NFL Players Can Face Six Drug Tests

The NFL, eager to show it is serious about enforcing its steroid policy, is tripling the number of off-season drug tests players can face.

The change was announced Tuesday, on the eve of today’s hearing before a congressional panel investigating steroid use in sports. Players now will be subject to a maximum of six random drug tests during each off-season, up from two.

“For two decades, the NFL has had very strong programs in place to rid its locker rooms of performance-enhancing drugs,” Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said in remarks prepared for his testimony today and released by the league Tuesday. “We have not had all the answers, but we have worked with leading institutions and top scientists to seek to stay ahead of an ever-changing curve.”

Today’s hearing will be the second conducted by the committee and probably will be less contentious than last month’s look into baseball, which drew a large national television audience.

The NFL hearing -- which will be televised on ESPN News and CSPAN, beginning at 7 a.m. PDT -- is expected to last a day, and no current players are to testify.

The House Government Reform Committee last week announced the hearing, inviting to testify Tagliabue, Gene Upshaw, executive director of the players’ union, and Harold Henderson, the league’s executive vice president for labor relations. All are scheduled to attend.

Also on the witness list are Steve Courson, a former NFL guard; Willie Stewart, football coach at Anacostia High in Washington; Dr. Lynn Goldberg, professor of medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University; Dr. Gary Wadler, associate professor of clinical medicine at New York University; Dr. John Lombardo, NFL advisor on anabolic steroids and related substances; and Dr. Bryan Finkle, NFL consulting toxicologist on anabolic steroids and related substances.

Added to the witness list Tuesday was Bobby L. Barnes, football coach at Buckeye Union (Ariz.) High. He suspended 10 of his players after learning they had taken steroids. He is expected to discuss the pressures young people feel they are under to take illegal performance-enhancing substances.

The committee, headed by Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.) and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), co-wrote a letter to the NFL last month requesting several documents, among them the league’s drug-testing policy and a detailed description of how tests are conducted in and out of season. The letter was sent the day after a CBS report saying three Carolina Panther players had prescriptions for testosterone cream filled during the 2003 season and within two weeks of playing in the Super Bowl. The cream is banned by the NFL.

Associated Press contributed to this report.