In the 1960 college football season, Missouri coach Dan Devine fretted for one of his most important players, Norman Beal, likewise the team lightweight. The fast junior back was sensational on offense, tremendous on defense, but weighed maybe 160 pounds on a full meal. Then he would sweat out in a practice or game. Beal’s skinny body was oft-injured despite his huge spirit, unwavering. “No one hits the dummies in practice like Beal, no one runs like Beal,” Devine said. “Beal gives you everything.”
Beal began the season hobbled, hardly playing the first month, coming off knee surgery for an injury in the Orange Bowl. His lack of bulk was an issue ongoing, aired in newspapers since he arrived at Mizzou from Normandy High in suburban St. Louis.
Thus an MU physician prescribed Nilevar pills — anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) — for injured Norm Beal. Nilevar was a “tissue-building” drug of chemical name norethandrolone, not originally intended for athletes if an obvious fit. Nilevar was the first AAS in pill form, released in 1956 by G.D. Searle & Company, an Illinois pharmaceuticals manufacturer.
Beal typically trimmed weight during football season, like most players, but in 1960 he added pounds, reaching 170 on the scales. He set an Orange Bowl record against Navy on national television, scoring on a 90-yard interception return to lead Missouri’s 21-14 win. Beal’s heroic sprint drew a grimace from President John F. Kennedy in the stands, among Naval Academy alums and midshipmen on New Year’s Day.
The weight gain of Beal was apparent in Miami, and sportswriters heard an explanation from MU trainer Fred Wappel: “Since last September we’ve had Beal on a special eggnog diet and we’ve got him up to 170, a gain of nine pounds.” A decade later, St. Louis Post-Dispatch sportswriter Bill Beck recorded a different version from Wappel, who disclosed Beal was actually provided an “anabolic agent,” Nilevar; the trainer claimed AAS “had no effect.”
Elsewhere in 1960, an anabolic agent apparently benefitted Jim Otto, rookie center for the Oakland Raiders, of the upstart American Football League. Otto’s listed weight as a college senior was 210 at the University of Miami, Fla. At 6-foot-2, Otto added 25 pounds his first season in Oakland, when the strongman reached 235 to “amaze” head coach Eddie Erdelatz. In July 1961 Otto reported to training camp weighing 248; two years later, he checked in at 250 for new coach Al Davis.
In camp at Santa Rosa, Jim Otto discussed his gains with a writer for United Press International. The wire service reported that Otto, an All-AFL lineman and future Pro Football Hall of Famer, had “beefed up… by lifting weights and taking special pills.”
***
Since World War Two, the trail of modern performance-enhancing substances through sport has left a provocative, illuminated record in newspapers for events and witness accounts. Today the story segments become clearer — like early AAS in American football — thanks to contemporary electronic search, particularly of newspaper pages formerly buried in microfilm rolls and stacks. Millions of historical news-pages have become searchable since this author’s book on football doping in 2009. Additional online sources include histories, biographies, academic studies and periodicals, accessible for e-search.
Anabolic or tissue-building substances in sport began with the male hormone testosterone. In 1935 Dr. Charles Kochakian isolated testosterone in an experiment at the University of Rochester, N.Y., identifying chemical structure and anabolic nature. In 1937 synthetic testosterone propionate was commercially available for injection, produced and marketed by an international monopoly involving the German Nazi Party; two of the manufactures had plants in New Jersey, Ciba of Switzerland and Schering of Berlin.
Testosterone customers cared nothing of politics, they just wanted the drug, touted to cure anemia and male impotence, to build mass, and to overall “rejuvenate” the aging body, among advocate promises. “Word of its potency spread rapidly,” The Associated Press reported in 1939. “Thousands of men asked their doctors whether it would be useful. The new material could be made without end, and for the first time physicians had something to experiment with clinically on a large scale.”
