2009 Defensive Rookie of the Year Cushing Fails Steroids Test

Houston Texans’ Defensive Rookie of the Year Brian Cushing has been suspended for the first four games of the 2010 regular season after failing a random test for performance enhancing drugs. Cushing, a USC product who built himself into one of the best defensive players in the country for his senior year after stewing on the Trojans’ sidelines during his first three years on campus, was questioned about his possible use of steroids at the 2009 NFL Scouting Combine when one general manager made the simple statement that Cushing didn’t look ‘natural’.

Cushing did not fail any tests at the Scouting Combine and has never been a part of the league’s substance abuse program but he will now have to carry that stigma for the rest of his career. Unlike baseball, we excuse our warriors for their use of steroids, only asking them to accept their penalty and play their hearts out when they return.

Most of the time in sports your eyes don’t fool you. If a guy doesn’t look ‘natural’ in today’s day and age, the chances are about 98% that he isn’t. There are always going to be physical freaks but those guys don’t develop muscle mass overnight.

THE TEST

We know that this failed test happened while Brain Cushing was in the NFL but when was the last time the NCAA caught a prominent football player for the use of steroids? We would be ignorant to think that a player only begins to use steroids when they reach the NFL, when most of the time it is the exact opposite. They use steroids in order to chase the dream and put themselves ahead of the competition at the college level, hoping to find that pot of gold on Draft day.

If you live close enough to a college campus and are a football fan, you can do your own little test. You don’t have to live in Ann Arbor or Palo Alto in order for this test to work either. Colin and I live next to -and work out with a lot of the players from- Central Connecticut State University, a small 1-AA school. The test is as fool proof at these programs as they are anywhere else. A friend of mine, who played on a 1-AA National Championship team in this decade, estimated about 20% of all scholarship players were on steroids.

Go to the first game of the season and take pictures of all the freshmen on the roster. Make sure you get a few shots of their mug so you can compare neck size and swelling down the road. Take a few of the guys that you think have already been anointed by the coaching staff as the next big thing. Then, visit campus with those pictures for the ‘Spring Game’ during their sophomore season. You won’t be able to recognize half of the pictures you hold in your hand.

Most of the time, a college weight program is the first professional program a football player will get on. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only thing he’ll be on. Steroids are talked about in a college football locker room as much as the women from the night before. Maybe not as loudly, but just as frequently. They have become as common as the pigskin itself throughout the college game -at all levels- but we still live by the ‘ignorance is bliss’ attitude as we scan through 25 different games throughout the week.

Steroids, when used properly, can be as helpful of a drug as there is on the market. Like anything else though, when it’s abused the consequences can be deadly. There should be mandatory classes on the safest possible way to take steroids for every football player at the NCAA level. The class should also go in-depth about the long term risks and health problems associated with the abuse of PEDs.

There will become a point when the NCAA concedes the fact that steroid use is a problem that isn’t going to be stopped -or deterred- with the threat of random testing. As long as there’s a multi-million dollar carrot to be dangled by NFL franchises, players will do anything they have to in order to grab it. Once the NCAA realizes more can be done by education than scare tactics, we’ll start seeing a cleaner game.

We won’t hold our breath.