A group of APSE sports editors met in April in New York with commissioners from the four major sports leagues, plus the NHL and Major League Baseball players associations, NASCAR, U.S. Track and Field and the United States Olympic Committee. Here's what they had to say.

United States Track and Field CEO Craig Masback not only offered some insights on drug-testing, but threw out some story ideas he would like papers to pursue before the Olympics in August.

Masback offered three ideas:

AP U.S. Olympian Marion Jones is at the center of the BALCO firestorm engulfing the USOC.

1. The track and field "social movement." Masback said 30 million people run, track and field is the No. 1 participation sport in junior high and high school sports, and 25 percent of NCAA athletes are cross country or track athletes.

2. How the track and field marketing budget has gone from under $2 million to more than $10 million. He said the Golden Spike Tour and the Olympic track trials are big TV draws for NBC. He said the Golden Spikes Tour averages close to a 2.0 rating on NBC.

3. He is frustrated that the only time track and field is "front-page news" is when one of its athletes tests positives for drugs. He said there are plenty of good features out there that he also thought were "front page news."

Drug-testing, of course, dominated the session and Masback did not back away from the subject.

"I'm not saying we don't have a problem," he said, "and we acknowledge we have made mistakes. Whatever we were doing was not enough, but now we're being punished for doing things right. In 1989, we were testing when nobody else was and, on average, caught 10 people a year. Any sport that tests will find positive results. But our reward: Our sport was labeled as having a drug problem. But we (just) have the same problem everyone else has."

Masback said there is still confusion among the athletes because of the discrepancy in the rules on tests administered by the different governing bodies that oversee track. But he added that track and field has the most serious anti-doping policy in sports and the goal before the Olympics is to remove the cloud over the innocent athletes. He said the athletes accept their testing, because they want a clean sport.

— Chris D'Amico
Newark Star-Ledger