His lawyer cites team-approved Sudafed in failed test

	Miami's Sammy Morris believes he should be exonerated from his NFL drug suspension. Eliot J. Schechter/Getty Images

The bourbon did it.

A long night of sex did it.

A vengeful masseur did it with a drug-laced cream.

Miami Dolphins running back Sammy Morris didn't rely on any of these lame excuses when he was told he had tested positive for a banned performance-enhancer. His explanation was simple: On Oct. 16, 2005, a team doctor told him to take four Sudafed tablets for an upper-respiratory disorder. It was the ninth time in 13 months that the team doctor had treated Morris for the persistent problem, according to briefs prepared by Morris's lawyer, David Cornwell, and obtained by SI.com. But this time was different. The next day an NFL drug tester showed up for a random urine test. Sudafed contains pseudoephedrine, a substance banned unless it has been prescribed by a team physician. Morris gave the tester the required sample, and, sure enough, four weeks later the NFL told him he had tested positive.

Under NFL testing rules, a first-time positive carries an automatic four-game suspension. But because they believed they had a full explanation for the positive, Morris and Cornwell requested a hearing with the league to challenge the finding and the suspension.

As they prepared for a hearing held last March, Morris and Cornwell found what they contend were flaws in the testing procedures followed at the UCLA Olympic lab, one of the two labs that analyze NFL drug-testing samples. According to Cornwell, the lab found ephedrine -- another banned substance -- not pseudoephedrine, in Morris's sample, even though Sudafed does not contain ephedrine. "The laboratory's failure to detect pseudoephedrine [from the Sudafed] is both surprising and casts doubt on all that precedes it," Cornwell writes in a brief. (Cornwell says that Morris was taking no supplements that contained ephedrine.) In addition, according to Cornwell, the UCLA lab did not have not adequate documentation to show that it had performed confirmation testing on Morris's sample, a departure from NFL protocol. (The NFL would not comment on the case, citing the confidentiality provisions of the league's drug-testing policy.)

Even worse, Cornwell says, was the discovery that the league's drug czar, Dr. John Lombardo, had inexplicably waited nearly two weeks after learning of the positive test before notifying Morris. The delay was significant, Cornwell explains in the briefs, because a timely notification would have allowed Morris to serve his four-game suspension during the 2005 season, before he headed into the off-season as an unrestricted free agent. The delay meant that Morris, a sixth-year pro who rushed for 58 yards on 16 carries last season (he gained a career-high 523 on 132 carries in 2004) would have the possible suspension hanging over him as he went through the free-agent process, reducing his market value. (Morris re-signed with Miami in April for $585,0000, the minimum for a player with at least four years in the league.)

Cornwell and Morris were confident that the NFL's hearing officer, Jay Moyer, a former vice-president and general counsel of the league, would resolve the matter in their favor. At the March hearing, Cornwell and Morris pointed out that the team doctor had told Morris to take the Sudafed -- a contention supported by a team prescription log, according to Cornwell's briefs.