Clemson football coach makes asinine claims about why his football players tested positive for SARMs.
Dabo Swinney, the head coach for the Clemson Tiger football team, was on the hot seat this week trying to explain why three of his players, including his top defensive player, tested positive for a prohibited performance-enhancing drug.
First-team All-ACC defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence was the biggest name to test positive for Ostarine. Lawrence was joined by teammates Zach Giella (offensive lineman) and Braden Galloway (tight end) with Ostarine positives.
Swinney told reporters that anti-doping officials only detected a “sliver” of Ostarine in each of the “A” samples for his players. He reported that his players thought he was joking when he told them that they failed the drug tests.
Ostarine could be present in “anything” used by the Clemson players.
Swinney defended his players and implied that they did not knowingly or intentionally use any prohibited substance. But Swinney went a little overboard in proclaiming their innocence by claiming that “anything” could be contaminated with Ostarine and result in a failed drug testing including “hair products” and “protein powder”.
“This particular substance can come from anything. And these three players have no clue… how this has gotten in their system,” Swinney claimed. “It could come from hair products. It could come from a cream. It could come from protein. It could come from a product that you order or buy online that you think there’s nothing wrong with it. It could be anything. Literally, it could be a drink—something in a drink.”
Of course, Ostarine contamination is not as pervasive a problem as Swinney suggested. To assert that Ostarine could be in “anything” is clearly overstating the problem of contamination.
The selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM) known as Ostarine has been widely (and illegally) sold over-the-counter as dietary supplements for many years. In those cases, Ostarine is usually listed directly on the label as an ingredient.
However, Ostarine is not disclosed as an active ingredient in a small number of cases. In addition, traces of Ostarine have been discovered in dietary supplement due to accidental contamination by supplement manufacturers.
If the three Clemson football player really did not intentional use Ostarine, the most plausible explanation is the use of the same “dietary supplement”. Whether Ostarine, or the name of one of its synonyms, was listed on the label is another story.
If the three football players purposely used Ostarine, and this would not be at all surprising, there is no shortage of online sources that offer this product for sale in the United States. Ostarine is arguably easier to obtain than anabolic steroids.
Since Ostarine is technically not classified as a Schedule III controlled substance, the penalties for buying and selling it are much less severe. Yet as a banned doping product, the consequences of using SARMS are no different than using anabolic steroids.