A Time Of Whispers And Rumors

Normally at this time of year we would all be talking about Auburn's Bo Jackson, the projected top choice in next week's NFL draft, the best pure running back prospect to come out of college since O.J. Simpson. We would be evaluating the talent pool—top heavy in runners and offensive tackles, shallow in defensive players—and everyone would be tuned in to the jockeying for position as teams try to trade up for one of the blue-chip quarterbacks or elephant-sized linemen.

But this isn't a normal draft. In 1986 everyone is checking a new statistic, one that came out of the workouts held by the combined scouting syndicates in New Orleans in January. That stat was a shocker and it has turned this draft sour. One out of six of the top college football seniors in New Orleans tested positive for drugs.

The positive tests have led to whispering campaigns and gossip mongering, all of which means some highly regarded players will get bumped, fairly or not, out of the early rounds. Other prospects, in the words of Cincinnati Bengals player personnel director Pete Brown, "will slide a long way." They will wind up in the middle or lower rounds. Some may not get drafted at all.

"It's a shame," New Orleans general manager Jim Finks says, "that good kids are going to be painted with the same brush."

Of the 335 players tested in New Orleans, 57 showed some level of substance use. Three of the 57 tested positive for cocaine. The others are presumed to have used marijuana and other drugs.

For the past five years, the syndicates have combined to stage postseason workouts. Part of the package has always been a complete medical workup, which included urinalysis as well as blood testing, but this time the numbers were higher. They also had more shock effect, coming as they did on the heels of the post-Super Bowl revelations of drug use on the New England Patriots.

NFL executives are trying to figure out how they'll handle the matter. Some clubs have flatly said they won't touch a player who tested positive—for anything. Giants general manager George Young, on the other hand, says each case has to be individually evaluated and studied more deeply. "We absolutely aren't soft on drugs," he says, "but if you're interested in a kid, you've got to find out if he's an addict or a onetime user, whether it involves questioning the people who know him at school or bringing him in and retesting him yourself."

Ernie Accorsi, Cleveland's executive vice-president for football operations, views the drug-test results as "an IQ test. They've been having the medicals for years. The players were notified in December about the workouts. For six weeks they knew they were going to be tested, and yet 57 of them turned up positive. Aside from the other problems, is a guy that dumb going to be able to remember his plays?"

Howard Slusher, the well-known player agent, says, "there's no question that there's a problem, but three out of 335 testing positively for cocaine is less than one percent."

The American Civil Liberties Union is upset that the figures became public. (The Boston Globe broke the story in March.) "You have drug testing in private industry," says Allan Adler, a legislative counsel for the ACLU, "but the information remains private. Now any notion that a player might have that there's a foolproof method of confidentiality...well that's a pipe dream. As far as the legal issue [is concerned], there's very little statutory law that covers this."