakers step in. The quote works because it turns a complicated ecosystem of ambition, economics, and identity into a simple legislative warrant: temptation has escalated, so authority must too.