Nutrition is Iowa's next frontier in college football development's feeding frenzy

Anthony Nelson knew his physique would change when he committed to swap high school basketball stardom for a shot at Big Ten football.

But when the Waukee grad arrived at Iowa in 2015 as a 6-foot-7, 215-pounder, he wasn’t completely ready for a redshirt year as a competitive eater.

“For a while, I was eating seven meals a day,” said Nelson, who was listed at 260 pounds this spring. “I liked the food, but I had to eat almost all the time.”

College football’s resources race has famously rocketed athletic department dollars into facilities, recruiting, publicity and coaches’ salaries.

Nutrition is the big-time sport's next big investment. 

In three years since the NCAA approved a rule allowing Division I student-athletes to receive unlimited meals and snacks — in addition to the meal plans they still qualify for and receive under scholarship or financial aid — Iowa’s three principal football programs have altered their approaches to food as a competitive edge. 

Records requests at Iowa and Iowa State show spending has soared for Football Bowl Subdivision teams trying to develop players with the healthy dining options they can provide.

“If we’re going to be a developmental program that really, really relies on strength and conditioning, then we need to be a developmental program that meets the nutrient needs and recovery needs of our athletes,” longtime Iowa strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle told the Register late last season. “I felt almost like we were negligent for a long period of time.

“We were training kids at a high level, but we weren’t feeding them at a high level. It wasn’t right.”

The 2014 rule change was for all student-athletes, scholarship or walk-on, in conjunction with their participation in any sport. But the impact of football-related income and the sheer size of FBS rosters means most meal money goes to the biggest men on campus. 

The Hawkeyes and Cyclones have committed more than $3 million combined for the 2017 fiscal year to supply meals, snacks and supplements to football players.

From food spending to food focus to food quality, coaches believe improvement in the buffet line can translate into success on the field, as controlled diets contribute to faster and stronger rosters.

“I find it fascinating that sports and nutrition have ever been separated from each other,” said Erin Hinderaker, the Iowa State athletic department’s sports dietitian. “It really makes sense to me that they go hand in hand.

“Ultimately, if we have guys that are optimally trained and then optimally fed, they can become the best athletes they can be.”

The cost of calories

Hy-Vee spends as much time at the Hansen Football Performance Center as some Hawkeye players.

A truck backs up in the shadow of Kinnick Stadium every day that the team is together, delivering fresh produce and trays of catered meals to feed more than 100 men at a time. Doyle and his staff have picked out what’s being served and what can be snagged out of stocked coolers at Iowa’s refueling station to carry to class or home.

It’s all convenient and health-conscious. But it results in a pricey grocery bill. 

According to an expense summary requested from the University of Iowa, the football program had a budget of $1,677,590 for meals, snacks and supplements in the 2016 fiscal year, and is on pace to top that figure in 2017.

That amount is a drop in the bucket of Iowa’s overall athletic budget — $102.1 million for 2017, none of which comes from general university funds — but carries more importance when compared with past seasons. 

“These kids train extremely hard, and their recovery needs to match that,” Doyle said. “To have limitations on how you feed athletes is counterproductive. The biggest change is that we’re allowed to feed them well and feed them often.”

The Hawkeyes have had to learn how to plan for those meals in a hurry. The 2015 budget was $1,028,297. The 2014 sheet, the first fiscal year following the NCAA rule change, was less than half that. Next season’s fifth-year seniors arrived in Iowa City in 2013, when the program had $375,000 to work with for food.

For decades, college football players received guidance from coaches and athletic staff on what to eat, but the follow-through on those diets was largely unsupervised. 

“Kids were eating pizza and burgers and going to Subway,” Doyle said. “They were trying the best they possibly could on a limited budget to fulfill their needs. We’d give them shopping lists, and they’d be at Hy-Vee or Fareway, getting cans of tuna, gallons of milk, and peanut butter and jelly.

“But I think they were working with inferior strategies.”

The Iowa FBS schools are hardly alone in the investment into nutrition. A USA Today survey in 2015 found a group of major-conference teams budgeted for an average increase of $600,000 for the new legislation.

Iowa State’s new coaching staff only needed one offseason to get close to those marks.

The budget for the Cyclones went from $884,372 in 2016 to $1,325,344 in 2017.

“Coach (Matt) Campbell and his staff prioritized some things,” Iowa State senior associate athletics director for operations Chris Jorgensen said. “They valued nutrition in different ways than prior staffs looked at it. And there are additional resources available to be able to fund some programs that we maybe couldn’t have in the past.”

