The numbers were sobering.

About one of every 20 student-athletes who responded to a 1989 NCAA drug-use survey said they used anabolic steroids or related substances

-- even after three years of championships drug testing.

Nearly one of every 10 football players responding to the survey admitted to using the drugs, as did one of every 25 male track and field athletes.

Even high-profile suspensions of players resulting from testing before NCAA-sanctioned football bowl games did not discourage athletes who understood that they could benefit from steroids for much of the year without risk of penalty -- so long as they quit using them well before the end of the season.

The time had come to ask the NCAA membership to take the next step toward an anti-drug program that would effectively deter abuse of steroids.

"There always was this understanding that a year-round, short-notice program was the perfect drug-testing program, but there also was an understanding that implementation had to be done in steps," recalled Frank Uryasz, who was director of the NCAA drug-testing program at the time.

The Association already was spending $1 million annually on the championships testing program, as well as a voluntary football off-season testing program. Expansion to year-round testing would dramatically increase expenses. But those 1989 survey results could not be ignored.

"As individuals become more sophisticated in methods to avoid detection, telling them a year in advance that they're going to be tested before a bowl game is not a deterrent at all," Malcolm C. McInnis Jr., serving as chair of the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports' drug-testing and drug-education subcommittee, told The NCAA News in 1989.

"But if they know that they can be tested at any time of the year -- particularly during training -- that can be a very effective deterrent," he said.

The membership overwhelmingly adopted the committee's proposal for a year-round testing program at the January 1990 Convention, with initial focus on Division I football. The program was expanded to include Division I track and field in 1992, and also included Division II football.

Year-round testing -- then and now -- focuses on anabolic steroids as well as products that athletes may use to "mask" the presence of steroids. Beginning this year, it also will test for ephedrine, but it does not test for street drugs and other substances.

 The 1993 student-athlete drug-use survey showed moderate decreases in admitted anabolic substance use, but by 1997, survey results demonstrated a dramatic curtailment of usage. Only one of every 100 student-athletes answering the survey that year admitted to use of steroids and related substances. Only one of every 50 football players admitted use, and only one of every 100 track and field athletes admitted use.

The numbers increased slightly in the most recent survey in 2001, but remain well below those 1989 findings.

That 1997 survey also revealed that three of every five student-athletes responding to the statement strongly agreed or agreed that NCAA drug testing deterred athletes from using drugs

Today, Uryasz believes that decreased steroid use in intercollegiate athletics may be the NCAA drug-testing program's foremost achievement.

The Association's testing program, however, still isn't perfect.

"In a perfect world, the program would operate year-round, including summer," Uryasz said. "Every athlete in every sport would have the opportunity to participate, and that's not currently the case."

-- Jack L. Copeland