NCAA SURVEY RESULTS Caffeine-, guarana- and
taurine-based stimulants were not included in the survey. SOURCE:
National Collegiate Athletic Association Original graphic by SEAN
WATERS/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Web adaptation by STEPHEN
WONG/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
 Christina Teller Teller isn’t on campus
this summer, so if you want to share your thoughts, get off the
couch, log on and send her an e-mail to [email protected].
Football players are bigger than they used to be. Yet training
expectations stay the same despite the drastic increase in body
size. There’s something wrong with that. The game of football
is pushing the human limits of its players. Bigger players cannot
be as quick as the smaller guys. This seems obvious, but the common
sense of it hasn’t stopped players from trying. To get more
from their bodies, athletes are turning to supplements containing
such ingredients such as caffeine and ephedrine, which is derived
from ephedra. Ephedrine is supposed to help an athlete get more out
of a workout by working on the adrenal gland and central nervous
system, and ephedrine-containing supplements can be purchased at
your neighborhood General Nutrition Company store. In the past few
weeks, five football players have died: one NFL athlete, one indoor
leaguer, two NCAA athletes and one high school player. Three of
these deaths ““ Northwestern University’s Rashidi
Wheeler, Davaughn Darling of Florida State and Curtis Jones, who
played in a professional indoor football league ““ have been
linked to the alleged use of supplements containing derivatives of
ephedra. The NCAA has been looking the other way on this issue.
They recently reported in a survey that only 3.6 percent of
athletes use ephedrine. That’s like saying only three or four
players on a team are using it. But in the last few days, two
players may have shown that the use of stimulants is even more
widespread than that. The Los Angeles Times reported, citing
anonymous sources, that several players on the Northwestern team
allegedly used supplements the day Wheeler died, and former USC
player Petros Papadakis told The Times that more than half of
Trojan players turn to stimulants such as caffeine pills and
dietary supplements to get them going. The NCAA survey, which was
released on Aug. 13, did not even acknowledge the existence of
caffeine-, guarana- and taurine-based stimulants. Nor does it
address how the body reacts when these stimulants are combined with
prescribed medications or rigid physical regimens. So we’re
left with a paradox. In order to stay competitive against the
300-pound guy on the other side of the line of scrimmage, an
athlete has to bulk up. But that extra mass puts additional strain
on bodily organs. Combine that with what ephedrine does to your
body during a strenuous workout (i.e. constrict blood vessels,
making it more difficult for the body to rid itself of heat) and
athletes are making themselves vulnerable to serious potential
health risks. Ephedrine is already banned by the NCAA, and some
teams have experts address their players on the dangers of
over-the-counter stimulants, but the NCAA clearly isn’t doing
enough. So what’s it going to take before the NCAA seriously
addresses the problem of supplements and workout enhancers? Five
deaths? Ten deaths? Two dozen? Korey Stringer, a 335-pound Vikings
lineman, suffered from organ failure due to heat stroke, and Travis
Stowers, of Clinton Central High School in Indiana, is said to have
died of complications of heat stroke. But I know this isn’t
going to stop athletes from bulking up, and pushing themselves
beyond their limits. If players are going to continue to weigh
300-plus pounds, then the leagues need to understand their
potential health risks and what precautions can be taken to prevent
them from occurring. If players are going to continue using
over-the-counter supplements, there needs to be more information
available to the players about the risks that come along with them.
To many athletes, performance-enhancing supplements are not a life
or death issue. But in the case of Wheeler, Darling and Jones, they
were. Several other players collapsed at the same point in practice
that Wheeler did ““ but they were luckier. How long will that
be the case for them, or the thousands of others ingesting
ephedrine or combining over the counter “legal”
stimulants? Death isn’t something that can be ignored. It
must be learned from.