Sport: Scoring Off the Field

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The athletically gifted are different from you and me. As children they rule the sandlot and playground. While most kids pray they are not the last picked by the shirts or the skins, it is the natural athletes who do the choosing. Late in high school, the best are wooed by colleges offering scholarships, special treatment and maybe a nice set of wheels. A happy few make the jump from big man on campus to major-league pro. Most start with salaries in six figures -- not bad for a 22-year-old who, chances are, did not earn enough credits to graduate. In the popular imagination, the great pros are elevated to a status they share with only a handful of movie stars and Kennedys. Theirs is that realm beyond celebrity: American royalty.

That is what makes the growing problem of drugs in sports seem so insidious, and why each new disclosure about a career destroyed or an athlete dying young comes as such a head-snapping blow. In an era so stingy with heroes, the fall of sports stars to the lure of cocaine and other narcotics has helped spur the growing national concern about drug abuse. It has also prompted college and professional sports officials to search for new ways to crack down on the illicit indulgences of those who are supposed to serve as exalted role models.

Both the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Football League have announced sweeping plans for mandatory drug testing. The N.F.L. Players Association has challenged Commissioner Pete Rozelle's authority to carry out such a program; with the players back at training camps and the season set to begin in three weeks, the matter is expected to be resolved by mid-September. As college athletes return to their campuses, the N.C.A.A. is preparing a widespread testing program for so-called recreational drugs, including cocaine and marijuana, as well as for such performance-related drugs as amphetamines and steroids.

The pileup of revelations about drugs in sports raises issues beyond the propriety of testing. Big-time university athletic programs have come under fire for allegedly placing sports competition -- and the revenues it garners -- ahead of educational ideals. In professional sports, the big leagues may be in danger of alienating fans permanently if the perception grows that players are unable or unwilling to tackle the drug problem. "We have to restore public confidence in the game," says Don Shula, head coach of the Miami Dolphins. "We must do everything possible to show fans that the game is drug free. This is a battle we have to win, and the players, coaches and owners must join together to win it."

During this summer, a number of incidents focused attention on the problem of drugs in sports and, in doing so, have become a catalyst for confronting the problem in society as a whole. Among them: