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NFL encourages culture of obesity, leading to deaths

It's the end of training camp, and the breathing is easy for the NFL.

All is swell, because their plus-sized lugs were misted, spritzed and watered until their rhino hides beaded up in the blazing sun. All is fine, because there were only a few dizzy spells and not one belly flop amongst them.

In fact, the league's ever-expanding lineman left camp hydrated and happy this past week, buoyed by the self-esteem any 335-pound guy would have when his Hungry-Man lifestyle is appreciated with a hefty contract in a society that pays supermodels to purge their carbs.

"Getting to 300 lbs is a milestone," Minnesota center Matt Birk, all of 314 lbs, told The Pioneer Press of St. Paul during Vikings camp. "Life is more fun at 300."

An NFL bumper sticker, if there ever was one. If only Kelci Stringer could just fall in line, the NFL could go about branding its bulk-rate offensive lines with clever barnyard nicknames.

But the widow of Korey Stringer has decided to fight the behemoth-makers at the NFL by filing a lawsuit against the league last month, describing training camps as sweatshops, leading to a "perverse, insidious and deadly culture" that she alleges led to her husband's heatstroke death in 2001.

She has a point, but it is as much about the culture of obesity as it is about the culture of camp. Korey was 335 lbs the day he died, all the insulation he needed to bake when his body temperature hit 108 F.

"It was the hottest day in 40 years," Stanley Chesley, a lawyer representing Kelci Stringer, said in a telephone interview last week. "There was a cow alert put out on all the farm stations. It was spray the cattle down. Just shows players are treated worse than cattle."

Players moo because they want to, right? Not necessarily.

"People say, well, he was fat, so what do you expect," Chesley said. "His contract said he had to be at 335. The NFL doesn't want 300-plus pound linemen, they demand that these guys are 300-plus pounds."

The demand is written in the image the NFL unveils when it rolls out its teams every Sunday, with the average weight of nearly half the offensive lines in the 320-pound range.

Players are asked to live large, but to a point, say, a reasonable 400 lbs. Any more, that's just sloppiness. But how does a lineman discipline himself to eat three helpings versus four? In season, it's far easier. In the months before training camp, NFL linemen have been known to gain 30 lbs or 40 lbs when they are away from the structure of the training table and routine of a practice.

"You've got to stay away from the IHOP and some of those places," said the svelte Roman Oben, a lightweight lineman standing at 305 lbs after Bucs practice last week. "Thank God I've never had the fat problem. But I know it's hard for some guys because they gain weight, and you don't want to drop 20 lbs in a month. If you do that, you're losing water and a lot of energy.

"I'm only 305," Oben said, "and you have guys who are 350 or 360. I remember Jamie Nails, he's at Miami now, but he was at 420 and had to lose 50 to get back near weight, something crazy like that."

Losing weight before camp may be as dangerous as taking it off in two-a-days. With 20 lbs to go, and two weeks until camp, there can be full-scale panic.

In a don't-ask, don't-tell type strategy, NFL teams don't seem to care how players peel off the extra pounds so long as they hit their weight upon arrival.
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