Athletics have existed in our world since the beginning of the human race. The spirit of competition has inspired many men to push their bodies to the utmost limits in an effort to excel to the highest possible levels for their respective sports. This immense desire for athletic perfection has driven some athletes to seek an unfair edge over their competition. This advantage comes in the way of illegal performance enhancing drugs. The topic of steroids and similar drugs has been very popular in the news media in the past decade. We have witnessed many heroes stripped of their pride after a drug test rendered them ineligible to compete. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has been forced to tighten the rules governing drug use among its athletes. These regulations do not stop at merely outlawing "performance enhancers", but also restrict the use of narcotics such as marijuana. The NCAA has taken a positive stand in an effort to keep college athletes from falling victim to the plague that many of our professional athletes have succumb to.

It is essential that the National Collegiate Athletic Association continue its excellent anti-doping campaign in or

It is probably the goal of many college athletes to excel to the level of professional athletics. This puts professional athletes in the position of being role models for their collegiate counterparts. All of today's American professional sports leagues have developed some degree of an anti-doping campaign. It seems however that this effort is aimed at eliminating the use of narcotics as opposed to the use of performance-enhancing chemicals. Androstenedione is essentially a synthetic steroid that is completely legal for players to ingest in Major League Baseball. Baseball's foremost current home-run hitter, Mark McGwire was a tremendous supporter of the drug until he recently terminated his use of the substance because of the controversy it was creating. The NCAA, with its emphatically stringent restrictions, banned "Andro" as soon as it became available for retail. This did not nearly eliminate the use of Androstenedione among college athletes, as the substance is cleared from the system within a month of termination. Here at Tusculum College, there are dozens of athletes who reported the usage of Andro during the summer. This is quite troubling, as the use of "performance-enhancers" makes college's athletic playing field "unlevel". As already stressed, when athletes of a given sport begin using a substance like Andro, there is much pressure for other athletes involved in the same competitions to use the drug. The feeling that an athlete will be unable to compete with the "dopers" unless they also "dope" can be quite powerful. Drug use must be eliminated completely among college sports in order to maintain a level of purity in athletics. The NCAA has taken positive steps toward directly accomplishing the latter.

Mckinley Jr., J. (1999, August 31). Track star's burden: proving innocence. New York

Science is constantly advancing thus allowing for a constant increase in the number of performance-enhancing drugs for athletes. This is a sad fact, but must be recognized in order to maintain the integrity of sports. The National Collegiate Athletic Association has done a commendable job with its progress in the field of drug testing. A prime factor for the pursuit of athletics is to better one's level of personal health, the use of d

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