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Pounds of performance

By By Ryan Colaianni (Contact)

Thursday, December 1, 2005

Two stainless steel buffet tables piled with hot food greet Kansas football players in the dining room of the Burge Union each night.

On this day, they have a choice of four entrées - meatloaf, mahi mahi, chicken and pork chops and an array of vegetable and sides including steamed wild rice, sautéed squash, carrots and potatoes.

Together, the two tables stretch about 10 yards, the same distance the football team travels to gain a first down.

Members of one unit on the KU team will help themselves to more food from this all-you-can-eat feast than others. It’s the unit most responsible for gaining those 10 yards - the offensive line.

Linemen like 317-pound Bob Whittaker and 285-pound David Ochoa must consume 5,000 calories each day, to maintain the size needed to open holes or protect the quarterback.

Nutritionists urge Americans to maintain a modest 2,500-calorie diet to stay healthy. During the last 20 years football offensive lines have ballooned in size with players urged to eat twice as many calories.

The average weight of the starting KU offensive line was 260 pounds in 1985. This season, the offensive linemen weigh in at a whopping 293 pounds, an increase of 33 pounds in just 20 years.

The growing girth of football players, especially on the offensive line, is a concern to doctors who cite heart disease and damaged joints as two health concerns related to obesity. College and professional linemen weighing more than 300 pounds, including the San Francisco 49ers Thomas Herrion, have died after games in recent years. Obesity among football players is a visible, yet little explored, corner of the U.S. obesity epidemic.

The super-sizing of college football players raises serious questions about what happens to giant-sized student athletes after they leave college and future health problems they might face.

How did this increase in size occur?

The size of linemen is apparent simply by tuning into a college football game on Saturday. The 300-pounders are tough to miss, many with their stomachs hanging over their belts. While William “The Refrigerator” Perry once stood out as an exception, it is now rare to see an offensive lineman at the professional level who does not weight more than 300 pounds. The average weight of the Kansas City Chiefs starting line for the 2005 season was 310 pounds.

This summer, Herrion, a rookie offensive lineman for the 49ers, died after collapsing during a preseason game. He weighed 330 pounds. In the summer of 2001, the Minnesota Vikings’ Korey Stringer died of what an autopsy revealed as a heat stroke. He weighted 335 pounds.

Larry McGee, Kansas head team physician, is concerned with the rapid increase in the size of players.

“The human race is not evolving that quickly. It has to do with the dietary thing, it has to do with the weight training, it has to do with the year-round stuff,” McGee said. “I think the players just carry more weight.”

McGee, who came to the University in 1983, said the increase in weight became noticeable in the mid `90s with the arrival of two 300-pound players, offensive lineman Keith Loneker and defensive lineman Gilbert Brown. Their size was rare at the time.

“They were these huge people and now you have to be that big to play on the offensive line. It is a huge amount of difference,” McGee said.

In order to remain competitive, KU linemen must now grow, mostly through intense diets recommended by KU’s sports nutritionist.

This year marks the first time that the Kansas Athletics Department has employed a sports nutritionist. Randy Bird gives recommendations to every football player about his food intake and plans the meals available at the Burge Union.

For offensive linemen, Bird recommends consuming nearly 5,000 calories and 125 grams of fat per day. That’s double what the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends for an active male aged 19-30.

These diets have led to every player on the Kansas offensive line being considered obese according to the Body Mass Index — a measure the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses to evaluate if a person is obese. A Body Mass Index score above 30 is considered obese. The lowest index score on the body mass index for a Kansas starting offensive lineman is 32, while the highest is 38. Only one starter does not reach a body mass index of 35 or above, which is considered severe obesity, according to the CDC.

Even so, Kansas has the lightest offensive line in the Big 12 conference. The offensive line for Big 12-leading Texas averages nearly 314 pounds, compared to Kansas’s 293 pounds.

Kansas football coach Mark Mangino said, “You certainly would like to have a large one that is athletic. Ours are not quite as heavy but we kind of play to their athleticism.”

After one practice earlier this season, Mangino discussed how junior center David Ochoa arrived on campus his freshman year weighing only 260 pounds. He ran a lot during the summer to stay in shape. Mangino joked that it was not a good decision because Ochoa actually lost weight while running, even though he was in great condition. Ochoa now weighs 285 pounds.

“I was never the type of athlete in high school or anything to step on the scale every day and see where I am at. I focus more on the physical conditioning aspect of anything than the actual playing weight,” Ochoa said.

Sophomore offensive lineman Cesar Rodriguez has put on weight even more dramatically. He finished his senior year of high school at 220 pounds, and now, just three years later, Rodriguez is up to 286 pounds — the result of 5,000-calorie diets and work in the weight room.

“As soon as I got here they put me on a weight program and I will probably be on it until I leave Kansas,” Rodriguez said. “I was undersized when I first got here and I am just now starting to put on more weight.”

Is it healthy? What long term heart problems do players face?

Despite their large size, McGee, the team doctor, said the players were young so the weight didn’t create as big a problem at it would for older people.

“Youth overcomes a lot of physical problems. They are able to participate and be active carrying more weight than an older person can,” McGee said.

However, a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this year reported there was cause for concern with football players and increasing obesity. The report was published just a few months before Herrion’s death.

“You see the deaths in the NFL and, in my opinion, a lot of it has to do with the excess weight that the offensive linemen are carrying,” Bird, the nutritionist, said.

Mangino, however, is not concerned with the growing size of players despite the deaths that have occurred nationally, he said.

