McGill University athletic director Drew Love suggested the revelations at Waterloo could have a far-reaching impact in Canadian university football.
"I'm disappointed a situation has occurred like this where a lot of innocent people and a lot of clean programs are being painted with the same brush," he said Tuesday.
At the same time, Love said, Canadian Interuniversity Sport has little choice but to review all its procedures concerning doping and to beef up its testing procedures and policies.
"I think it's unrealistic to say it can be stamped out altogether … there will always be the odd individual who wants to try [performance-enhancing drugs] But we don't accept it and we have no tolerance for it," said Love, whose institution was the last CIS school to suspend its football program (for the final two games of 2005 as a result of a hazing incident).
Elsewhere, Christiane Ayotte, a world-renowned anti-doping researcher at Quebec's INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier, told CKAC radio in Montreal that she doubts Waterloo's football team is an outlier and that steroid use is a problem "in several universities."
"This is a situation that we believe has existed for years, due in part to the laxity of the CFL … and tests that don't scare anyone," said Ayotte, who runs one of only 35 laboratories worldwide accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
She added athletes in several university sports have told her "[CIS]testing is predictable and infrequent, so it's a bit of a joke."