I <3 Joe Paterno so much.

[manosax]

There are those that are a part of a high profile team like Penn St Football where most of the members of the team are on full rides.  Well, most of the starters at the very least.  I have told some of my HS students that a soprts scholarship can get them a free or nearly free education.  I'm sure that there are some programs where they pay for their tuition, housing and all of their meals.  That would make sense from a control aspect.  Heck, I would want my players eating what the team nutritionist told them to to optimize their health and performance. 

I agree.  Unfortunately, most college athletes eat in the general eating area where you have a meal card and full access to every variety of fried unhealthy crap.  If I were a university giving out scholarships to athletes, I'd want them supervised by a nutritionist too.

There are a great deal that actually do.  Nebraska has an intese program for all of their atheletes.  They partner up with the Nutrition students and really get the most from their diet.  I had a kid that just got a scholarship to UT and he is in contact with their food gurus..

[dazie]

Trust me- these guys eat well and live well.  Trust me.   

[manosax]

Trust me- these guys eat well and live well.  Trust me.   

eating well and eating correctly are two differnt things... I saw a thing on the Nebraska Sports Nutrition program, they had to really retrain how many of these footballers ate.  they even took them to a grocery store and taught them how to shop for ballenced nutrition.  I was way impressed.

[VikingJuice]

Yeah, eating right as an athlete is a very big deal at that level.  I remember at UH how the football team and other athletes ate in the same cafeteria as the student body-meaning they had access to hamburgers, fried chicken, loads of gravy and whatever unhealthy stuff there was from day to day.  I saw one football player eathing nothing but hamburgers.  Even for a person who needs 5000 or so calories a day, those aren't nutritious calories.

[ursus]

It's not just a football phenomenon, it's a societal thing.  Look at Britney Spears.  I have no doubt she has put in the time, sweat, and effort to get to where she's gotten.

As someone who has studied performance practice I'm going to use the idea of the pop star rather than the specific pop icon mentioned here. If she had really spent that time , sweat and effort to get there she would not have sucked the way she did. Zorched out of her mind or not, she would have been better if she had put in the reps. I've seen the zonked do amazing things, based on muscle memory (dance?) and she didn't display that.

Having said that, I suspect that some of these folks would be attention seeking turtle necks even if they had gravitated toward chess, found art or anthropology.

I don't know why the NFL has such a strangle hold over our college campuses. Why should students bear the brunt of dealing with football's minor leagues? The flip side is that with all the dough these programs bring in, they should adequately compensate  at least some of these guys, they sure as hell aren't at school on academic scholarships.

Who wants pie?