Raise your hand if you know someone who smokes marijuana — you know, pot or weed.

Chances are your hand went up, and chances are it’s no big deal that it did. You’re in college, that’s just part of college life for some — athletes included.

As a fan, athlete or just a general bystander of collegiate athletics, is it any sort of surprise that marijuana is prevalent in college athletics?

Take it from a college student, it’s not a surprise, and the only people who actually would be surprised by this are unbelievably naïve.

If you haven’t seen it yet, ESPN The Magazine will feature a piece on marijuana use within the University of Oregon football team in their issue on April 20. The story details the teams’ general love for the ganja — in this case, the night after the team’s Rose Bowl win over the University of Wisconsin in January.

Maybe it isn’t that surprising at Oregon. One of their best defensive players, cornerback Cliff Harris, did get kicked off the team mid-season after repeated run-ins with police.
But really, I’ll ask again, is the idea of marijuana being prevalent in college sports a surprise to anyone? Of course, it is against the rules and is tested for, but some students (athletes included) smoke. That’s a part of the lifestyle; it’s just a matter of who partakes.

According to the NCAA’s Health and Safety website, 61 percent of Division II schools administer drug tests in some form, and Grand Valley State University is within that percentage.
Speaking of testing, the school’s policy on drug testing is, well, random. The school focuses on administering random tests to all student athletes during the academic year; testing anonymously, multiple times per semester with a three strikes and you’re out policy.

Sometimes, a sober athlete can luck into the chance to pee in a cup during all or most of the testing cycles, and if you are smoking, you can sometimes luck into not testing in a cycle at all.

“Each test is done separately, with a trainer outside of the stall,” said a former GVSU athlete. “It takes around two weeks for the results; no news is good news.”
Just look at college sports in the last month and you’ll see that marijuana isn’t something that just joined the party. Michigan State University basketball player Derrick Nix was found with marijuana at a traffic stop earlier this month.

That’s tame compared to Central Michigan University football players Austin White and Joe Sawicki who, according to Central Michigan Life, currently face charges of manufacturing and delivering narcotics, possession and maintaining a drug house.

Now, I don’t mean to point to that example as being the poster child for drugs in college sports. That’s just a case of two athletes with about as much common sense as Carlos Mencia has funny jokes.

My point is this is a dilemma you see in nearly every sport in nearly every college. Even GVSU isn’t safe from the possibility that some athletes may enjoy partaking in some reefer – better that then snorting bath salts, am I right?

The problem isn’t athletes smoking marijuana; it’s the fact that smoking marijuana is kosher in the eyes of many college students. Not that every college student or student athlete smokes, but there is a pervasive mindset among young adults that there really isn’t much harm in smoking marijuana.
When compared to underage drinking — or even drinking and driving — is smoking marijuana really the all-damning villain some see it as? Being on a campus where both underage alcohol consumption (and students’ fear of a date with Judge Post) and drug use (the Derek Copp debacle) have been seen, would drug use here really be that much more surprising than what’s happened at Oregon?

Some athletes are going to smoke and drink. Some students are going to smoke and drink — it’s college, it’s a culture and it’s just how things go for kids who, for what it’s worth, are more young and stupid than you’d hope.

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