When Harvard students started playing Yale students in the earliest intercollegiate games, performance-enhancing drugs were not even on the radar. The game was played for honor, not for money. College sports competitions became a money-making enterprise when the National College Athletics Association formed, securing broadcast rights for large sums. Suddenly, the temptation to cheat grew manyfold, and the NCAA stepped in to start to start prohibiting the practice.

On this day, June 18, in 1973, as Congress held hearings on drug use in the Olympic games and in college athletics, the NCAA Executive Committee approved urine testing and other methods to be used on student-athletes participating in NCAA championships.

A number of lawsuits have been filed against the testing, on the basis of protection of privacy, but the courts ruled that NCAA athletes give up some measure of privacy — for example, revealing any medical conditions to the training staff and undergoing frequent physical examinations — to participate in the extracurricular activities. Drug tests were just one of those privacies that student-athletes would have to forego.