Far from the Final Four, a protest in track spells out NCAA’s drug-fighting issues across all sports
It was supposed to be a time to celebrate as the top finishers in the NCAA Division III 5,000-meter title race lined up on the eight-tiered podium to receive their trophies.
Instead, when winner Seth Clevenger’s name was announced, the other seven runners stepped off their perches and walked away.
With the NCAA holding its biggest party of the year at this week’s Final Four, the protest over Clevenger’s alleged use of performance enhancers at one of its smaller championships is a telling illustration of what critics see as a glaring weak spot in college sports.
They point to an NCAA anti-doping policy rife with imperfections, all of which undercut the association′s ability to provide a level playing field — a responsibility that means more than ever with growing name, image and likeness opportunities that raise the stakes for players.
“In the NIL era, failing to have a robust anti-doping program doesn’t just invite doping into college athletics — it undermines fairness, the very heart of the game,” said Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
USADA has no authority over the NCAA, though college athletes who also compete on national and Olympic teams are subject to the world anti-doping protocols.
Video of Clevenger being ghosted on the podium has garnered more than 10 million views on social media, part of a mushrooming protest against the former Iowa State distance runner who moved down to Division III Rowan University earlier this year. More than 750 D-III runners have since signed a letter to school and conference officials demanding a “full and public investigation” into Clevenger.
Last month, Clevenger won NCAA indoor titles at 3,000 and 5,000 meters, setting meet records in both. His wins allowed his new school to eke out the team title by one point.
Clevenger did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Associated Press. In response to a series of questions about its anti-doping measures, the NCAA said it has a “rigorous drug-testing policy.” Shawn Tucker, the athletic director at Rowan, declined to comment on Clevenger specifically.
″In line with Rowan athletics and NCAA policies, we assure you that all rostered student-athletes competing for Rowan have been both academically and athletically eligible to compete this academic year,” Tucker said.
Clevenger is not known to have tested positive for either of the banned drugs he is alleged to have used: a hard-to-detect and widely available peptide called BP-157 that some believe is key to injury recovery; and erythropoietin (EPO), a well-known red blood cell booster detectable through blood tests, the likes of which the NCAA is not known to administer.
Because Clevenger let his membership to Olympic-affiliated USA Track and Field lapse after 2023, he only needs to follow NCAA rules, which are far less demanding than the system that governs international sports and is helmed by USADA in the United States.
With that agency on the sideline, the NCAA’s handling of cases like Clevenger’s has largely stayed under the radar, below ever-rotating headlines about the transfer portal, eligibility lawsuits and, more recently, the new college landscape’s impact on a March Madness tournament that was built on underdog stories but has tilted recently more toward deeper-pocketed programs.
Those who track doping issues have taken notice. They see the Clevenger case as something with implications far beyond a single D-III school.
“In this case, there was enough conversation, and you had people walking off the podium,” said researcher Oliver Catlin, president of the Anti-Doping Sciences Institute. “If you ignore something like that, that’s going to send a horrendous message through the rest of the ranks. And people pay attention and it’s going to get repeated.”
A supsension at Iowa State and a move to Division III
The seeds of this saga were planted at Iowa State, where Clevenger spent most of his three years low on the depth chart for the highly rated Cyclones.
Given a chance to race at the Nuttycombe Invitational in Wisconsin last October while Iowa State rested its top runners, Clevenger ran the 8-kilometer championship in 23 minutes, 37.9 seconds. That was 4.5 seconds better than a personal best he had topped by 28 seconds only three weeks earlier.
Eight days after that, Iowa State suspended multiple athletes, including Clevenger, “for breaking team rules.” The school did not specify which rules had been broken but Clevenger did not race for Iowa State again and wound up at Rowan, less than 20 miles from his childhood home of Haddonfield, New Jersey. Cyclones coach Jeremy Sudbery did not respond to requests from AP for an interview.
Since then, Clevenger has admitted to using BP-157, a person close to the case told AP, speaking only on condition of anonymity because that detail has not been made public by the runner or his attorney. The track website letsrun.com published a story last month about the allegations; an Instagram page soon after carried a post that purportedly shows a receipt for an order of EPO placed through Clevenger’s email account.
The AP could not confirm the authenticity of the email, nor of a letter to Iowa State administrators that has also shown up on social media and appears to be from Clevenger’s mother, who insists her son never took EPO.
The email and letter are among evidence that Catlin and other anti-doping experts said could be used to investigate a case under world anti-doping rules. The ability to investigate potential evidence other than blood and urine samples led to the ban of cyclist Lance Armstrong and dozens of other athletes even though they did not test positive for drugs.
The NCAA’s lack of tools to open those sort of investigations is viewed as a big hole in its drug-fighting program.
“An effective anti-doping program can’t just test — it must also investigate,” Tygart said. “Without both, cheaters game the system and clean athletes may be falsely harmed on just suspicion, not evidence.”
The NCAA has a difficult history with anti-doping efforts
Five years ago, the NCAA got great reviews for putting on a successful post-COVID version of March Madness in Indianapolis – the site of this year’s Final Four – filled with constant testing and a solid list of protocols to handle players who fell ill.
It received virtually no blowback when AP reported that not a single test for performance enhancers had been conducted the entire tournament.
Six years before that, the NCAA’s own medical chief at the time, Brian Hainline, said the association’s drug-fighting program “could be improved considerably.” That was in response to AP reporting that revealed the Final Four teams were subject to different drug-testing policies based on their on-campus policies.
College sports still operates under essentially the same system, leaving schools in charge of the bulk of their anti-doping efforts and how to sanction those who get caught.
The NCAA said its program “undergoes regular review by the membership, including two reviews in the past five years.”
“Each academic year, 10,000 NCAA student-athletes are tested without notice in year-round testing or at one of the 92 NCAA championships in 24 sports,” the association said. Privacy laws typically prevent schools from making public statements about doping cases and the NCAA doesn’t disclose test results.
Year-round, out-of-competition testing is considered the gold standard, and while the NCAA does have a program for that in Divisions I and II,, officials in Division III studied a year-round program but never adopted it. The NCAA drug testing handbook says D-I and D-II athletic departments are, under most circumstances, notified at least two days in advance of a visit from testers.
“Giving notice of testing, even a couple of hours before the collection, is mostly theater — just to say you test,” Tygart said.
The lack of a true investigatory arm also denies Clevenger the chance to clear his name if, as his school claims, he has done nothing wrong.
“There’s got to be due process,” Catlin said. “You’ve got to protect the athletes to one degree. And, from the NCAA’s perspective, you have to protect your sports environment. And based on this case, it certainly doesn’t sound like that’s happening.”
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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports