Posted Feb 4, 2009
There’s no arguing that linemen in college football are getting bigger, and no doubt that coaches like it that way.
But as a new group of high school stars prepares to sign Wednesday with their colleges of choice, a new study raises questions about what is the best way to make sure the behemoths are spared from early deaths because of obesity. And some coaches are starting to pay more attention to how their men bulk up.
As high schoolers hit college with poor diets, many get their first lessons in nutrition, which some coaches and doctors say they believe is enough to turn fast-food habits into healthy eating, healthy weight gain and better performance.
But if, as an Ohio State University study found, half of college linemen have signs of heart disease and diabetes, it might be a wake-up call that sports nutrition must begin early.
One author said athletic physicals need to go beyond crude measurements such as body-mass index, which are sometimes disregarded because couch potatoes and musclemen who weigh the same both are deemed unhealthy. Instead, she said they should include blood tests for metabolic syndrome — the constellation of risk factors such as abdominal fat, high blood pressure and insulin resistance that lead to heart disease and diabetes.
“They say, ‘I want to gain weight and I don’t care if it’s fat or not, I just want to be bigger,’ ” said study author Jackie Buell, Ohio State University’s director of sports nutrition. “Getting bigger by getting fat is not good.”
Sean Matela, a 21-year-old Wayne State University offensive lineman from Grosse Ile, learned his lesson when he started playing college ball. Matela spent his first year at another college, where, he said, “if you weren’t 300 pounds, you were not going to play.”
So Matela followed his then-coaches’ advice to simply eat as much as possible after each practice. After transferring to WSU, he underwent a radical transformation to gain the right kind of weight. He worked with a nutritionist. He learned to cook. He figured out proper portions. He’s now 6-foot-4, 284 pounds.
“Even if you’re putting on weight, you don’t want it to be garbage weight,” he said.
Abdominal fat is a main indicator of metabolic syndrome risk, but not the whole story, Buell said. Her team took measurements and blood samples from 70 of the 108 NCAA Division I, II and III linemen at three Ohio colleges on the first day of preseason training camp.
They looked for metabolic syndrome risk factors: high blood pressure, a waist circumference of at least 40 inches, high fasting blood glucose, low levels of HDL — the so-called good cholesterol — and high levels of triglycerides — fat in the blood linked to heart disease. They also measured levels of sugar-carrying and inflammation molecules, often associated with diabetes and heart disease.
Nearly half the players studied had three or more risk factors, mostly large waists or high body fat percentage, high blood pressure and low HDL.
In a couple of years, most of the linemen in the study will no longer be training for football.
“When they stop playing, that’s when they really get in trouble,” said Dr. Charles Burant, diabetes expert at the University of Michigan. “How bad off would they be if they weren’t so physically active?”
He said while there is some imprecision in measuring big people, the study confirms current thinking.
“To beef up, they eat a lot. They’re probably putting themselves at risk,” he said.
And it seems college football is listening.
“It’s no longer just, ‘let’s pick up that 400-pound guy and throw him at somebody,’ ” said Jeff Fantuzzi, a 17-year-old Central Michigan University freshman from Macomb Dakota High School. Listed at 6-4 and 280 pounds, the lineman dropped a bit of weight since he came to school in January, in the hopes of regaining it as muscle in time for the season.
For guys with a predisposition to be large, the goal is to be lean and strong, rather than fat, to last an entire game, said WSU offensive line coach Terry Heffernan. Many of his players come in and immediately have to drop some weight.
But, he said, good nutrition needs to start in high school, since most prep football players won’t suit up in college.
Micajah Reynolds, a 6-5, 315-pound lineman headed to Michigan State, learned that lesson between his junior and senior year at Lansing Sexton High School.
He “pigged out,” he admitted, and had lighter workouts while attending football camps, gaining about 15 pounds in the process. On his first day of fall practice, he said, “I was not prepared. It was hard to move that added weight around,” he said.
It was a tough lesson for a kid whose mom was an athletic trainer, and who had him on a pretty strict diet during the season.
Prepping for his first college season, Reynolds will enter a program heavy on nutrition education. Many of MSU’s incoming players have bad eating habits, said Dr. Randy Pearson, MSU football team physician, And blood tests, he added, don’t address the root cause of the problems — the lack of education. The tests just point to indicators that the athletes eat poorly.
“It doesn’t matter what the test shows,” he said. “The message we have to get to the kids is to develop a pattern of eating healthy for life.”
Date: Feb 2, 2009
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