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Far too often, John Calipari says his Wildcats have gone to bed hungry. Not because the wealthy Kentucky basketball program couldn’t afford to feed the players. It’s because NCAA regulations wouldn’t permit it.
Calipari has begun a campaign to get the NCAA to repeal its diet-restricting rules.
John Calipari says he's tired of seeing his Wildcats players going to bed hungry, so he's doing something about it. (AP Photo)The NCAA allows schools to feed athletes only three meals per day, and all food much be consumed at the training table. No snacks. No taking food back to the dorm room. So if Nerlens Noel wanted to make a turkey sandwich to cure his midnight hunger, that’d be an NCAA violation.
“Food is placed in the same category as a car in the NCAA’s eyes,” USC dietitian Becci Twombley told the New York Times.
"It's stupid," Calipari said of the NCAA rule.
High-level athletes typically burn more calories than they can consume in three square meals. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, for example, ate seven meals per day while training just to maintain his strength and weight.
Calipari says his players can burn about 2,500 calories per practice.
The Collegiate and Professional Sports Dietitians Association is backing Calipari and other coaches, demanding the NCAA allow “unlimited interval feedings as needed throughout the day to fully restore athletes and make them ‘whole again.’ ”
“When kids are prevented from being fed because rules are in place, we have a problem,” Calipari wrote recently on his website, CoachCal.com. “Our players have actually lost weight since the beginning of the year. I’ve been on them about their conditioning, but part of the reason they’ve been so exhausted in practice and in games is their energy levels have been low.
“You can say that’s for a number of reasons, but one of them is they aren’t eating enough. Under the current rules, if a young man eats at our training table and wants to take some food for later, he can’t. It’s either eat it all there or go hungry the rest of the night.”
“We go so hard and train so much that these kids exert and spend a lot of energy. Are we not going to let them refuel? If they want to grab some a snack at their dorm because they’re starving after a practice, we aren’t going to let them because there aren’t snacks at the other dorms?”
Calipari said the only exemptions are when a school is on break, like now between semesters, and when the club is on the road.
“We’re improving as a team for a lot of reasons, but one of them is because we aren’t limited in what we can feed them so they are coming to practice with more energy,” Calipari wrote. “They aren’t being underfed like they are during the school semesters.
“We’re signing billion-dollar agreements and moving teams across the country for money, and yet we’re worried about kids eating a sandwich at night. That’s what we’re worried about? It needs to stop now.”
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ing ridiculus? Our guys burn roughly 3k calories a day in practice and they only get 3 meals? I know its an infraction but i wouldn't mind if Cal found a way around it. Harrow of all ppl can't afford to lose weight.
