CBS' 60 Minutes reported Carolina punter Todd Sauerbrun (above), along with teammate Jeff Mitchell and former Panther Todd Steussie had steroid prescriptions filled by a South Carolina doctor. Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

As a young pup grinding away for Newsday 17 years ago, I was dispatched to South Korea to cover the Summer Olympics. Midway through my stay, I was assigned the Ben Johnson story. You may remember Johnson, the Greek god of a sprinter who won the 100-meter dash. Then, in the story of that Olympiad, he walked into the doping center after the race, gulped down a couple of light beers because he couldn't fulfill his requirement, got very nervous while it took nearly an hour (I talked to the doctor who took the sample), then finally produced a sample that 12 hours later showed he was a steroid cheat. The steroid in question: Stanozolol. A staple of steroid use. One of the cheaters' old standbys. Everyone in the muscle and performance business knew Stanozolol, an injectable steroid. Johnson was stripped of his medal and fled from Seoul, disgraced.

I hadn't heard much about Stanozolol until last week, when CBS reported that Carolina punter Todd Sauerbrun possessed Stanozolol, and that offensive linemen Todd Steussie and Jeff Mitchell filled 18 testosterone prescriptions between them. All the offending stuff, CBS reported, was obtained from a South Carolina physician currently being investigated for improperly prescribing such medications.

Stanozolol. Is someone using one of your father's steroids? If so, there's something rotten in Denmark.

And so on Friday I asked the NFL's counsel for the steroid program, staff attorney Adolpho Birch: How can the public have confidence in a steroid-testing program that apparently can't catch a guy -- allegedly-- who used one of the oldest and most common steroids known to man, and who allegedly used a lot of it?

"You can have confidence,'' Birch said, "because we've caught many more players than we haven't. Taking a synthetic steroid is a huge gamble in this program. You've got to think a guy who used that steroid has used up all the luck he has because he didn't get caught.''

So, if Sauerbrun indeed used the Stanozolol -- or let's assume some other anonymous NFL player did -- we have to figure out why it never showed up in testing. Four possible reasons:

1. The offender simply wasn't random-tested while he was taking the stuff. This, I'd think, is the most likely scenario. Under the NFL's system put in place in 1989 to snuff out the juicers players can be tested year-round. Every player is tested at some point during training camp. Then, during the season, the NFL directs seven players per team per week -- picked at random by the league -- to provide a urine specimen to be tested for more than 80 different kinds of steroids. (Including, of course, Stanozolol.) So picture this: You're tested once in training camp, then any number of times during the season. Dan Marino told me that one season he was tested six times, and another year he was tested once during the season. During a season in which a team goes to the Super Bowl, there are 22 possible weeks players can be tested. Figuring 63 players per team, approximately, including injured ones, that means each player would be tested, on the average, once every nine weeks. Taking a banned substance with the prospect of testing hanging over your head is Russian Roulette. And as unlikely as it seems that guys who have half a brain in their heads would do it, it's certainly possible.