NCAA Attempts to Defuse Bomb Called Steroids

The names were big, starting with the biggest of them all, Brian Bosworth, the fire-breathing All-American linebacker from the University of Oklahoma.

There were local names in there as well, John Zentner III, a former El Camino Real High player, now an offensive tackle at Stanford, and USC lineman Jeff Bregel, who played his high school ball at Kennedy.

All have been banned from postseason play because of the results of drug tests.

But these results are different. This time, there was no stigma over the use of cocaine or any of the other drugs that cause people to shake their heads in disgust at an impressive young physical specimen destroying his body and perhaps his life just when he should be enjoying it the most.

The results of these tests showed traces of anabolic steroids, used as a quick, often drastic bodybuilding tool. Under the new get-tough drug-testing policy of the NCAA, steroid use can get you at least 90 days of suspension.

Somehow, it’s just not the same as a Len Bias or a Don Rogers.

Bosworth shows up for the coin flip at Thursday’s Orange Bowl game wearing his Oklahoma jersey, looking leaner and meaner than many of the players in the game. He goes on national television and indicates the NCAA is unfairly singling out some people and heads nod in sympathy.

Zentner’s father says his son is “so Pat Boone-like, he wouldn’t even smoke a cigarette.”

More heads nod.

It’s understandable. These are not athletes who are missing games or cracking up cars or scrambling their brains. After all, steroids aren’t even illegal. Not under state or federal law. Just under the rulings of bodies like the NCAA and the International Olympic Committee.

Sure, the argument might go, using steroids might give an athlete an unfair advantage by providing him more bulk to work with. But isn’t he just speeding up the end product he could otherwise get through long hours in a gym? Why throw him in there with the real low life--the hard drug dealers and users--for that?

These are reasonable questions. For some answers, we went to Dr. Robert Voy, Director of Sports Medicine for the United States Olympic Committee.

Q: When and where did steroids first come to prominence among athletes?

A: Steroids were around in the late 1950s, but use among athletes really started 25 years ago among Eastern Bloc countries. Steroids had been used to treat severe burn victims and those wasting away from cancer. Steroids can help synthesize protein loss. Then it was found that steroids could affect, over the short term, one’s growth center.

Q: What kind of effect?

A: An athlete using steroids could put on 25-30 pounds of lean muscle in eight to 12 weeks.

Q: So what’s wrong with that?

A: It was found that adolescents using steroids would get wider, but not taller. Steroids could permanently stunt their growth, leaving them at the height they were when they started using them. It was found that in adolescent males, steroids could cause acne, high blood pressure, enlargement of the breasts and excessive hair growth. In females, it could cause masculinization, excessive hair growth and deepening of the voice. They had to pay a bitter price for enhancement of performance.

Q: But that is their choice. It would be different if there were something of a life-threatening nature. Could that be the case?

A: Over the short term, I’ve never heard of anyone overdosing from steroids. Over the long term, however, it can have a time bomb effect. It can cause dysfunction of the liver and blood cysts. There are reported cases of cancer of the liver, early aging and hardening of the arteries which could lead to premature heart disease or a stroke.

Q: How do athletes obtain steroids? Are there dealers for this drug in the sense there are for the hard drugs?

A: They can be obtained through mail-order firms. No self-respecting physician would prescribe them, but there are still those who do for whatever their perverted reasons, possibly because they are sports groupies. I guarantee you, an athlete can go down to many local gyms and they will either have steroids or know where to get them. You can go down to Muscle Beach and obtain a handbook that tells you everything you need to know about steroids--how long a cycle to take, where to get them and so on. It’s gotten out of hand. High school and junior high students use steroids because they want to be macho and show their muscles. We are finding steroids are being used by everybody from police officers to firemen to bar bouncers.

Voy is not the only one with horror stories about steroids. Dr. Bob Goldman has a few. He’s the chief medical officer in charge of drug control for bodybuilders in 130 countries and director of the High Tech Fitness Lab for the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine.

“One of the big problems now,” Goldman says, “is the amount being used. Athletes are taking more steroids in a week than others in previous years would take in their whole careers. Athletes read a few articles on steroids and think they are experts. They don’t understand what’s going on in their bodies. They feel indestructible. Until something happens to them personally, it does not hit home. But they learn that to play, they’ve got to be willing to pay. Some come to wish they’d never heard the word steroid.”

One immediate case comes to Goldman’s mind.

“I’ve got an athlete,” he says, “who is only 23 and is impotent, sexually dysfunctional, because of steroids. He’s now looking for the guy who sold them to him. He wants to decrease that guy’s life span.”

Slowly, sometimes painfully, the message is getting through.