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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, defensive end Lyle Alzado died from brain cancer, which was attributed to the use of anabolic steroids, however, Alzado's doctors stated that anabolic steroids did not contribute to his death.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=elitefitness.com )〕 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 showing 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 program in place for their football teams.〔 ==Use in the NFL== The use of performance-enhancing drugs and anabolic steroids dates back to the late 1960s in the National Football League (NFL). The case of Denver Broncos defensive lineman Lyle Alzado notably exposed early use among NFL players. In the last years of his life, as he battled against the brain tumor that eventually caused his death at the age of 43, Alzado asserted that his steroid abuse directly led to his fatal illness, but his physician stated it could not possibly be true. Alzado recounted his steroid abuse in an article in ''Sports Illustrated''. He said: Former player and NFL coach Jim Haslett said in 2005 that during the 1980s, half of the players in the league used some type of performance-enhancing drug or steroid and all of the defensive lineman used them. One of the players from the Super Bowl winning 1979 Pittsburgh Steelers team who had earlier confessed to using steroids (in a 1985 ''Sports Illustrated'' article) was offensive lineman Steve Courson. Courson blamed a heart condition that he developed on steroids. However, Courson also said that some of his teammates, such as Jack Ham and Jack Lambert, refused to use any kind of performance-enhancing drug.〔 The BALCO Scandal in 2003 also revealed many users of steroids in the NFL. The scandal followed a US Federal government investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) into accusations of its supplying anabolic steroids to professional athletes.〔Fainaru-Wada, Mark, and Lance Williams. ''Game Of Shadows''. 2006.〕 U.S. sprint coach Trevor Graham had given an anonymous phone call to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in June 2003 accusing a number of athletes being involved in doping with a steroid that was not detectable at the time. He named BALCO owner Victor Conte as the source of the steroid. As evidence, Graham delivered a syringe containing traces of a substance nicknamed ''The Clear''. Shortly after, then-director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory Don Catlin, developed a testing process for The Clear (tetrahydrogestrinone (THG)). With the ability to detect THG, the USADA retested 550 existing urine samples from athletes, of which several proved to be positive for THG. A number of players from the Oakland Raiders were implicated in this scandal, including Bill Romanowski, Tyrone Wheatley, Barrett Robbins, Chris Cooper and Dana Stubblefield. Recently, many players have confessed to steroid use. One of these players was former Oakland Raiders player Bill Romanowski. Romanowski confessed on the American news television show ''60 Minutes'' to using steroids for a two-year period beginning in 2001. He stated that these were supplied by former NFL player and former head of BALCO Victor Conte, saying: A notable recent occurrence happened in 2006. During the season, San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman failed a drug test and was suspended for four games when his primary "A" sample and backup "B" sample both tested positive for a banned substance.〔 Merriman was named NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2005, with 54 tackles and 10 sacks. He also had a total of five passes defended and two forced fumbles. He was a starting player in the 2005 Pro Bowl, and was a leader on his team in sacks in the 2006 season. The incident led to the passage of a rule that forbids a player who tests positive steroids from being selected to the Pro Bowl in the year in which they tested positive. The rule is commonly referred to as the "Merriman Rule". However, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has tried to distance the policy from being associated with the player, stating that Merriman tested clean on 19 of 20 random tests for performance-enhancing drugs since entering the league. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Steroid use in American football」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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