The Nightmare Of Steroids

A few schools recruited me, but the coaches at South Carolina showed the most interest. They sent up the defensive line coach, Jim Washburn, and he came to see me in the hospital in the spring of '83, my senior year. I was recovering from having a prolapsed rectum wall repaired, fairly serious work. I was in a lot of pain, but I remember he told me that my bench press of 350 pounds would make me one of the strongest guys on the S.C. team. And he said that after the Gamecocks' annual spring game, the winners always ate lobster and the losers got steak. He was a good salesman.

All the time he was talking, he was checking me out, walking up and down the side of the bed to see how tall I was. I'd said I was 6'2", but I'm more like 6'1". He saw the tattoo of a star on my arm and the stretch marks around my pecs from lifting, and I guess he liked those things. Anyway, I wanted to play college ball so bad that I would've played anywhere at all. I'd never been to Columbia, S.C., but I didn't care where the school was. When they offered me a ride, I snapped it up.

So I showed up in Columbia in the fall of 1983, a naive, easygoing but ambitious 19-year-old, ready to make his mark. The first thing I found out was that Washburn had fed me a line. I wasn't even close to being one of the strongest players on the team. There were a lot of monstrous guys in the weight room. And I found out later that the spring game winners didn't get lobster, either. They got little steaks, and the losers ate hot dogs. Basically, what I discovered was that I couldn't trust this man, my position coach.

I also discovered that Columbia was one of the hottest places on earth. For the first few days of double sessions Washburn ran me and the two other freshman defensive linemen half to death. Then one of the linemen, Ray Bingham, went to offense, and the other, Ricky Daniels, blew out his knee. That left me and Washburn, one-on-one in the heat, until the upperclassmen reported a few days later.

Washburn never stopped screaming at me. I was dehydrated, my electrolytes were screwed up, and my legs cramped all night. I actually prayed for a serious injury. One day I was standing in the huddle, and my eyes rolled up and I just keeled over. I'd stopped sweating, my skin was cold, I was delirious. They packed me in ice and gave me fluids. And the next day I was back at practice. All this—and I was sure they'd redshirt me anyway. I wouldn't even play for a year.

So I held a dummy for the scout team and got knocked around all fall. I didn't like it, but it was no big deal. Already guys had asked me if I wanted to take steroids—they called the stuff "juice"—so I could beef up and fight back. They were big guys, on steroids themselves, and they were trying to help me, but I always said no. I'd smoked pot a couple of times in high school, but I didn't like drugs. And I'd heard stories about the side effects of steroids, which can include cancer, liver damage, heart disease and sex problems. No way was I going to mess with something as risky as steroids. I was going to build myself up naturally.

In fact, I'd decided that I wanted to be a defensive end, and I figured I wouldn't have to build myself up at all. Over Christmas break I ran and ran and ran, and actually dropped my weight down to 205. I wanted to be lean and quick as a cat for spring practice. I get obsessed when I put my mind to something, and I was obsessed with being a fast defensive end.

That spring I got the crap knocked out of me. I got pushed all over the field. I also got a lot of muscle pulls in my legs, and Tom Gadd, the defensive coordinator at the time, reacted to that by saying, "Dianabol abuse! Dianabol abuse!" to me. He was referring to a type of steroid, but I hadn't taken any yet, so he didn't know what he was talking about. But neither did I—at least as far as being a defensive lineman was concerned. It turned out that being light and quick meant nothing. I found out the hard way that you've got to be big and quick.

It was bad. Real bad. I finally said to myself, I've had enough of this, and I started looking hard at those guys who were using steroids. They looked fine to me: They were happy; they were going out drinking, they seemed to have normal sex lives, and they were a hell of a lot bigger than I was. Maybe it was time for me to join the crowd.

At that point I was so laid-back that guys on the team were calling me the Mild-Mannered Man from Maryland. I thought I was fairly intense, but I was nothing compared with some of the others. In fact, the aggression level and the intensity of the players were the things that shocked me the most about college ball. There were fights all the time in practice, a lot of them instigated by coaches. They would always let the fights go, too, let guys beat the hell out of each other. If you showed a violent nature, regardless of your athletic ability, it definitely swayed the coaches' opinions in your favor.