Steroid Use in American Football

Steroid Use In American Football

The use of performance enhancing drugs in the sport of American football has been an ongoing issue since the late 1980s, especially in the National Football League (NFL). The NFL began to test players for steroid use during the 1987 season, and started to issue suspensions to players during the 1989 season. The NFL has issued as many as six random drug tests to players, with each player receiving at least one drug test per season. One notable incident was when in 1992, when player Lyle Alzado died from brain cancer, which he attributed to the use of anabolic steroids, however, Alzado's doctors stated that anabolic steroids did not contribute to his death.

The use of performance enhancing drugs has also been found in other levels of football, including college level, and high school. The most recent figures from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football drug tests show that one percent of all NCAA football players failed drug tests taken at bowl games, and three percent have admitted to using steroids overall. In the NCAA, players are subject to random testing with 48 hours notice, and are also randomly tested throughout the annual bowl games. The NCAA will usually take approximately 20 percent of the players on a football team to test on a specific day.

Anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs are also used throughout high school football. Steroid use at this level of play doubled from 1991 to 2003, with results of a survey showed that about 6 percent of players out of the 15,000 surveyed had admitted to using some type of anabolic steroid or performance enhancing drug at one point in their playing time. Other data shows that only 4 percent of high schools have some form of drug testing programs in place for their football teams.