Most of the players on Kansas’ offensive line will not move on to play in the NFL and will instead enter the working world with large bodies and without the strenuous conditioning of practice.

“I have concern long-term-wise with cardiovascular disease, with joint problems just from carrying that much weight,” McGee said. “It is hard to say it’s the healthiest lifestyle for them to weigh 300 pounds. But the reality of Division I football is that you have to weigh 300 pounds or you can’t compete.”

Since last summer, all new players entering the Kansas program go through a medical screening for cardiac problems. Once in the program, however, players are not regularly monitored, so problems that may occur after their arrivial at the University may go undetected.

Players already in the program still go through regular physicals and blood testing each year.

Andrew Ziskind, cardiologist and president of Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, said the size of a person did not determine if they would have heart problems.

“The question is, are people really bulking up and getting fat? If the people are eating unhealthily, eating high fat and so forth, what it can do is increase the likelihood of developing arthrosclerosis, which is narrowing of the arteries,” Ziskind explained.

Ziskind said cardiologists looked at five indicators for heart problems —­ high cholesterol, the presence of diabetes, high blood pressure, a family history of cardiovascular disease and smoking.

If a person had one of those risk factors and ate a high-fat diet for multiple years, his chance of developing cardiac problems could accelerate, Ziskind said. Those problems could include heart attack, some forms of cancers and premature death, the CDC said.

McGee said players often became healthier and that body fat may actually drop after being in the program for a year, even though the Body Mass Index considers every member of the Kansas offensive line obese.

Ziskind said, “The question is, are they developing a lifestyle where they are going to be fat for their whole life? And then that starts to impact it as well.”

The difficulty of eating that amount of food each day.

The ritual of eating at the Burge Union training table gives players numerous options to maintain their weight. The meals set by Bird offer healthy options each night, he said.

Sophomore offensive lineman Todd Haselhorst missed the entire 2005 season because of shoulder injuries, but still eats the dinners each night.

“It is really important because it helps you keep your weight up,” Haselhorst said.

Haselhorst had trouble staying in condition at times, because of the lack of physical exercise. He’s been more conscious about what he eats for that reason, he said.

Haselhort’s mother, Becky, said that she had noticed a difference in her son’s muscle build.

“It is kind of amazing to see that he basically weighs what he weighed when he was a junior, senior in high school, but how much more firm he has gotten,” Becky Haselhorst said. “He has got a lot more muscle. You can tell that he has dropped a lot of body fat.”

Some members of the Kansas offensive line, such as Ochoa, have difficulty eating 5,000 calories and 125 grams of fat daily.

“After games and stuff you have to force yourself to eat even though you might not be hungry,” Ochoa said. “You kind of see the big picture that in the long run it is going to help you out and makes it a lot easier.”

Rodriguez, who has put on more than 60 pounds since arriving at Kansas, also has trouble with the calorie intake.

“During the season you don’t have time to go eat all the time because you have to go to practice, go to class, and you have to study,” Rodriguez said. “It’s tough, but you have to do what you have to do to put on weight.”

Rodriguez said he ate four to five meals per day to maintain the weight, and the big meals at the Burge Union helped.

“It’s crucial. You can go at five o’clock and not leave until seven and you can eat as much as you want. It’s important to gaining weight,” Rodriguez said.

When Rodriguez is not eating from the training table at the Burge, he often eats at Chipotle and PepperJax, he said.

The players seem unconcerned about how much they are eating or about future health problems because of their weight. They said they were satisfied with the treatment they received.

“They take good care of us here to get us in a position where we can compete and play and I think that it is never to a point where they put your body in jeopardy,” Ochoa said.

During the season, offensive linemen find it difficult to maintain the weight that they are expected to keep in order to play the position. That’s why Bird gives individual players recommendations for what they should eat daily. He knows that some players will choose more fattening foods because they enjoy them more.

“The problem with them is trying to get that from healthy choices rather than going and getting the Monster Thick-burger from Hardees or something like that,” Bird said.

Bird’s diet recommendations are vastly different depending on thbe player’s position. He tells a wide receiver or defensive back to eat 3,800 calories per day but just 100 grams of fat.

Life after football, dealing with their size.

Once the players are done playing football at Kansas, they have no need to stay on a 5,000-calorie diet.

Some players enjoy eating the large amounts suggested by the team nutritionist.

Joe Vaughn, who started at center for Kansas in 2003 and 2004 and still lives in Lawrence, said, “It’s the o-line. It is what it is. You can put on as much weight as you want to, you just have to be able to get the job done. It wasn’t really hard for me and it really isn’t hard for o-lineman because we like to eat anyway. You just kind of gain weight until you feel comfortable.”

Vaughn said he still weighed the 285 pounds that he weighed when he last played. He is currently finishing up his degree and still looking to play professionally.

Former players who are still aspiring to live the dream of playing in the NFL often have trouble staying in playing shape. These players no longer have the structure of practice and coaches making sure they work out.

“It is different. You don’t have anyone pushing you when you are on your own,” Vaughn said.

Bird said he was formulating a program to meet with graduating athletes to discuss different healthy eating diets for when they are done playing.

“For four years or probably throughout high school, they have been trying to eat as much as they could to put on weight,” Bird said. “Then once they are done playing there is no need to carry that much weight.”

Bird said that those not playing professionally needed to take off the excess weight they gained playing at Kansas.

“Once they are done playing football, their activity level is going to go down too,” Bird said. “If they continue to eat the way they have eaten the previous four years and with the decrease in activity since they are not practicing, they are just going to get obese.”

­— Edited by Erick R. Schmidt

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