It is the elephant in the room nobody talks about.

Steroid abuse in Canadian university football.

On Monday, the results of the biggest steroid investigation in Canadian university history will be made public and we may begin to see how widespread steroid use is.

The answer, through the lens of one school, the University of Waterloo Warriors, may not be pretty.

Sources say several athletes have admitted they took steroids. And these sources also say there may be as many as eight in all on the team when the exact number is made public. 

The former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Canada's Dick Pound, says the Waterloo case is unfortunately not unique.

"I think it's very significant," Pound says.

"It's a sample in the sense it applies so far to only one university, but to think that's not replicated in other universities across the country is really (laughs) self delusional."

The chief executive officer of Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS), Marg McGregor, says the CIS is trying to determine the size and scope of the steroid problem around the country. But it's going to take time.

"Certainly the CIS is not taking the view that this is an isolated incident. Our historical track record of positive infractions would show that there are other schools over the years that have had positive doping infractions. So it would be naive of us to simply dismiss this a couple of bad apples at Waterloo."

Unprecedented tests

At the end of March, CIS and this country's drug testing authority, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, took an unprecented move after an embarassing discovery was made around the Waterloo campus.

They tested every one of the 65 players on the Waterloo football team, tests requested by University of Waterloo officials themselves.

A handful of athletes at two nearby universities were also tested.

Started with police investigation

This came about after a police investigation in March uncovered a stash of  steroids in a home in the Waterloo area. 

According to the Waterloo police incident report in early April, they were investigating robberies in the area.

In one home, police seized several thousand pills, vials and capsules including what was believed to be anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. They also found stolen property.

Police charged a member of the Warriors football team, 23 year old Nathan Zettler, with possession for the purpose of trafficking steroids.  

He was a wide receiver and more recently a defensive back on the team.

A teammate Mathew Valeriote, was charged with possession of stolen goods along with a former player Eric Legare.

Sights on the Canadian Football League

In March, Zettler attended an evaluation camp for the Canadian Football League where he was trying to impress scouts.

The CIS serves as a feeding ground for the CFL and the ties between the two run deep.
Several of the coaches in Waterloo have come from the CFL, including head coach Dennis McPhee.

The Waterloo athletic director is Bob Copeland. His brother Michael is the CFL's chief operating officer.

Some have criticized the CFL's refusal to do any drug testing for sending the wrong message to young players. The CFL says it is about to release a new policy.

One former university football star admits players do talk about steroids, a lot of times in a joking fashion. 

Chris Rankin was an all-Canadian receiver with McMaster University in Hamilton.

"Just with the football mentality, steroids are something that's talked about. I don't think it's widely used but it's not surprising that that would come up."

Rankin was a sure-handed receiver and was recently voted to McMaster's team of the decade.

He got a chance at a pro career with his hometown team the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. But it only lasted about a year.

He was told he wasn't quite fast enough when the team tested his speed. And he admits it did cross his mind that maybe he should take a short cut.

"But then as soon as you say something like that or talk about it, all the negatives come out.  You know the side effects. I'd be cheating myself, cheating my teammates - all the negatives that come out highly outweigh the positives. And the conversation is usually squashed pretty quickly."

Rankin, now a financial advisor in Hamilton, says he might still be playing in the CFL if he decided to use steroids. But young players need to hear it's not the smartest thing to do. 

"When I looked at it, it was never really serious because what am I getting, a $50,000 pro salary? That's not worth it. If it meant going to the NFL and making millions of dollars yeah, you might have considered it."

CFL players are expected to be tested for the first time for performance-enhancing drugs once the league's new collective bargaining agreement is ratified in the next month.

But Pound says the jury is still out to determine how effective that policy will be to deal with what he calls a drug culture in professional football.

And he says it is not much better at the lower levels.

"Both here and in the United States, the testing policy at the collegiate level has not been particularly vigorous."

For years, Pound has called for the CIS to target specific players and test out of competition.

McGregor says the steroid scandal in Waterloo, only discovered by police, has served as a reality check.

She says the CIS doesn't have the resources to test everybody.

But in the future it will be far more strategic targeting players who show extraordinary weight gain or improvements in their performance in a short time.

The CIS is also planning to conduct tests in the summer when players may actually use drugs to prepare for the season.

"We know we need to do a better job," McGregor says.

These changes couldn't come soon enough for Pound, a former university swimmer who says drug use and football have gone hand in hand for years.

"Even back when I was still competing there were stories of college coaches saying to high school football players, if you don't come back this fall weighing 30 pounds more than you do now forget playing for me. And I think the implication was pretty clear that that wasn't all going to come from eating mom's oatmeal porridge."

Since the CIS began drug testing in 1990, it's had 56 positive tests. Twenty-four of them have been for steroids, but that's in many different sports.

There were no positive tests for steroids last year in football.