teams, fewer players, etc is unable to prevent things like this from happening what hopes do a much larger group of teams with way more players with no strong central organization or players union have?

I think the only hope we had of having college football was for the NCAA to come out with regulations/guidelines for how/when to test players, what happens when a player tests positive, establishing independent testing personnel to eliminate conflicts of interest, etc. The NCAA does not seem to have any interest in doing that (either b/c they can't or won't). So we're going to have "rules" that vary not only from conference to conference but potentially team to team. And expecting the teams to police themselves has been proven not to work over and over again.