NCAA Believes Its Drug Test Passed : Officials Are Pleased With Results; Expansion Is Planned

After being banned from the Orange Bowl because drug testing showed that he had used steroids, Oklahoma’s Brian Bosworth showed his opinion of the testing process by appearing on the sideline wearing a T-shirt that served as a billboard calling the NCAA the “National Communists Against Athletes.”

He added: “Welcome to Russia.”

Well, that’s one man’s opinion.

Walter Byers, executive director of the NCAA, stepped forward Tuesday with a very different opinion in giving a progress report on the first year of NCAA drug testing.

“The overall impact has been a very constructive impact. It is interrupting the use of anabolic steroids,” he said.

“The fall testing has dramatized to the student-athletes, and to high school athletes hoping to become college athletes, that this has to be stopped. My hope is that the (National Football League) will test for steroids and stop the use that is obviously going on there.”

The NCAA spent about $1 million in its first year of testing, getting reports on 1,050 athletes in cross-country meets, Division II and Division III football playoffs and at 10 different Division I football bowl sites.

John Toner and Ruth Berkey, who have been administrating the NCAA program, and Dr. Don Catlin, director of the UCLA Olympic lab that actually conducts most of the tests, also considered the first season of testing a success.

Toner said: “We went in . . . expecting 8-10% of the athletes to test positive. We are very, very happy to say that our tests came up with only 2-3% positive tests for banned drugs.”

Berkey said that most of the positive tests were for anabolic steroids, although they did find some cocaine, amphetamines and stimulants. Berkey added that, for the most part, the athletes were receptive to the idea of testing.

Catlin, who also was director of the lab at UCLA during the 1984 Olympics, explained how the computerized lab worked, how it identified all substances in the urine with a print-out graph that is the equivalent of a fingerprint of that substance. “This technology does not make mistakes,” he said. “There are no false positives.”

The NCAA currently uses only two labs, the one at UCLA and the one at the University of Quebec in Montreal. They are the only two labs in North America approved by the International Olympic Committee. Schools that are currently doing their own testing send their samples to those labs for analysis.

Eventually, there will be regional labs. Until more of those are in operation, making it more feasible and more affordable for schools to do spot checking of their own athletes, there are many administrators who believe that the temporary waiver on sanctions against institutions whose athletes test positive should stay in effect.

According to current NCAA rules, any school that uses an athlete who is ineligible for any reason must forfeit those victories--change the record, return trophies, miss out on further championship games and even return TV money. Those are stiff sanctions against an institution for something that one individual does on his own.

So until the subject can be fully debated, institutions are not being held responsible for using a player who has used drugs. The reasoning is that if he is ineligible because of his grades, his high school test scores or any similar rule violation, the school can be held responsible for not having checked him out. How can they police something they cannot check for?

Eventually, Toner said, institutions must be held responsible. “I don’t think we can conduct a fair championship or be fair to the student-athlete who does not want to be intimidated into using performance-enhancing drugs unless we have some team sanctions,” he said.

One resolution on the subject that was to be considered at the annual NCAA convention being held here this week has been ruled out of order. Unless some other form of action is taken, sanctions against the team for using any ineligible player, including those found ineligible because of drugs, would go back into effect next September.

Byers said: “We believe we have the most comprehensive drug program of any sports organization in the United States. It is designed to assure clean championships and protect the health and welfare of the student-athlete.

“We think drug usage and the effort to control drug usage is one of the most significant issues and most important issues today.”