For the first time in over a decade, the NCAA plans to expand its drug testing policy.
Last week, the organization's Championships and Competition Cabinet tentatively recommended that athletes in all sports should be subject to year-round testing.
Currently, only football and track athletes are tested.
The expansion proposal stems from results of NCAA drug-use surveys that suggested athletes are taking a greater variety of performance enhancers, especially the drug ephedra.
"When the NCAA year-round program started, it centered on anabolic steroids," said Frank Uryasz, President of the National Center for Drug Free Sport. The NCDFS is an organization based in Kansas City, Mo., contracted to operate NCAA drug testing.
"Football and track and field are high risk sports for steroids but medium risk for ephedra," Uryasz added. "Sports which require a low body weight, like women's gymnastics, are high risk for ephedra."
The expanded policy, which must first be approved by the NCAA Management Council, is proposed to go into effect for the 2004-2005 school year.
A 2001 NCAA survey found that 3.9 percent of the athletes who were questioned admitted taking ephedra, an increase from 3.5 percent in 1997. The biggest single-sport increase in ephedra-users was in women's gymnastics, which rose from 1.1 percent to 8.3 percent in the same four-year period.
Ephedra -- which is found on the NCAA's banned substances list, as well as the NFL's, International Olympic Committee's and minor league baseball's -- is an herbal supplement often found in weight-loss products and some cold medicines.
The stimulant is considered dangerous by many experts, as it increases the user's heart rate in order to increase the body's metabolism. Uryasz also noted that "anytime you take stimulants, you reduce your body's ability to dissipate heat."
Medical examiners found the drug to have contributed to the Feb. 17 death of Baltimore Orioles pitching prospect Steve Bechler.
"Ephedra is marketed to athletes and is easily available in over-the-counter dietary supplements," Uryasz said. "It's also marketed to women to reduce body fat and to lose weight."
"We educate athletes that anytime they buy a product that reports to increase metabolism or burn fat, it probably has ephedra in it," he added.
In 1986, the NCAA started its drug-testing program by randomly testing all student athletes competing in postseason play.
Year-round testing began in 1990 with Division I and II football, and was soon followed by the addition of Division I track and field in 1992.
Penn football coach Al Bagnoli continually educates his players on the subject, both in scheduled seminars and informally throughout the season.
"They know that at a certain point in time the NCAA is going to come in and randomly select, so that's a very good deterrent," Bagnoli said.
"We have all kinds of educational things in terms of handouts, in terms of actual meetings, in terms of strength training," he said. Strength and fitness coach "Rob Wagner comes in and reinforces what you can and can't take. It's an ongoing educational process."
Unlike postseason testing, which applies to all NCAA banned substance categories -- such as stimulants, anabolic agents, diuretics, urine manipulators, street drugs and beta blockers -- year-round testing only searches for anabolic agents, diuretics and urine manipulators.
NCAA rules currently require schools to submit team rosters for track and football to the NCDFS, which then enters the names into a computerized random number generator.
This computer generator then randomly outputs a list of athletes to be tested, with every school seeing the NCAA at least once a year in each sport between August and June.
Tested athletes -- who are notified less than 48 hours in advance -- submit to an NCDFS official a urine sample which is then sent to a lab at the University of California, Los Angeles to be analyzed.
