Universities Spend Millions of Dollars Annually to Fuel Their Football Players — Here’s How It All Comes Together

For elite college football players, success on the field is measured in poundage from the meals they consume and the touchdowns they score. And feeding these athletes is no small feat: Consider the 200 pounds of chicken served daily to the University of Florida football team or the 800 pounds of weekly produce delivered to the University of Oregon.

Behind these staggering numbers lies a complex operation blending nutrition, logistics, and strategy. With teams averaging 120 players, feeding players requires constant coordination and millions of dollars annually. Teams of dietitians, chefs, and administrators collaborate to make college football dining a performance and recruiting advantage.

“We don’t want this to be a cafeteria,” says Dylan Witt, Sodexo Live! general manager at the University of Florida. “It is like a Vegas buffet. The salad bar has 89 different ingredients. There is fresh steak, salmon, shrimp. It is not frozen and not processed. That makes a huge difference. There is an investment in [the athletes].”

This investment goes beyond the food itself, extending to nutrition education, maintaining nutritionally dense variety, and constantly keeping food stocked for the hundreds of athletes dining daily.

The logistics: feeding the machine

Each university approaches athlete dining differently, whether through all-athlete dining halls or football-specific setups. Fueling stations near weight rooms and practice fields provide convenient options like grab-and-go snacks, smoothies, and shakes.

Feeding all the football players, in addition to the other athletes on campus — not counting support staff and coaches — can easily exceed 1,000 meals a day.

At the University of Oregon, where weekly orders can total as much as 2,200 pounds of meat, logistics involve careful sourcing, ensuring a certain level of prime or choice quality meat. “We get the freshest salmon, hand-cut steaks, lobster tails are cold water,” says Kari VanOrsdel, director of food operations.

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This massive food supply is essential for maintaining players’ performance. “In season, we really are trying to keep the athletes healthy and durable,” explains Brenna Sleggs, senior sports dietitian for Oregon football. “In the offseason, we are trying to do a lot of body composition changes — looking at certain nutrients. The amount they have to eat to stay at weight, they have to eat a lot of food. They get food fatigue. They get bored.”

That’s why creating variety and menu nimbleness is critical to combat that fatigue. “We have to understand the athletes have to want to eat the food,” says Jennifer Cox, vice president of culinary at Levy, which works with Indiana, Northwestern, Ohio State, and Wisconsin. “You can put a nutritious meal in front of them every day, but if they are not interested, they are outside getting food from somewhere else. It has to taste good.”

To keep things interesting, chefs work to keep up with trends and use new ingredients in familiar dishes the players already love. “One of the great things about the dining hall is we have so many options,” Blaire Wolski, director of Olympic sports nutrition at the University of Florida, explains. A typical lunch in Gainesville has a salad bar and a cold well full of foods — from cottage cheese to Greek yogurt and fruit to berries.

Rai Braithwaite, director of strength and conditioning for football at the University of Iowa, says the fueling stations are like a convenience store, with Subway and Jamba Juice all rolled into one space. There, they serve fresh fruits and vegetables, smoothies, and sandwiches. A rotating mix of burrito bowls, wraps, salads, and grab-and-go items helps make things more convenient but tasty.

On the road, teams work with hotels and local restaurants to cater everything from smoothies to full knife-and-fork meals. Selection is essential. “We focus on having strong variety in the training table so we can feed all the athletes,” Jessica Vines, Aramark catering director at Auburn University, says. “There is also a happy mix since they are still 20-year-old college kids who want to eat foods they want to eat.”

Adapting to the seasons

Nutritional needs shift throughout the year. In the summer, the focus is on replenishing the up to 9,000 calories a player might burn daily. So, as Danielle Gallaway, general manager at the University of Cincinnati athletic dining, says, nutrition requirements aren’t as strict. This means calorie-dense options like macaroni and cheese, burger bars, and chicken tenders. There’s even Chick-fil-A and Whataburger just to get the players to consume the needed calories. Sometimes nutritionists and dieticians instruct chefs to add heavy cream to the mashed potatoes or butter to the green vegetables to up the calorie intake.

“The energy demands are so high they have a hard time getting enough calories,” says Brooks Gillerlain, director of football nutrition at the University of Arkansas. “If they have four meals and one of them is fried, I’m okay with that.”

Once the season begins, all that changes and menus are planned based on energy expenditures and around gameday meals — centering on lean proteins, complex carbohydrates, and fresh fruits and vegetables. There’s usually chicken aplenty, which Gallaway says is primarily thighs, to capitalize on the flavor. Beyond that, proteins that can work with pasta or rice are a plus because of their flexibility.

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Day-of-game meals are always simple: pasta, rice, mashed potatoes, lemon pepper chicken, or sirloin. Some guys opt for the turkey sandwich or wrap, which are easy to digest; while fruit, rice, and chicken are the staples. Most programs schedule the pregame meal four hours before kickoff.

It’s so important for athletes to be able to weigh in on food that at Oregon, dieticians run through mock pregame meals before the season starts to help athletes understand which foods sit best with them. The Ducks are known for the cedar-planked salmon during the night-before meal. Of course, there are other options too, but it is the Pacific Northwest, after all.