A football question emerged in one so-called study of testosterone, whether scrawny, passive boys could play with aid of the drug, by increasing size, strength and aggression. Philadelphia physician Dr. Charles W. Dunn administered testosterone injections to boys aged 9 to 13, deemed as “underdeveloped” specimens “with feebly developed sex glands.” The doctor qualified each child as “a victim of delayed adolescence,” according to science writer Paul De Kruif, PhD, author of The Male Hormone. De Kruif was a writer and editor of the popular press, for Reader’s Digest and newspapers; Dunn’s project wasn’t published in medical literature.
The prepubescent subjects “were no good at football, baseball and basketball, and they were ashamed,” De Kruif recounted. “Shrewdly Doctor Dunn brought these physically and mentally laggard boys up toward the condition of their classmates with little doses of testosterone. The first effect they felt was more energy so that they could play and fight, and they tired much less easily.” The boys “put on weight and were more and more ready to knock chips off their friends’ shoulders.”
De Kruif cited another happy case of performance-enhancement by testosterone, summer 1941 at Milwaukee, in a broken-down trotter horse named Holloway. Dr. Walter M. Kearns was published for studies of testosterone for anti-aging treatment, and he implanted hormone pellets under hide of the trotter. “Walter Kearns shot those crystals of testosterone… Its failure would make him the laughingstock of the sporting world.”
Bolstered with synthetic Test, old Holloway resumed training and racing. He placed and won at tracks again, setting a speed record at age 19. “In other words…,” Kearnes wrote in review, “Holloway was rejuvenated.”
***
Revision is in order for previous compilations of AAS history in American football, including this writer’s. Evidence newly recovered debunks the assumption that football adopted anabolic steroids primarily through the U.S. weightlifting team of York Barbell in Pennsylvania. Today, electronic sampling of newspaper texts portrays no vacuum of information, post-WWII, but rather a national awareness of anabolic substances, among all ages and types.
In 1950 methyl-testosterone tablets were available at drugstores coast-to-coast, supposedly for anti-aging, but advertisements appeared in sports pages and comic books. Testosterone pills were less potent than injections; many users found the tabs inadequate by comparison.
Public appetite grew for simple and effective tissue-building drugs, and manufacturers delivered in 1956. Nilevar AAS tablets debuted from Chicago, where a syndicated medical columnist, Dr. Theodore R. Van Dellen, spread the word nationwide and beyond. Van Dellen declared chemists had separated testosterone’s harmful androgenic or masculinizing effects from desirable anabolic properties, for the revolutionary pill. The inconvenience, cost and concern of injections was avoided; for many people, hypodermic needles smacked of morphine addition plaguing America since the 19th century.
“Nilevar, this new tissue-builder, was sent to more than 30 medical centers in the country and abroad,” Van Dellen stated, apprised by G.D. Searle representatives. “Reports now available show the steroid to be of most value in patients undergoing surgery. By preventing loss of nitrogen, the preparation helps to maintain strength and promote healing.”
Sports personnel were reading, undoubtedly, including from football and track and field. “The athlete will always find literature on [a] drug that will support his internal beliefs,” said Al Oerter, Olympic Games discus champion of 1956, speaking decades later as he acknowledged AAS use. “There’s a great deal of talk among the athletes that it does help performance in some way.”
At Nilevar’s release many coaches, trainers, doctors and sportswriters were aware, as reports indicate. University of Southern California track coach Jess Mortenson “started feeding… muscle pills” to a shot-putter for size and power, according to the Los Angeles Times. At Christmas, a high school football coach in Pennsylvania wished for larger players. Coach Jim Wheeler needed something special in his stocking, mused the Greenville Record-Argus, like “hormone pills designed to make big (athletes) out of little ones.”
