NFL Delays Penalties for Early THG Users

In an apparent victory for its players’ union, the NFL announced Thursday that no player who had tested positive to this point for the designer steroid THG would be punished this season.

That means the four Oakland Raiders who reportedly have tested positive for the banned substance will not face discipline until 2004.

The league released excerpts of a memorandum sent Thursday by Commissioner Paul Tagliabue to its 32 teams, updating them on the status of player testing and discipline for the use of the recently identified steroid, a drug at the center of a widening sports scandal.

The league’s management council has said it should be allowed to test any sample, old or new, for the substance. The NFL Players Assn. has argued that the retesting of old samples is not permitted under the policy.

“We will continue to test our players in a normal manner, as agreed to in our collective bargaining agreement,” Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFLPA, said in a statement. “Any player who tests positive in the future will be subject to discipline under the policy.”

The positive results on the four Raider players were based on urine samples collected before Oct. 6, when the league began testing for the steroid. The league has tested more than 1,000 samples taken since Oct. 6 and has yet to find any traces of THG, according to Tagliabue’s memo.

The four Raiders -- Bill Romanowski, Dana Stubblefield, Barret Robbins and Chris Cooper -- were among 10 NFL players summoned to appear before a federal grand jury in San Francisco looking into allegations of money laundering by a Burlingame supplement laboratory.

The players were recently informed that the first part of their divided samples tested positive for the substance, and the second part is currently being tested for confirmation. If a player’s second test comes up positive, he is normally subject to a four-game suspension. But, according to a league spokesman, it has not been decided whether a positive test for THG will bring a suspension or a fine.

Tagliabue wrote that he’d decided to wait until next season to discipline any players who tested positive based on samples provided before Oct. 6 so as not to affect the “requisite competitive fairness for all 32 teams.”

The NFL, which has the strictest drug policy of any professional sports league, will continue random testing of more than 200 players each week.

“If any player tests positive in the course of this ongoing weekly testing, discipline -- including suspension for four games -- will be imposed in accordance with our policy,” Tagliabue wrote.

Upshaw, a Hall of Fame offensive lineman for the Raiders, traveled to Alameda on Wednesday and met with the four accused players after practice. He also addressed the team and detailed the union’s objection to the testing of old samples.

At a sports-law forum last week at Suffolk University in Massachusetts, Upshaw outlined the NFLPA’s position.

“I don’t think it serves any purpose to go back to the players who tested positive and penalize players for testing positive,” he said then. “I am definitely in favor of moving forward and if a player tests positive in future tests, he should be subject to the punishments that the NFL and the NFLPA have instituted as a result of the collective bargaining agreement.”