Chicago Bears

Soldier Field (formerly Municipal Grant Park Stadium) is located on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, Illinois, and is currently home to the NFL's Chicago Bears. It reopened on September 29, 2003 after a complete rebuild (the second in the stadium's history).

With the current stadium capacity of 61,500, Soldier Field became the smallest stadium in the NFL when the Indianapolis Colts moved out of the RCA Dome and into Lucas Oil Stadium in 2008.

No solid evidence to date,but he did play during an era when steroid use was a rampant and widely used and accepted compound,he did die from a rare liver cancer as well as other notable players from that era(70's-80's) who were known to use and abuse steroids and died at relatively young ages also,but Payton was such an Icon in pro football,that nobody would link him to any abuse without any hard evidence.but if you take that era of sports into account,for anyone not to use them would've put them at a physical disadvantage when compared to the leagues majority of NFL players of all positions who did take them.

Jim Haslett was quoted saying that during the 1980s, half of the players in the league used some type of performance enhancing drug or steroid and all of the defensive lineman used them. One of the players from the Super Bowl winning 1979 Pittsburgh Steelers team confessed to using steroids before these statements, Steve Courson.[8] Courson was another lineman for the Steelers, and admitted to using steroids before his death in 2005. He also blamed a heart condition that he had on steroids. Some of his teammates, such as Jack Ham and Jack Lambert refused to use any kind of performance enhancing drug.[8]

The BALCO scandal also revealed many users of steroids in the NFL. In 2003, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California, Kevin V. Ryan, began investigating BALCO. U.S. sprint coach Trevor Graham had given an anonymous phone call to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in June 2003 accusing a number of athletes being involved in doping with a steroid that was not detectable at the time. He also named Victor Conte as the source of the steroid. As evidence, Graham delivered a syringe containing traces of a substance nicknamed The Clear.

Shortly after, Don Catlin, MD, the founder and then-director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory and now head of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Anti-Doping Research, succeeded in developing a testing process for tetrahydrogestrinone (THG). Now able to detect the new substance, he tested 550 existing samples from athletes, of which 20 proved to be positive for THG. Later that year, the Chicago Tribune named Catlin Sportsman of the Year.[9]

A number of players from the Oakland Raiders were implicated in this scandal, including Bill Romanowski, Tyrone Wheatley, Barrett Robbins, Chris Cooper and Dana Stubblefield.[10] Recently, many players have confessed to steroid use. One of these players was former Oakland Raiders player Bill Romanowski. Romanowski confessed on the American news television show 60 Minutes to using steroids for a two year period beginning in 2001.[11] He stated that these were supplied by former NFL player and former head of BALCO Victor Conte, saying:"I took [human growth hormone] for a brief period and ... I definitely didn't receive what I got out of THG."[11]"

A notable recent occurrence happened in 2006. During the season, San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman failed a drug test and was suspended for four games when his primary "A" sample and backup "B" sample both tested positive for human growth hormone (HGH).[12] Merriman was named NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2005, with 54 tackles and 10 sacks. He also had a total of five passes defended and two forced fumbles. He was a starting player in the 2005 Pro Bowl, and was a leader on his team in sacks in the 2006 season.[12] The incident led to the passage of a rule that forbids a player who tests positive steroids from being selected to the Pro Bowl in the year in which they tested positive. The rule is commonly referred to as the "Merriman Rule".[13][14] However, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has tried to distance the policy from being associated with the player, stating that Merriman tested clean on 19 of 20 random tests for performance-enhancing drugs since entering the league.[15]