Other news items were intriguing, such as the 1957 football team at Texas A&M. Players were issued “bruise pills” that team officials explained as a bioflavonoid preparation of Vitamin C. The “special vitamin” decreased injuries “both superficial and deep” among colliding players, according to trainer Smokey Harper. In Major League Baseball, spring camp for the Baltimore Orioles, special vitamin was also buzz term. Medical staff treated outfielder Larry Doby with “tablets said to be especially effective on [pulled] muscles.” The pill was Vitamin E, according to Dr. Erwin Mayer, who added: “This vitamin is also designed to help relieve the pain in muscles, so it might be quite beneficial to Doby.” For injections, sore-armed pitcher Billy Loes was shot with Vitamin B-12, “an experimental sort of thing,” said the doctor.
Elite weightlifters at York Barbell, meanwhile, employed vitamins, protein supplements and muscle drugs in their quest to reclaim world supremacy from the Russians. The U.S. coaching staff included Alvin Roy, strength guru of Baton Rouge, La., who franchised “slenderizing” salons across the South. Roy would become notorious in football doping. Dr. John Ziegler was U.S. team physician in York, injecting lifters with testosterone. Ziegler communicated with Ciba chemists in New Jersey for a new AAS pill in development, methandrostenolone, to be known as Dianabol.
Muscle drugs for strongmen in York “started around 1950 and caught on fast,” said U.S. lifter John Davis, a world champion until Russia suddenly dominated at Vienna, 1954. Ziegler learned USSR lifters were injected with testosterone, causing swollen prostates throughout; they inserted catheters to urinate.
“I wasn’t into steroids myself,” Davis said. “I was asked to take steroids by my coach, but I said there was no way.”
***
Anabolic-androgenic steroid protocols for athletes, whether for performance enhancement or injury recovery, apparently did not begin with merely Dr. John Ziegler, physician for the U.S. weightlifting team in 1960—long a faulty storyline of historians. Electronic newspaper search now confirms period cases in American football, unconnected to York. There was Norm Beal at the University of Missouri, prescribed Nilevar by an MD, and a high school team in Texas, where adolescent players were provided steroids by doctors and parents, if not coaches.
Ziegler distributed methandrostenolone tablets to lifters, Ciba’s Dianabol, in time for the Rome Olympics of summer 1960. He also approached NFL lineman Stan Jones, offering the drug, but the Pennsylvania native said he declined.
Contrary to popular belief, Ziegler did not co-engineer methandrostenolone for Ciba, according to John D. Fair, weightlifter author of Muscletown USA: Bob Hoffman and the Manly Culture of York Barbell. I interviewed Fair, history professor in George, by telephone in 2008. “What was Ziegler’s role in [Dianabol]?” posed Fair, who studied personal papers of the doctor and Barbell owner Hoffman. “I would answer [Ziegler’s] role was simply as an experimenter with it, with the athletes, with the weightlifters, in fact.” Additionally, Fair maintained that Dianabol was not released until 1960—which newspaper coverage confirms as correct. Dianabol was marketed after nandrolone phenylpropionate, Durabolin, an injectable anabolic steroid released in America during 1959.
Noteworthy for football history, Louis Riecke was a U.S. weightlifter served Dianabol by Ziegler. Ten years later, 1970, Riecke was hired as strength coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, by head coach Chuck Noll. Riecke would always claim ignorance of AAS use on the Steelers, despite player confessions and suspensions for decades. Riecke and Noll contended that AAS was of no use to legit NFL athletes. In 2006, however, Riecke affirmed that Dianabol benefitted weightlifters and helped him become a champion. “[Ziegler] gave me some pills, and I really didn’t know what they were,” Riecke told Jeff Frantz of the York Daily Record. “I took them. I know they made me stronger.”
I spoke with Sheri Waters for my book on football doping, which I wrote as a former steroid user in college football at Southeast Missouri State. Her late husband was Bob Waters, college football coach and former NFL quarterback diagnosed with ALS a few years after I played. Water publicly discussed his own AAS use as a player before he died of neurodegeneration in 1989.
