It must have been embarrassing for Onterrio Smith, the Minnesota Vikings' part-time running back and full-time substance abuser, to have airport security people find a plastic penis and bags of dehydrated urine in his luggage.

Hey, I blush when the airport security people examine my electric nose- hair trimmer. I never want to be asked, "Sir, is this your penis?"

In Smith's carry-on bag, inspectors found a Whizzinator kit, which includes bags of powdered pee and the ersatz male genitalia designed to fool drug testers.

But every cloud has its silver lining. Maybe Smith, who has cost himself millions of dollars by flunking several drug tests over the years, can pick up a lucrative endorsement deal with Whizzinator.

Joe DiMaggio was Mr. Coffee; Smith could be Mr. Whizzy.

Instead of SMITH on the back of his Vikings' jersey, he could petition the league to let him wear HE TEST ME.

I hate to stamp myself as an old coot pining for the good old days. But I miss the innocent era of substance abuse, when the most degrading situation an athlete might face was to be caught in a locker room toilet stall with a pants- down teammate.

Fortunately for Smith at the airport, he had an alibi. The rig, he said, belonged to his cousin. Pity that cousin, so desperate to pass a drug test that he relies on the help of Onterrio Smith, serial drug-test-flunker.

The guys I feel most sorry for, though, are Paul Tagliabue and Gene Upshaw. The Smith incident may cost them the Nobel Prize for fighting drug abuse.

Remember what heroes those two were at those House committee hearings?

It would have been a different story had the Smith incident come to light before the hearings. Imagine the painful moment when a congressman waves a Whizzinator and demands, "Mr. Tagliabue and Mr. Upshaw, do you know what this is?"

Look, I appreciate the potential for comedy in Whizzinatorgate. I would be shocked if this product doesn't show up soon in various forms in movies and TV sit-coms. I'm thinking mini-series -- "Desperate Drug-Test Takers."

What's sad is that this plastic prosthetic penis is no more fake than the drug testing systems it is designed to fool.

Urine testing for drugs is a poor second cousin to blood testing. The urine tests, for one thing, do not detect human-growth hormone, a potent performance enhancer with potentially serious side effects.

But Major League Baseball and the NFL, and their respective players unions, settle for urine tests. The unions reject every proposed upgrade in testing and consider their stance a sign of union strength.

Here's the funny thing about the players' unions: Every time they must choose whether to protect illegal-drug-abusing players or non-using players, the unions always put their weight behind the juicers.

Only when painted into a public-relations corner does a union accept more stringent testing.

The positive fallout from the Smith airport incident is that players who rely on the Whizzinator to keep their careers alive might find their pet trick is now null and void.

Onterrio Smith let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. Drug-test inspectors who allowed players to produce a specimen without completely disrobing will now demand the Full Monty.

As for Smith, his only hope of staying in the NFL is to give up drugs, and that doesn't seem to be an option.

He was kicked out of the University of Tennessee after failing so many drug tests that he lost count.

"It was at least two, probably more," he said a few years ago. "I never really thought I had a problem. It was just something you did coming from the neighborhood I was raised in."

In that neighborhood, apparently, one thing you didn't do was take responsibility for your actions. After getting the boot at Tennessee, Smith played victim, saying, "I'm pretty sure they gave other guys more chances."

He did allow that flunking all those tests at Tennessee "Was all part of my maturing process. You learn things the hard way."

Or not.

Smith got through two years at Oregon with no busts, but despite being a Heisman Trophy candidate he wasn't drafted until the fourth round, costing him a truckload of cash (injuries were a contributing factor).

Last season, Smith failed an NFL drug test for either the second or third time and was suspended four games. It's not known if his positive tests have been for recreational drugs or for steroids, but at 5-10 and 214 pounds Smith is built like a brick Whizzinator.