great photo, great guy...

(CBS) Former star linebacker Bill Romanowski, known as one of the most feared players in the NFL, admits he feels “awful” about purposely breaking an opponent’s finger.

"Romo" also comes clean about his steroid use in a conversation with 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley this Sunday, Oct. 16, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Romanowski writes about his 16 seasons in the NFL in an upcoming book, "Romo: My Life on the Edge."

He says he took illegal steroids from spring 2001 to fall 2003 and got them from Victor Conte, head of the infamous Bay Area Lab Cooperative that supplied dietary supplements, including steroids. He says he also took human growth hormone, also illegal, from Conte, but found it not as effective as other drugs. “I took (human growth hormone) for a brief period and ... I definitely didn’t receive what I got out of THG,” he says, referring to another drug he got from Conte.

Speculation was so rampant about his drug use, it reached even his young son. “I had ... a little boy who looks up to his dad and he said, ‘Dad, do you do drugs?’ That one hurt more than anything,” he says.

“Your daddy did a lot of things to deal with the pain of the game” is the answer Romanowski says he gave his son.

Romanowski says he put his desire to win ahead of his own sense of right and wrong. “I compromised my morality to get ahead, to play another year, to play two more years, to win another Super Bowl.”

The finger incident was during a playoff game against the New York Giants; the running back was Dave Meggett. “I am pissed ... down there just trying to rip that ball out of his hands,” says Romanowski. “All I could get was a finger and, at the time, I thought it was his, but whatever it was ... I just snapped it and I could hear a scream at the bottom of the pile,” he says.

He had no regrets at the time because inflicting that kind of injury meant he had diminished his opponent’s effectiveness. But now looking back, he says it was “awful.”