Drug Official Says Andro to Be Classified as a Steroid

Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton’s top drug policy advisor, said Monday the muscle-building supplement that Mark McGwire made famous should be classified as a steroid “within a few months.”

Making a speech to the Citizenship Through Sports Alliance in Arlington, Va., McCaffrey said, “I’ve got to do something about andro. I’ve got to get valid testing completed, and I bet that’s the way it comes out: that andro is a steroid.”

Androstenedione, commonly called andro, is an unregulated food additive. Sales soared in 1998, the year McGwire hit a record 70 home runs for the St. Louis Cardinals, after it was reported that the first baseman used it. McGwire stopped using it last year.

McCaffrey said andro already meets two of three tests used by government laboratories to determine whether a substance is a steroid.

“I suspect we’ll find that it meets the third, although I have been saying that for over a year now,” McCaffrey said, admitting that tests should have been finished already.

If androstenedione does meet the third requirement, it would be declared a steroid, illegal to use without a legitimate medical reason.

Pro Football

An animal rights group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, wrote a letter to Green Bay Packer President Bob Harlan requesting that the team change its name. The group complained the name promotes violence and bloodshed because it refers to meat packers, or those who work in slaughterhouses.

Harlan said no. “We’ve been the Packers since 1919, and this is the first time anyone has suggested that we change our name,” he said. “We like our name, our tradition.”

The late Ray Scott, who died at 78 in 1998, was named the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award winner. Scott was CBS’ play-by-play announcer for Packer games from 1956-67. . . . The San Francisco 49ers re-signed defensive end Jeff Posey to a one-year, $358,000 contract, the league minimum for a third-year player.

College Football

Legislative efforts to trim the Louisiana state budget chopped $1 million in state money from the Sugar Bowl, held annually in New Orleans, and $250,000 from Shreveport’s Independence Bowl.

Officials said the cuts won’t hurt much this year, but if it’s not reinstated in upcoming budgets, the pinch will become more painful. Both bowls hope the money will be restored next year.

Boxing

Cedric Kushner, testifying at the racketeering trial of International Boxing Federation founder Robert W. Lee in Newark, N.J., said that after he convinced Lee in 1987 that his organization should rank South African fighters despite that nation’s apartheid policy, he found it came with a price.

Longtime IBF ratings chairman C. Douglas Beavers approached Kushner and demanded $20,000, Kushner testified. Kushner said he agreed to pay only $10,000, and that payoff became the first of periodic payments that he made over the next eight years that were divided among Lee, Beavers and other IBF officials.

A state bill to provide tax relief for boxing promoters in California was passed by the Senate Committee on Business and Professions, moving it to the Appropriations Committee. Promoters are required to pay a tax of 5% on the live gate, but this bill would set a cap at $50,000.

Miscellany

Zhang Ouying scored twice as China beat Canada, 3-2, in the second game of a Women’s Gold Cup 2000 soccer doubleheader at Hershey, Pa. Mexico beat Guatemala, 7-0, in the opening game.

The United States and Brazil are both unbeaten in two games and have clinched semifinal berths from the other group. The two countries play each other Tuesday in Foxboro, Mass.

Michigan football Coach Lloyd Carr was given a six-year, $6.11-million contract extension through the 2005 season. Carr’s annual base salary will remain at $287,000, with compensation for other services, including television and radio appearances.

John Brophy, former coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, is in critical condition in a hospital in Halifax, Canada, after a single-car accident over the weekend. He had surgery on a broken leg Sunday. . . . Ed Hughes, former coach of the Houston Oilers and offensive coordinator of the 1986 Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears, died last week at Libertyville, Ill. He was 72.

The UPS Cup men’s water polo tournament, with five Olympic teams, starts tonight at Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center pool with the U.S. men’s team playing Australia in the feature matchup at 8:30 p.m.

Team UPS, a team of younger U.S. players, takes on Croatia, the 1996 silver medalist, at 6. Yugoslavia meets Italy at 7:15.