“Friday night pregame is not the time to try new food,” Sleggs says about lean proteins and complex carbohydrates. There is always the pasta bar, the salmon, and sometimes a baked potato bar. And there’s no shortage of different salads, fresh-cut fruit — one of the most popular elements across the country — and a made-to-order smoothie bar.

Pregame at Arkansas limits fats and pushes proteins, carbs, and fruits. “The goal is to eat to fullness, but don’t stuff yourself,” Gillerlain says. Every menu has two to three proteins, and always a lean option with chicken and either salmon or shrimp. For balance, it always comes with carbohydrates and then a vegetable, salad bar, and fruit bar. “Our guys crush that,” Gillerlain says about the bars. “We have a wide variety of fruits, salads, toppings, and dressings to get in other colors.”

Sunday is when Oregon chefs like to get a little fancy. Recently they had a prime rib carving board; and another day included lobster tails and New York steaks, warm apple crisp, and, of course, Prince Puckler’s ice cream, a local favorite near campus that the team gets once per week.

Keeping athletes interested throughout the week requires creativity. So there are stations where the athletes can order in any which way they want, whether it’s going to the omelet bar or getting a breakfast sandwich in the morning to hitting up the pasta bar, where they can order proteins like chicken, beef, and shrimp. There are also stir-fries and a hamburger bar. “It is not like a buffet that can get old and boring,” Sleggs says. “It is something that they enjoy having a little control over.”

In the days following a game, Oregon serves “victory shakes,” which are packed with protein. They are always named and themed after the team the Ducks just played, but in the end, there are about 100 individualized shakes based on body composition needs. The variety of flavors and themes is simply a way to get them to drink the shakes.

Braithwaite says they purposefully put the carbs in the front of the line, so the players scoop that first, placing the protein and vegetables on the back end. “Whatever is first on the line is whatever they fill their plate with,” he says. “We stress on them eating for performance, you can focus on aesthetics when done playing football.” That reliance on carbohydrates is mainly for injury prevention and performance.

While Wolski says they are working to introduce fruits and vegetables and create healthy relationships with food, there still needs to be fun involved. Florida offers restaurant-style themed meals. Cajun alfredo chicken pasta is a popular pregame meal, and the athletes love any sort of pasta dish — especially a bake. But nothing hits quite like chicken wings.

Eggs are a common theme throughout the morning and strawberries are the most chosen fruit for football players. Vines says when peaches come in season, though, plenty of specialty dishes are developed to work the summer favorite in. Of course, the double cheeseburger is the most popular item for Auburn, so no peaches are needed there.

Over at Arkansas, players love red meat. “Any time we do any kind of steak, rib, brisket, or lamb chops, they love it,” Gillerlain says.

Balancing fun with nutrition

Despite the focus on performance, meal planning doesn’t forget the players’ preferences. Themed meals and comfort foods like burgers, wings, or even sushi bars keep players engaged.

“They are still kids, right? They get pumped for a burger bar,” says Braithwaite. “There are times we will do a sushi bar and have a whole line of guys behind the counter for the made-to-order sushi rolls.”

Getting constant feedback from the players on likes and dislikes is helpful in pointing the chefs in the right direction. “If they are not eating here, they are going to go eat somewhere else and it might not be what you want them to eat,” Danny Poole, assistant director of football administration for Clemson University football, says. “It plays that really fine line with good, sound nutrition and what they like.”

Across several teams, desserts are approached with moderation. Wolski says ice cream is limited to once per week, and other desserts are made less fatty by limiting sugar. They are often replaced by sorbets or smaller-sized items, such as pudding shooters.

Iowa makes dessert a celebratory item. “We don’t want to make a kid feel crappy for eating it, but there is a time and place,” Braithwaite says. “If that is a go-to, maybe on Tuesday instead of every day.”

And Tuesday is celebration day at Cincinnati with an ice cream sundae bar that appears only then. Other desserts are often a pudding, a trifle, or a pound cake with fresh fruit. “When on campus with us,” Gallaway says, “we are having the team organize meals, so they are being properly fueled.”

Education: Building Healthy Habits

Nutrition education is integral to these programs. Dieticians and nutritionists are constantly present within dining areas to provide one-on-one support, answer questions, and create relationships that can help lead to healthier eating. They build relationships with players to get them comfortable trying fresh and new items. As athletes mature, they start to try new foods — asparagus is one that grows on players — and the older players encourage the younger ones to try new things.

“They go from staying up late, waking up late, and going to McDonald’s to get fries, a shake, and a burger,” Braithwaite says, “and they get here and see how they separate themselves is how they take care of their body.”

Introducing seasonal ingredients, like roasted butternut squash in the fall, helps athletes expand their palates. “We are checking more nutrition boxes with high nutrition density, lean, low-fat proteins,” says Gallaway. “But we’re also testing the boundaries on flavor and getting them to try different things.”

In the end, the programs strive to balance providing the nutrition athletes need, maintaining variety and fun, and educating them about long-term health — because as Braithwaite says,  “True growth occurs in what they do away from the facility.”

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