The NCAA’s Drug Problem
The NCAA’s Drug Problem - WSJ
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...Brian Hainline, appointed two years ago as the NCAA’s first chief medical officer, is using that perch to try to bring greater oversight and consistency to how the NCAA and its schools police performance-enhancing and recreational drugs in college athletics. A change he’s seeking: putting the big five conferences—as opposed to individual schools—in charge of setting policy and carrying out testing for performance-enhancing drugs. Unlike other sports, college teams conduct their own testing and mete out their own punishments—an obvious conflict of interest, in his view.
“The NCAA’s doping policy is outdated, and there needs to be more consistency among schools,” Hainline said in an interview.
...The NCAA can’t afford to increase its testing frequency enough to sufficiently police all of college sports, Hainline said. So he calls it imperative that schools—or better yet conferences—run their own testing programs. At present, schools aren’t required to do any testing above and beyond what the NCAA administers.
But the NCAA says that 90% of Division I schools conduct their own testing. One school that doesn’t test is Stanford, which says it is awaiting a Pac-12-wide policy.
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In his most cynical moments, Hainline thinks that school testing could be used to make sure players won’t flunk an NCAA test. “In the worst-case scenario, you could have a school that tests just enough to make sure (drug use) is under the radar,” he said. “If it’s done internally and you have a positive, (who knows) how it’s being handled.”
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Just sayin...