I have been going to a fantasy baseball camp for a few years (missed last year for a family emergency thing). The 'roid discussion often comes up.
The pros there are folks like Sid Bream, Steve Avery, Marvin Freeman, and some special guests like Andruw Jones this year and Dale Murphy a couple years back. None of them say they partook, and they all said one of the main advantages was healing faster. A discussion this year was about how wearing a 162 game season was on even young bodies. I was surprised to hear them say that by May they were all dinged up, bruised, sore, the starting pitchers less so.
The "cream" or whatever would enable some to heal up faster, aside from any strength building aspect.
The players at the camp range from 25 to 74, I was second oldest at mid60s, and after 3 days of playing, we were nearly all limping or bruised or whatever, after 3 days. Some of these guys appear to have been in good shape otherwise, one of the guys on our team was a 43 year old who played in the NFL (WR) for quite a few years (nice guy). He was banged up too, on our team and two lockers down from me so we chatted quite a bit. He said he had stayed in good shape but was really feeling it after 2-3 days.
I trained pretty hard this year and was barely able to run by Day 5, but I'm at an age where recovery is going to be slow, and I had a slight pull in a quad on Day 2 I was trying to save. I'm still a bit sore 2 weeks later.
In football of course, the bodily damage is going to be greater, and the desire to build effective muscularity greater still. UGA has been running a two back system for several years now and the comments by the running backs tell me they appreciate that even if it means they don't put up gaudy numbers. Of course it helps when you take out a Chubb and put in a Michel.
I know these guys are 20 and in incredible shape, but the pounding they take is incredible also.