One of those “additional resources” toward nutrition in Ames is Hinderaker. The Iowa State grad and mother of four began working part-time as the athletic department’s dietitian in 2015, while also teaching and assisting at Des Moines University. She was offered a full-time spot last fall and now plans every meal the Cyclones eat. Meeting with football players and coaches accounts for almost half of her job duties.

“The football staff has been great at looking at nutrition as part of all the other requirements the guys on the team have,” Hinderaker said. “They are required to go to classes, required to be there for workouts, required to be there for film and meetings, and they’re required to meet with me and be at these meals. It’s something that’s taken seriously by the staff, and that helps.”

Iowa State’s vision for football food extends well beyond the group of interns and graduate assistants Hinderaker has helping set up meal plans.

Athletics director Jamie Pollard introduced the idea of a “Sports Performance Center” in a December memo to donors and fans. Jorgensen says the all-sport facility is still in its brainstorming stages, with academics, medical treatment, strength and conditioning and dining in mind.

But it does signal how seriously the department is treating an increasingly competitive field.

“A critical component for the future success of our football program will be how we physically develop our student-athletes during their careers,” Pollard wrote. “We must maximize our ability to meet the nutritional needs of our student-athletes.

“Raising the funds for this project will be a significant priority of our development team during the near future.”

Northern Iowa’s spending shows how much further down the food chain Football Championship Subdivision currently is. An athletic department budget of $14 million for 2017 doesn’t leave wiggle room for catered spreads.

UNI spent $86,231 on meals, snacks and beverages for the football program in 2016, not including expenses related to team travel for road games. The Panthers have enjoyed a bump up since 2014 — the 2012 mark was only $57,972 — but their annual expenditure is less than the Hawkeyes and Cyclones average per month.

That drop-off from the FBS level makes meals offered on campus essential. 

So, the Panthers are still encouraged to frequent dining halls or use food stipends in Cedar Falls. But even at programs that can’t afford daily banquets or grocery trucks, getting more food into the hands of players felt like an overdue benefit to many.

“That’s real money, and I understand that, but I’m all in favor of it,” NCAA president Mark Emmert told USA TODAY in 2015. “They were going to spend that money, anyway. It wasn’t like they were taking that $700,000 and sending it to the chemistry department. They were going to spend it on the locker room, or they were going to spend it on the video system.

“Spend it on kids. So, they’re spending it to give kids better nutrition.”

What’s on the menu?

The business office in Iowa State’s athletic department has not historically accounted for nutrition as a standalone budget category. Food spending was filed under other expenses. The investment is so great now that Iowa State is tracking it specifically. 

“We didn’t have so much that we had to track it separately,” Jorgensen said. “If the food was related to a recruiting visit, it went under recruiting. If the food was related to team travel, it all went under team travel.

“Now, nutrition has its own budget, and it’s about double what we’ve ever done in the past.”

A quick glance at Hinderaker’s calendar can show where that money is going.

Breakfasts and dinners are supplied at Heartland Hall inside the Jacobson Building throughout the season, during spring practice and for planned offseason training and workout sessions. The team’s breakfast staples are on a two-week rotation, and dinners are on a five-week schedule. A salad bar, plain chicken breasts and beef are daily standards.

“That’s what has made it a lot easier to make sure they’re getting nutrition that they need,” Hinderaker said. “As a dietitian, I can tell people until I’m blue in the face, but it’s a matter of if they’re going to leave me and actually do it. Having the meals here, I can be there to say, ‘Hey, this is what we talked about in our session. Let’s apply this and see what we can put on your plate.’”

The idea of unlimited food for football players sounds simple enough: readily available protein, carbohydrates and produce to help athletes refuel and recover for their physical activity and busy college schedules. The application is more complex, even with “Take and Go” sandwiches at Iowa State and snacks sitting a few feet away, and is the reason why FBS schools customize their setups.

“With the way we do things at Iowa, maybe there’s a stronger need to fuel our athletes than at some other schools,” Doyle said. “If our goal is to play in January bowl games, we have to develop those kids. Some places bring them in right away. We have to build our kids.”

Most recruits arrive on campus needing to gain weight. Some need time to transform their bodies. A handful need to lose weight. There are plans in the dining hall and in the weight room for all of them, with the general goal of adding one pound of lean muscle mass per month under Doyle’s guidance.

Days usually start with a 1,000-calorie breakfast smoothie: spinach, kale, fresh or frozen berries, apples, bananas, protein powder and flaxseed.

