March 24, 2005
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - New Orleans Saints coach Jim Haslett admitted taking steroids during his days as a player for American football's Buffalo Bills .
The Los Angeles Times and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspapers reported the revelation came during the NFL owners meetings this week in Hawaii and just one week after US lawmakers conducted an 11-hour hearing in Washington on the impact of steroids in Major League Baseball.
"I didn't think it (steroids) was very good for you," Haslett told the Times. "I was hyper all the time. Got bloated, a fat face.
"But if you didn't (take steroids), you weren't as strong as everybody else, you weren't as fast as everybody else.
"That's the only reason to do it. Everybody's looking for a competitive edge."
The former linebacker played for the Bills from 1979 to 1985. The NFL began to suspend players for steroids in 1989 and introduced random testing a year later.
First-time offenders are suspended for four games and 44 such banishments have been handed down. No player has tested positive more than once since the bans began.
Haslett said that "all the offensive and defensive linemen, linebackers" were steroid users during his career and specifically pointed his finger at the Pittsburgh Steelers , who won four Super Bowl titles in six years in the 1970s.
"It started, really, in Pittsburgh," Haslett told the Post-Gazette. "They got an advantage on a lot of football teams. They were so much stronger (in the) '70s, late '70s, early '80s. They're the ones who kind of started it."
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