Thursday, March 31, 2011
Associated Press
When it comes to college sports and drug testing, policies are as varied as the schools themselves.
An Associated Press survey of measures used by the NCAA, conferences and more than 50 schools to keep steroids and performance-enhancing drugs out of sports found policies all over the map — with no consistency or integrated strategy to tie them together.
While the NCAA runs an umbrella drug-testing program, the conferences vary widely in what they do to augment those rules. Some, like the Big Ten, have extensive guidelines that closely mirror the NCAA’s. Others have nothing and say they simply adhere to the NCAA, which tests athletes on campus and at postseason events it sanctions, including the Final Four this week.
The AP sent out requests for information about drug-testing policies at 76 universities — 73 in the six biggest conferences and three mid-major teams ranked in the Top 25 in the Feb. 28 AP men’s basketball poll. It received responses from 51.
Some policies — like the one at Florida — were stringent, booting athletes who test positive for steroids into Phase IV of its sanction program, which calls for missing at least 50 percent of the season. Others barely mentioned performance-enhancing drugs. Not a single school’s drug policy submitted to the AP read exactly the same as another — even within conferences and states — and the majority appeared much more concerned with curbing recreational drug use than steroids.
“They have programs,” said Gary Wadler of the World Anti-Doping Agency. “Some are related to conferences, some related to championships, some depend on sports, some depend on drugs. But has anyone really taken a serious look at the NCAA the way we’ve looked at the NFL and Major League Baseball? The answer is no. For a long time, I’ve been mystified by that.”
Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis said developing good drug-testing programs “is an evolving process.”
“As institutions, it seems we’re always playing catch-up,” Hollis said.