Commonly speculated at the time, now it’s official: UW-Stout coach Todd Strop was indeed forced out in January. Since he was under contract to the school through July 1, he only recently spoke to the Eau Claire, Wis., Leader-Telegram.
You may recall his resignation came shortly after an outgoing UW-Stout player was arrested on drug problems.
“Obviously, from my point of view, I feel it was mishandled,” Strop said. “To me, from an outsider looking in, it looks like it was just swept under the rug and that, ‘OK, that situation is all cleaned up.’ But the reality is, the situation is still there to be dealt with, and I felt like I was the guy to deal with it.”
Of course, athletic director Larry Terry later got forced out in a similar manner, after it was revealed that six of 58 UW-Stout football players (10.3%) tested positive for steroids, five (8.6%) for marijuana and one (1.7%) for amphetamines. That apparently got him the ax, though the newspaper points out that 20% of Division III student-athletes in a recent NCAA survey said they had used marijuana in the past 12 months.
“I don’t think there’s another school in the conference that we could drug test where you wouldn’t find out that college kids smoke dope. It’s a reality,” Terry said.
I hope new coach Duey Naatz knows what he’s getting into — first piece of bad news and the chancellor could be calling for him, too.
Wow.
I know they do random drug testing in the playoffs, do they do this during the regular season? Does the NCAA foot the bill?
There’s a pilot program for Division III for the regular season and offseason, and yeah, it’s expensive. I’ll have to track down the details.
Texas is starting random steroid testing for HS athletes next year. The minumum cost is $110/test per a recent story in the Austin American-Statesman:
http://www.statesman.com/sports/content/sports/stories/other/07/08/0708highschoolside.html
And just now on ESPN I saw this which says they may not do it this year after all:
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/highschool/news/story?id=2937357
They put the costs more like $200 per test:
The Senate’s original plan was to test at least 22,000 students — about 3 percent of the 730,000 of high school athletes — for about $4 million per year.
So lessee … 250 D3 schools, ~100 football athletes per school would be 25,000 student athletes, if you do 10% of that total around $500K if costs scaled roughly. Pat, is the D3 pilot program random testing or compulsory testing for all?
For the pilot program, schools had to opt in. and I believe about 115 schools are taking part. This is the preliminary work, however, for something that I’m sure will be mandatory.
Call me naive but I honestly cannot believe that many d3 athletes are using steriods and other drugs (I guess I figured the marijuana though). That is a shame. What is the answer? How do the NCAA and college programs get more involved with each individual athlete to monitor this situation? It is possible for all athletes to be drug tested throughout the season?
Is it possible? I think that’s what they’re trying to explore. It sounds like it’s something Division III schools want to move towards.
The perennial contenders know they would be taking a huge risk because players have been tested in the playoffs for years. If they test positive, they lose a year of eligibility.
Actually I believe the statstics show that Division III has the highest rate of steroid use among all Divisions. The reason behind this is obviously the lack of testing a player would know that if he was taking he would simply need to cut back within a certain time frame before the playoffs.
I dont believe that its possible to test all players on a DIII team over the course of a season, the numbers are huge and the cost would be staggering. There are many DIII teams which carry rosters well above 100 players and with the number of schools playing this cost would be huge. Even the random testing of athletes on a weekly basis in season would be very costly and I cant imagine that the NCAA is interested in spending that much money on DIII. Obviously with the money made and the publicity in Division I there is a much larger reason to test the players. Thats all I think anyway.
Personally, I would imagine steriod use in D3 is higher than D1 simply becuase the lack of oversight from the NCAA and the individual schools. There are a lot more D3 kids working out at independent gyms in the off-season than at D1 schools. And access to illegal supplements are not uncommon at local/independent gyms. Unfortunately, even for high school players. I think an honest number of HS kids using illegal supplements would shock all of us.
