Dick Harmon: Deer-antler spray remedy for Utes, Cougars, Jazz, Aggies

Well, we’ve found a quick remedy for Utah’s Pac-12 woes — a quick track for BYU to become a dominating independent football powerhouse, and the reason the Jazz didn’t show up for that game with Houston.

It’s a miracle cure that no one with a line of scrimmage, basketball, golf club, bowling ball or dance partner should do without.

It is too late to help Cougar quarterback Riley Nelson’s back. But, boy, oh boy, if we’d only known back in September, his six offensive linemen might have also recovered more quickly.

Using this potion might be the way I finally shoot a golf round in the 60s. This elixir might make folks in retirement homes dance the night away. It could take the edge off arthritic joints that hurt and get Utah State’s injured basketball players up to snuff. It could change the world, elevate mankind, solve medical mysteries and cut short our recovery time from ailments, surgeries, sprains, aches, bone fractures and muscle pulls.

It’s called deer-antler spray.

And right now it’s taken a toll among sports headlines that involve the Super Bowl, PGA Tour, and the monumental rise of the SEC and national champion Alabama.

No wonder the Crimson Tide made Manti Te’o and the Fighting Irish look like leprechaun runts in the BCS championship game. ‘Bama players were shooting deer-antler spray in their mouths. As it turns out, the owner of the company that makes the spray, SWATS, said he sold it to 20 Alabama players the week of the title game in New Orleans and another 20 players 10 days before the game. He also provided the spray to players at Auburn and LSU, schools that say they’ve sent cease-and-desist letters to SWATS.

Deer-antler spray. Who’d have thunk it.

Then this week of the Super Bowl, there are reports that Ravens’ linebacker Ray Lewis is allegedly connected to deer-antler spray, a substance banned by the NFL.

On the PGA Tour, veteran Vijay Singh admitted he’s taken some whiffs of the spray, which has caused Tour veteran Mark O’ Meara to make a public issue of it. This antler spray was the talk of professional golfers at a recent tournament in Dubai.

Superstar Lee Westwood was among the professional golfers having a good laugh about it in Dubai. "Deer-antler spray? That sounds like something you wax your car with, doesn't it?" Westwood said. "I've never heard of it. ... You have to be careful about what you take. I try not to take anything now, really, other than Corona and vodka."

SWATS spokesman Christopher Key has explained this antler spray to journalists and he says he is the one who sold it to Alabama players.

"They want to win," Key said. "After the games they said they couldn't believe how they weren't tired and how much energy they had."

Key explained it this way to Sports Illustrated: "You're familiar with HGH, correct? It's converted in the liver to IGF-1. (This) IGF-1, or insulin-like growth factor, is a natural anabolic hormone that stimulates muscle growth. We have deer that we harvest out of New Zealand. Their antlers are the fastest-growing substance on planet Earth ... because of the high concentration of IGF-1.

"We've been able to freeze dry that out, extract it, put it in a sublingual spray that you shake for 20 seconds and then spray three (times) under your tongue. ... This stuff has been around for almost 1,000 years, this is stuff from the Chinese," Key told Sports Illustrated.

But wait …

There’s a spoiler — a finger in the pie.