Bill Fralic Known as Steroid User Turned Anti-Steroid Advocate | steroid.com

Bill Fralic used steroids as a college player but became an anti-steroid advocate once he entered the NFL.

Bill Fralic, a professional football offensive guard who played for the Atlanta Falcons and Detroit Lions of the National Football League (NFL), died from cancer at the age of 56 years old on December 14, 2018. He was known as an anabolic steroid user who turned into an anti-steroid advocate after he joined the NFL.

Fralic used anabolic steroids on his way to becoming a first-team All-American at the University of Pittsburgh. His father discovered a bottle of Dianabol pills in Fralic’s 1977 Ford Thunderbird following his freshman year as a collegiate football player.

Fralic liked Dianabol and Deca Durabolin stacks in college.

Fralic told his father that steroid use was a prerequisite to play college football because everyone else was doing them. Fralic continued using steroids even after his father flushed the Dianabol pills down the toilet. Fralic used the popular Deca Durabolin plus Dianabol stack during his sophomore season.

It was not clear when Fralic stopped using steroids but he became known as a staunch anti-steroid advocate by the time he was a rookie in the NFL.

The Atlanta Falcons drafted Fralic as the second overall pick inn the 1985 NFL draft. After his rookie season, Fralic confronted NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle and urged him to do something about the “huge” steroid problem in the league. Fralic even called up local Atlanta newspapers to discuss the rampant use of steroids by players.

Fralic was a great offensive lineman during his career. He was a four-time Pro Bowler between 1986 and 1989. He was later named to the NFL 1980s All-Decade Team.

However, his talent and success did not make him popular among his teammates, other NFL players and even some NFL executives. They did not always like his honesty and candor about the rampant use of steroids in the NFL during the 1970s and 1980s. And they particularly did not appreciate his anti-steroid activism.

Fralic testified at a hearing before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee titled “Steroids in amateur and professional sports – the medical and social costs of steroid abuse” in 1989. Based on his own experience, Fralic estimated that approximately 75 percent of linemen, linebackers and tight ends were using anabolic steroids in the NFL.

The Senate hearing was the beginning of the war on steroids. It led to federal legislation such as the Steroid Trafficking Act of 1990 and the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2014. The legislation reclassified anabolic steroids as a schedule III controlled substance. This made steroid use and steroid trafficking felonies with penalties similar to those involving traditional drugs of abuse in the nation’s long-standing war on drugs.

Source:

Fittipaldo, R. (December 14, 2018). Bill Fralic, Pitt All-American and Penn Hills football great, dies at 56. Retrieved from post-gazette.com/news/obituaries/2018/12/14/bill-fralic-death-pitt-football-penn-hills-pittsburgh/stories/201806200156