The programs I’d be least worried about are the name recognized teams like a St Johns or Mount Union. Those are the schools under the microscope where a certain level of paranoia exists. Where they know they have to be squeaky clean becuase of the number of outside people just looking for a reason to discredit their success.
If you want to compete, then you better be clean. Any player using roids is a loser and a cheater, and should be ashamed of the ill-gotten gain.
The lack of testing may make it higher in D-III but the fact that there’s not much to gain at this level works against drug use as well, I’m sure.
dzemens: I don’t believe there are any stats, just a survey.
pat:
Thanks, I was unsure if it was stats or a survey. It would seem hard for them to gather the stats without actually testing in any way, so I guess I should have seen that a survey made more sense.
I disagree with the idea that “name recognized teams” can automatically be assumed to be “squeaky clean” programs. UW-La Crosse was a very recognizable team in the early 90’s while it carried a less than “squeaky clean” reputation in regards to drug use at the time. I don’t think it mattered to them until the randomized drug testing during playoffs.
Well, I’m sure HSCoach isn’t really talking about the early ’90s either. Things can change pretty significantly in 15 years.
Steroids werent illegal in this country until the early 90’s, albeit very early 90’s I want to say 91. Im sure they were still illegal by NCAA standards but as far as a nationwide law they were not and therefore I would guess that many programs big and small had more prevelant steroid use both before the law and in the several years after it first came into effect.
dzemens and HScoach,
I was very interested in your comments.
I would guess that there are fewer D3 athletes doing it (call me naive too, dlippiel) because there is less pressure to be huge in order to play, generally speaking.
From personal experience, weightlifting and speed training was heavily emphasized, but there were also 240-pound tackles with good technique or 280-pound offensive tackles who were carrying a lot of weight that wasn’t muscle. Also, with the prevalence of creatine and other over-the-counter supplements, our weightroom meatheads could still get their fix without going illegal.
Also, I remember testing several times my freshman year. Not sure for what, but I also knew they knew at 6-3, 165 they were wasting their time looking for steroids, and that if they were really trying to catch someone a non-random process might have yielded a user. Who knows?
The point about lack of oversight=more users makes lots of sense; I’m pretty sure a user would know how to beat a test if he knew it was coming.
But I also think in D3, where a 5-10, 175-pound guy can start for four years, that there’s just not the need to shoot up.
But you can toss hypotheticals back and forth all day. Maybe shorter and smaller athletes are more insecure and feel they need to get bigger and faster to play. Or maybe someone could argue that since D3 kids can work and might be richer since there are a lot of private schools that they have more disposable income.
I think if we’ve learned one thing about D3 recently its that you can’t paint everyone with a single brush. There are so many different school sizes, cultures and situations; in a vast pool like ours there are bound to be some bad apples or some people who feel they have to do drugs to compete. But I also wouldn’t be surprised, at a level where I honestly believe sportsmanship still thrives, if there were dozens of full teams who didn’t have a single user.
I must be one of the naive ones also. I find it hard to believe that D3 has higher usage than D1. I would agree with Keith that there are probably many D3 teams out there without a single user. I would also think the number of D3 players that smoke pot would be much higher than those that use roids.
I use to play in D3 and I’ll tell you that steroid use is an issue at this level also. I played JC ball first and there was a bit of a problem there aswell. The school that I went to everyone was tested at the start of the season, and then there were random test throughout the year. The AD was also the coach there and really wanted to make sure all the athletes in every sport were “clean.”
I will not disclose the D3 I played at, but there were at least 11 guys on the team, and we had a pretty small team of about 70 guys to start the season. I know that’s a small percentage. Of the 11 there were only 3 who started and 1 other that seen any real playing time before their senior or 5th year. I think these guys did it because they weren’t starting going into their sophmore year and really wanted to get on the field. I think what most people have to remember is guys playing at the D3 level have a passion for the sport and really want to be on the field and some are willing to “do what ever it takes” to get some PT. We don’t play to make it to the next level.