Originally published Dec 15, 1983

Last week, the National Football League sent a letter to all of its players concerning anabolic steroids . The letter was a fairly thorough condemnation of steroids . It questioned their usefulness and pointed out their potential danger and warned that any NFL player caught using them would face disciplinary action from the league.

If the league had hoped to use the letter as a scare tactic, Stan Jones has some bad news. It won't work.

"People are going to take them," the Denver Broncos' defensive line coach said. "I'm not going to stop them, the league's not going to stop them, nobody's going to stop them. If a guy thinks ( steroids ) are the answer, he's going to take them. "

A three-month investigation by the Daily News has demonstrated that more and more players are becoming convinced that anabolic steroids are indeed the answer.

"They've become a necessary part of their sport," said Dr. Jerome Ciullo, director of Detroit Medical Center's sports medicine clinic and the team physician for the Michigan Panthers of the United States Football League. ''They wouldn't get anywhere as bulky without them and they all know that. "

Once upon a time, football coaches liked their players lean and lithe. Now, they prefer them massive and mountainous. The bigger, the better.

"When I first started playing," said Dr. Bob Paschall, a Virginia neurologist and a former offensive lineman for the Philadelphia Bell, ''weightlifting was taboo to most of the older coaches. In those days, you did calisthenics and sprints. You didn't lift weights. They claimed they made you tight. But I knew right away that that was ridiculous. It's a mass and velocity effect. If you weigh more and you're faster, you'll play. If you weigh less and you're slower, you won't play. "

Nobody knows that better than Paschall, who weighed only 219 pounds as a

college senior at Temple and was facing bad odds if he wanted a pro career. Determined to play professional football, he turned to steroids and added an additional 30 pounds.

"You can't play football now if you're weak," Paschall said. "You can't play football if you have moderate strength. You have to be big and fast. Temple probably beat Delaware this year because Temple was bigger and faster. And Temple lost to Penn State because they were probably weaker.

"You ever read about the dreadnought races? Before the first world war, for every dreadnought battleship the British built, the Germans had to build one. And when the Germans caught up and gained parity, the British had to build more.

"The same thing happened before World War II with us and Japan. We had these huge battleship fleets. Each line of battleships was bigger than the next. And that's what's happening with offensive and defensive football players now.

"The days of the Jim Stillwagons, the 5-8, 220-pound nose guards, are gone. Those guys don't exist anymore. You've got to have a refrigerator out there now. You've got to have the same number of battleships out there as the other guy or you're going to get wiped out. "

For many of those "battleships," steroids are the only way they can stay in the water.

"It's a business out there, not a sport," said Bob Young, a former All- Pro lineman for the St. Louis Cardinals and Houston Oilers who fought for his professional life for 10 seasons before turning to steroids for a competitive edge. "You do what you can to stay alive out there. You're trying to make a living, put food on the table. "

"It's not just a simple argument of, 'Hey, they're bad for you, let's get rid of them,' " said Jeff Everson, an exercise physiologist who ran the University of Wisconsin's strength program for 10 years before resigning last summer.

"It goes much deeper than that. These guys feel that they're the ones who are going out there and risking life and limb. They feel that as long as people are willing to pay money to see them run into each other, they should be able to do what they want to, including use steroids . "

The NFL, however, doesn't share that attitude. It feels all of sport is under a "chemical cloud," and it doesn't relish the thought of tackling another drug scandal.

"The desired athletic effects of building up people haven't been unequivocably confirmed," said Jan Van Duser, the NFL's director of operations. "There seems to be a lot more evidence that confirms the detrimental side effects (possible liver damage, kidney damage, stroke, high blood pressure, et al). Especially with the high doses that are being taken by some people.