This Drug Program Is Undefeated

When Sam Rutigliano launched his campaign to stamp out drug abuse by the Cleveland Browns a few years ago, the program got off to a roaring start.

Each of the players who volunteered for the Inner Circle program cheerfully provided his required two urine specimens a week, and the meetings were downright festive.

“The first couple of meetings, they (the players) were stacking it this high,” Rutigliano said, raising his arm to indicate the level of the verbal manure.

Then someone discovered that one player’s specimen cup was runnething over.

“One guy was straight, and he was doing all the voiding,” Rutigliano said. “So we had to have someone watching.”

Rutigliano, who is now the Browns’ ex -coach, and a TV sportscaster, was on the USC campus Tuesday night and Wednesday, taking part in the lecture series sponsored by the school’s Sports Information Department.

As a coach, Rutigliano won more games than he lost, but he wound up fired. As a drug-fighter, he claims he won ‘em all.

“We got to 11 (players) . . . and every single one of them made it (is still clean today),” Rutigliano said.

Rutigliano’s voyage into drug reform seems worth examining for a simple reason. It worked.

No other football team that I know of, with the possible exception of the Raiders, is claiming any such one-sided victory over demon toot.

Also, the big issue in drug reform seems to be whether or not to test, and Rutigliano has a pretty clear opinion.

“You need the cups,” he said.

The cup, he said, was a vital factor in starting Charles White on the road to recovery from drug dependency.

Still, the prevailing opinion of many athletes and all of the player unions is that drug testing is a violation of civil rights and that it’s dehumanizing.

Funny. A football player will cheerfully give up his right to sleep with his wife for weeks at a time, his right to sport certain haircuts, his right to wear anything but a company-issue team blazer, his right to stay up past midnight. But ask him to urinate in a cup and he is humiliated.

Testing doesn’t seem to bother Olympic athletes, who are routinely tested for drugs and steroids.

In fact, the only sport in which urine testing of the athletes seems to have a severe dehumanizing effect is horse racing.

Another argument against urine testing is that it presumes guilt, the opposite of our judicial process.

That’s like arguing that a CHP roadside breath test presumes guilt. What the CHP tests and the drug tests do, when suspicion arises, is measure the participant’s competence to perform up to par in an activity that affects a lot of other participants.

I’m convinced that if the issue were put to a secret vote of team-sport players tonight, there would be universal testing tomorrow. Players want to win.

Spencer Haywood, a forward for the Lakers in 1979-80, was suspended during the playoffs that season after some bizarre behavior, such as falling asleep during team calisthenics. No drug rap was ever pinned on Haywood, but his actions raised suspicions.

The other Lakers voted Haywood a pittance of a playoff share. One Laker, not exactly a goody-goody type, said, “Spencer let us down when we needed him.”

Forget about kiddie role models and league PR problems. Drugs are a team problem, because they can get in the way of winning ballgames.

A unusual feature of the Browns’ Inner Circle problem is that it involves the nondruggies as well as the users.

On any team, you will have at least a few veterans working to convince the younger players that doing dope is cool. You need a couple of other veterans to present the argument that not doing dope is cool.

“The problem is, a lot of straight guys, and gals don’t want to have anything to do with it (an anti-drug program),” Rutigliano said. “They have to have something to do with it. You take the straight people and you start to chip away (at the problem).”

In the Inner Circle program, there is no moralizing, only educating. Moralizing, it turns out, is effective only on non-users. Also, anonymity is stressed.

“Of the 11 we sent to a rehab center, Charlie White was the only one who lost his anonymity, and that was because he came to Orange County,” Rutigliano said. “He might as well have put it on the side of the Goodyear blimp. But that might have been for the best, because Charlie responds best to pressure.”

It seems like a pretty good record, 11 for 11, but so far the Inner Circle hasn’t caught on outside greater Cleveland, despite Rutigliano’s personal presentations to the NFL and the NFL Players Assn.

“I’m still waiting for the first phone call from the other 27 NFL teams,” he said.

Rutigliano believes that the Cleveland program is worth trying around the league because most other programs, and nonprograms, aren’t working. Someone in the audience asked something about enlisting influential coaches, like Don Shula.

“Shula had David Overstreet,” Rutigliano said. “Dead. He had Randy Crowder, Don Reese, Mercury Morris. I’m not knocking Don Shula, but I did not want that.”

Neither did Crowder, Reese, Morris or the late Overstreet. Maybe they could have been helped. Seems as though it’s worth a try.

I think the players should drop their knickers and raise their cups to old Sam. And remember the specimen rule, guys: To each his own.