In 1962 Bob Waters received Dianabol sample packs from 49ers physician Dr. Lloyd Milburn, for gaining weight, as he and Sheri were newlyweds. Waters did as instructed and added pounds, but he returned next season skinny again, down to 167 on his 6-2 frame. Milburn and Niners coaches were alarmed. “TOO LIGHT,” headlined the San Francisco Examiner, of Waters in training camp. “The doctors put Waters on a weight-increasing diet and prescribed special pills,” reported Bob Brachman. In 1964 Waters arrived chiseled at 194 pounds, “the sensation among the first day check-ins… a powerfully muscled upper torso,” lauded the sportswriter. Waters said, “Weights and handball did it.”
Later, Bob Waters said he wasn’t the only 49ers player on steroids in the early’60s, but he didn’t elaborate. In 2008 his gracious widow knew no other names involved, besides Dr. Lloyd Milburn. “I know Bob used steroids because Bob was very slight. He was tall and very quick, and fast, but he was not a brawny person at all,” said Sheri Waters. “I know that neither he nor I thought that any harm could come from something an MD prescribed. At that time we were unaware of complications from any legal drug that was available for use.”
“I doubt that Bob was the only [Niners] player using anabolic steroids, but I truly don’t know who else. There was some talk, but not much that I’m aware of. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.”
At time of my book, Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, Bob Waters was the earliest known user of AAS in American football. But not anymore. Today’s e-search of newspapers reveals Beal at Mizzou along with likely juicer Jim Otto of the Raiders, in 1960, and the steroid program of Ray High School football, Corpus Christi, Tex.
Coach Bill Stages led the Ray High Coach Bill Stages led the Ray High Texans to the Class 4A Texas championship in 1959. It remains unclear when players began receiving steroids, but complaints hit the school in 1961. School officials publicly discussed the AAS program in 1965, blaming “family doctors” and parents, saying football coaches had no involvement, in the Corpus Christi Times. “The schools cannot dictate relations between doctors and their patients,” said school superintendent Dana Williams.
Athletic director Chester Allen alleged some parents “were so bent on making football players out of their boys that they asked for the pills. Some of the doctors were mad and called us to find out what was going on.” He added that “every year some pharmaceutical firm comes out with a ‘great pill’ to help athletes. Colleges and pro teams get it and try it out. They give testimonials [within football] and the first thing you know, the high school kids want some.”
“If they want it bad enough, they’ll find some way to get it.”
Pro coach Sid Gillman, however, conveyed that Ray High’s weightlifting program and player specimens were his epiphany about training, as head of the AFL San Diego Chargers. Gillman visited Corpus Christi in December 1962 to coach a college all-stars game. He conducted practices at Ray High School, and one afternoon Coach Stages led Gillman to the gymnasium. “I walked over with him and there I saw 35 kids working on the weights,” Gillman said later. “They had beautiful distribution of muscles. That hit me like a sledgehammer.”
At a coaching clinic soon after, Gillman met Alvin Roy, known as football’s first strength coach for title teams at LSU.
Gillman couldn’t recall location of the confab with Roy as keynote speaker. “Alvin lectured that day,” Gillman said. “He had come back from Russia, where he had worked with Russia’s Olympic people, and I listened to him lecture on strength. I thought, ‘Gee, what a great thing that would be for our football team’ [in San Diego]. After that lecture, I hired him.”
Sid Gillman’s Chargers became AFL champions in 1963, garnering accolades in the short term, but subsequently exposed for a steroid program that mandated Dianabol for every player—directed by Alvin Roy.
NEXT >>: Newspapers reveal football steroid programs as an established practice in the mid-1960s
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About the author
Matt Chaney is an editor, author and publisher living in Missouri, USA. Matt is the author of Spiral Of Denial: Muscle Doping In American Football. His work on performance-enhancing drugs in sports has appeared in newspapers, wire service, magazines, including The Associated Press, Deadspin.com, Vice.com, New York Daily News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kansas City Star, Columbia Tribune, Beckett Baseball Monthly.
Email: mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com. For more information, see FourWallsPublishing or chaneysblog.com.
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