Letter Announcing Drug Tests at College Playoffs Called Fake

Baseball, track and golf coaches at Southeastern Conference schools received a bogus letter telling them that drug tests would be conducted during this weekend’s league championships, SEC officials said.

The letter “did not originate in the Southeastern Conference office,” SEC Commissioner Harvey Schiller told the coaches in another letter mailed this week. “There will be no conference drug testing at the 1989 SEC championships.”

The fake letter, dated May 4, said athletes competing in the baseball, track and golf championships would be subjected to testing “and may be determined ineligible as a result thereof,” the Atlanta Constitution reported today.

The letter said that four randomly chosen teams would be tested during the baseball tournament in Gainesville, Fla., and that five teams would be tested during the golf tournament in Louisville, Ky. It also said finalists in each event, plus the top three finishers and two athletes chosen at random, would be tested at the track and field championships in Gainesville.

The newspaper said the fake letter carried a blue SEC logo, while SEC stationery actually carries a gold logo. The envelopes were postmarked Birmingham, Ala., where the SEC is headquartered, but bore stamps rather than the postage-meter imprints used on regular SEC correspondence.

Kentucky golf coach Tom Simpson said he and other coaches were “completely flabbergasted” to learn that the letter was a fake.

“What amazes me is that someone would go to such extremes to try to win or mess up a conference championship,” Auburn track coach Mel Rosen said.