“When you’re a young player and you put weight on, Chris does a tremendous job of kind of gauging how much to put on,” Iowa defensive line coach Reese Morgan said in March. “We have target weights for all the guys that they have to be within two pounds of, and hopefully on that plan — and Chris is historic for doing this — gradually build into a position and get to a point where you’re not awkward, where you have a growth spurt like you do in high school.”

Doyle estimates redshirt players on a weight-gain program are consuming around 6,000 calories per day, with two “knife-and-fork” meals supplied at the Operations Center, along with smoothies and a plethora of fruit and vegetable snack options. He tries to keep it simple with players who want tips on what to eat when they’re outside of the practice facility.

“If it grows, eat it. If it doesn’t grow, don’t eat it,” Doyle says plainly. “If it comes out of a bag or a box, don’t eat it. Stay on the perimeter of the supermarket. Don’t go eating things on shelves that can sit on shelves.”

It’s advice that has consistently flipped the “Freshman 15” on its head. And it’s necessary at programs that can’t afford to squander the talent it has with a lack of organization or oversight.

“I wish I was with those guys that got to eat a bunch of food right away,” former Iowa defensive tackle and recent Minnesota Vikings draft pick Jaleel Johnson said last fall. “I was used to fast food or eating late at night, so I had to lose weight first, then add muscle.

“It was tough. It worked out, though.”

The premium on player development

Educating about healthy diets and trying new vegetables is well and good, but the purpose of putting nutrition at the forefront of player development is to produce wins on Saturdays.

These improved meal plans are meant to get the most out of players and eventually transform high school prospects into all-conference talent. Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa have yet to run full recruiting cycles through their current nutrition programs, but coaches say they can see early results.

“We’ve seen some of the best  (strength and conditioning) numbers we’ve had in our 18 years here,” Doyle said, “and I think it’s easy to see how it contributes when you know the kids are on the money with their eating.

“I think you see the evidence on the field.”

Doyle remains the nation’s highest-paid strength coach by a solid margin, earning $625,000 in base salary last season. Ferentz has remained a fierce defender of Doyle's strategies this spring.

“The bottom line, what I surmised is (Doyle) is going to have more face time with our players than anybody in the program,” Ferentz said. “They’re going to hear his voice way more than sometimes mine, maybe 20 times more than mine on a week-to-week, month-to-month basis.

“So, his opportunity to be with our players and be with them in critical times is far going to exceed mine or any of our position coaches'. So, as a result of that, he’s probably the most important coach, including me, in my mind.”

Iowa State doesn’t have a figure like that wandering the Bergstrom Football Complex quite yet, but Campbell is trying to bridge the gap. Nutrition and athletic development is an off-field edge the Cyclones could use to catch up to the rest of the Big 12 Conference.

“We compared and had a lot of conversations with our conference peers to see how they were handling it back in 2014,” Jorgensen said. “Every school treated it a little bit differently and gave different priority to it. Initially, it was given priority by us, but no different priority than other needs of the athletic program, be it coaches’ salaries, other student-athlete experiences, or facilities.

“As with any program, you end up prioritizing what you think you’re going to get your best return on investment.”

Budgets may not work to hire football-specific staff everywhere — UNI relies on Jed Smith, who is head strength and conditioning coach for the entire athletic department — but all levels of college and some high school sports are trying to stay ahead of the curve, too.

“It’s amazing how fast this field has grown in athletic departments,” Hinderaker said. “Being present is really important, so people don’t view a dietitian or nutritionist as a bad thing, someone they have to go see when they’re in trouble. It’s more like, 'This is someone who is part of the staff and here to help you.'”

Those changes are appealing to current players and prospects alike. Newton alum Nick Easley went to Iowa Western Community College for two years before arriving as a wide receiver at Iowa, and his quick acclimation to the healthy, high-speed lifestyle the Hawkeyes are teaching made him a standout in his first spring.

“I’ve never been in a program like this, with the facilities, the equipment, the food we have here,” Easley said last month. “You go from eating in a below-average dorm cafeteria to eating what we have here. It definitely makes a difference.”

Fans and opponents will be able to find out next fall just how much of a difference nutrition advances in Iowa can account for.

“I think it’s pretty straightforward,” Doyle said. “They’ve allowed us to feed the kids the way they should be fed. That’s it. I think the bigger story for us is: Why did we wait? Why did it take until 2014? It will be exciting to see how much more development we can have from here.”