…back in the day, anyway. So sayeth Tony Mandarich, arguably the biggest bust in NFL Draft history, in a tell-all book he promoted during a sit-down with Sports Illustrated. We come in right before the 1988 Rose Bowl, and Mandarich is facing an unexpected drug test days before the game:

I’d already gotten back on Anadrol-50, a steroids which makes you significantly stronger within a day or two, and now I’m freaking. I’m in this large 24-hour store, about midnight, brainstorming, thinking how am I going to beat this test?”

“In the pet area I see this rubber doggy squeaker toy. I get that, then I go to another area and get a small hose, and in the medical area I get some flesh-colored tape. I’m like the Unabomber getting supplies. Back home I rip the squeakers out of the toy, tape the hose into one end and experiment by filling the thing with water. At the Rose Bowl I taped the toy to my back, ran the hose between my butt cheeks, taped the end to my penis, and covered the hose tip with bubble gum. I had gotten some clean urine from somebody else. The tester stood behind me, couldn’t see anything, and when I removed the gum everything worked fine.”

Everything worked out fine, except, you know, your entire professional career. OH SNAP.

I really don’t care if guys get caught doing steroids. Like anything else, for every person actually caught there’s probably nine or ten people doing the same thing that get away with it. Why heap all the scorn on that one person? Just for you freak baseball purists that swear that the juice is ruining your silly little game, keep this in mind: Mandarich never hit any home runs in college. Take that, science!

[brown bagged at Larry Brown Sports, via EDSBS]