Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Size Matters

The size, bulk and ever-widening girth of college players has not gone unnoticed by high school players. Researchers at Iowa State have found nearly half of the offensive and defensive linemen playing on Iowa high school teams qualify as overweight, and one in 10 meet medical standards for severe obesity. The study, believed to be one of the first and most comprehensive appraisals of obesity in prep football, appears in Wednesday's Journal of American Medical Association. Of course, this presents all kinds of health problems, many of which won't be evident until later in life. The researchers gathered the height and weight data of 3,686 varsity linemen available from rosters from all classes of Iowa prep teams. They used that data to calculate a body-mass index, the same tool used for an NFL study.

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