Hats off to Frank Uryasz (president of The Center for Drug Free Sport), Mary Wilfert (NCAA associate director of education outreach), and the entire NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports for constructing and implementing year-round drug testing in Division I. While the program will target football and baseball this year, it appears that the endeavor eventually will expand to other sports and other divisions, and it will encompass a diverse aggregate of athletes.

The testing expansion will prove to embolden an already firmly entrenched and extremely effective program, and underpin it with a much needed additional deterrence.

We have come away from the Congressional hearings on steroids in Major League Baseball in March 2005 with a clearer picture of the proliferation of anabolic drug abuse and a better understanding of the deceitful mentality that pervades within a tight loop of high-profile athletes at the pinnacle of sports. Hopefully, the loop is small and eventually can be snapped. For far too long, MLB turned a blind eye to the dangerous, illegal chemicals that were embedded in a significant contingent of its players.

Now, with that eye blackened, MLB is in a damage-control mode and scurrying to clean up the mess.

The entire athletics community needs to wake up and smell the testosterone: Anabolic steroids, their precursors and designer anabolic compounds are ubiquitous and readily available. Along with relentless educational efforts and mentoring, year-round testing is vital in the sense that it places every athlete’s hand in the fire of deterrence.

The NCAA has served notice that it intends to be one of the world’s leaders in abetting the most viable defense we have against these perilous, banned substances, and in mitigating the uptrend of their abuse.

We have seen what happens when there are weak checks and balances, finger-wagging disciplinary stunts and public-relations smoke screens in lieu of a serious, solid and effective approach to drug testing.

 We also can be proud of the fact that we are part of an athletics organization that is taking progressive steps to level all playing grounds and, just as earnestly, enabling our athletes to grow on the common grounds of good health and great integrity.

Ken Mannie is the strength and conditioning coach at Michigan State University.