The mother of a former Tide player alleges that Bama pressures its players to take performance-enhancing-but-NCAA-legal drugs, and which lead to her son’s addiction. She claims that Bama, and specifically Saban, don’t care about the safety and welfare of their players, and includes examples from both her son’s experience, and others (including the handling of Tua’s injury as evidence). Best, she publicly aired these concerns in an open-letter to Bama’s recruits and current players, as a cautionary tale. While her son later publicly stated regret for her choice in going public, he also admired the truthfulness of her account. Her blog can be found, here: https://iftheruthfits44a.blogspot.c...Hf33GoX2E1TNxlvfjudUu1f5hOITu-1-hrvE17AmE&m=1 I’ll just add this personal note: While both the NCAA and SEC do have rules that broadly regulate the drug testing of student athletes, the implementation and day-to-day management (ie when to test, what to test, how often to test, what to do with results from those tests, any action taken on those tests and how much discretion can be exercised in the entirety of those processes) rests almost entirely and exclusively with each school. The NCAA and SEC only know, and in turn, can only oversee, those tests which are required to be performed and reported to them. As an example, the NCAA only conducts and oversees the drug testing of student athletes / schools immediately prior to their playing at a bowl or the NCAA basketball tourney, and even then, it’s only a small percentage of randomly selected players and who are tested at the site of the event. Further, while I’m certain that there are a good many reasons why CFB chooses to delay the commencement of bowls until 3+ weeks after the end of the regular season, perhaps there are other reasons that are given less consideration or are oft-overlooked. For example, Buffalo and Charlotte play in the first bowl game of the season on Dec. 20th, some 21 and 20 days since their last regular season game, respectively. And finally, perhaps most importantly, I understand that most people instinctively think of “drug testing” strictly in terms of illicit drugs - marijuana, cocaine, PCP, etc. - but that’s too narrowly and inaccurately defined. “Drug testing”, in any meaningful context, includes all drugs - illicit, legal, prescribed, administered, scheduled, natural, synthetic, over the counter...and performance enhancing. While no one may care what any school does about a failed marijuana test...I doubt that most would find it reasonable to believe the same for opioids and steroids, just to name a couple of completely random substances. This is a gigantic problem, with far-reaching ramifications that holds the potential for tragic results, and which should be easily preventable. But it is also one that has long been, and continues to be, completely - willfully - ignored.
