SUPER-SIZED BOWL
With 27 players on the field Sunday weighing more than 300 pounds, you have to wonder: Can they really call themselves athletes?
Chubby, pudgy and even obese are not adjectives typically used to describe top-level athletes, but consider that New England Patriots defensive lineman Vince Wilfork, at 6-foot-2 and 325 pounds, can run 40 yards in a smidge over five seconds. So, athlete or immovable object?
Chubby, pudgy and even obese are not adjectives typically used to describe top-level athletes.
But here’s a rather weighty subject if you’re chewing the fat with your pals between chicken wings during Sunday’s Super Bowl.
On the combined rosters of the New England Patriots and the New York Giants — the teams battling it out for the NFL title — are 27 players who tip the scales at more than 300 pounds. Some, if their vitals were updated for accuracy, are likely hovering — or should that be hoovering? — at close to 400.
We’re not talking lean muscle mass. Football pants don’t lie. During the big game, jiggling won’t be restricted to the cheerleaders.
While many of those monstrous men are impressively svelte, Vince Wilfork is the poster boy for those who look like butter sculptures come to life. He is New England’s nose tackle, and his job is to eat up as much space as possible.
And, at 6-foot-2 and listed at 325 pounds (though he appears much heavier), he is extremely good at it. Most often he’s set up in the middle of the defensive line, and it takes two or three opposing players to move him out of the way or tie him up. That frees up one of Wilfork’s teammates to tackle the ball carrier or pressure the quarterback.
But are immovable objects such as Wilfork really athletes? Those who know the game and even those who make a living training more traditional-looking competitors say the answer is an unequivocal yes.
“This is all about performance,” says TSN football analyst Chris Schultz, who in the 1980s and ’90s suited up in both the NFL and, with the Argonauts, in the CFL, as an offensive lineman. “From the outside, not being derogatory, this guy looks like a fat pig. But it couldn’t be any further from the truth.
“It’s misleading because you see him in short bursts. But what you don’t understand is how fast the bursts happen and how violent the bursts are . . . He’s a phenomenal athlete in his role.”
Consider that Wilfork, as big as he is, can run 40 yards in a smidge over five seconds. He holds the state high school record for shot put in Florida, where he also wrestled and played rugby. And the self-described “butterball’ revealed this week he can dunk a basketball.
The 30-year-old is also in the midst of a five-year contract that will pay him $40 million (U.S.). He has shown himself able to run down quarterbacks, tackle ball carriers for a loss, and, this season, he even had two interceptions. He was named to the Pro Bowl, the NFL’S all-star showcase, for the fourth time.
Count Greg Wells, an exercise physiologist at the University of Toronto, among the converts to perceiving the NFL’S mountains of flesh as finely honed, if not toned, athletes.
In 2008, Kevin Abrams, the assistant general manager of the Giants, who is from Toronto, invited his old pal from their Crescent School days to watch a game from the sidelines.
“I didn’t think they were worldclass athletes like I was used to dealing with,” recalls Wells. “But when I was within10 to15 feet of these guys and I saw how fast, how agile, how explosive and how intense they are, it completely revolutionized my understanding of football . . . It was absolutely stunning, inspirational in some ways.” Seam-busting Nflers have evolved in a Darwinian survival of the fattest. Bigger men on one side of the line begat bigger men on the other side. In the first Super Bowl 45 years ago, the biggest players were 260 pounds. In 1970, only one NFLER weighed 300 pounds. The Associated Press found there were more than 500 of those XXXL humans at NFL training camps 40 years later.
The scales tipped in favour of bulky brawn in the 1980s. Washington put together a group of gargantuan offensive linemen, known as the Hogs, and won two Super Bowls that decade and appeared in another. William (The Refrigerator) Perry, who reportedly weighed 380 pounds, became a cult figure for the Chicago Bears in the ’80s as a defen- sive lineman who would occasionally carry the ball. He even scored a touchdown in the 1986 Super Bowl. “Football is an extremist sport,” says Schultz, who packed just 280 pounds on a 6-foot-8 frame when he starred for the Argos. “If you run a 4.5 (seconds over 40 yards) at 225 pounds, they want you to run a 4.4 at 235. They just keep pushing the lines further and further . . . You’re creating a whole generation of interesting physical bodies.” But there is a downside to the heft. “What happens with these people is that, invariably, when their playing days are over, their eating pat- tern doesn’t change but their activity pattern changes dramatically,” says Dr. Anthony Graham, a cardiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital. “Carrying that amount of weight in many, many people will lead to high blood pressure over time, higher levels of cholesterol and increased incidence of diabetes, all of which are significant risk factors for the development of vascular disease later in life.” A year ago, The New York Times reported that various studies showed “retired (NFL) players are more prone to obesity, sleep apnea and metabolic syndrome: conditions like elevated blood pressure, insulin and cholesterol levels and excessive body fat around the waist that together heighten the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Retired linemen have been linked to higher mortality rates . . . ” However, the Times also cited a contrary study, published by The American Journal of Cardiology, that found “retired NFL players had significantly lower occurrences of diabetes, hypertension, sedentary lifestyles and metabolic syndrome than did non-athletes.”
Wilfork isn’t taking any chances and is regularly monitored for diabetes. His father died after a long battle with that disease; he was only 48. Wilfork’s mother died at 46 due to complications from a stroke.
“I want to see what my parents didn’t see — grandkids,” the father of three told USA Today.
Matt Nichol, a Toronto strength and conditioning coach, wavers between admiring the athleticism of a player such as Wilfork and wondering about their long-term health.
“The guy can move,” says Nichol, who has watched Wilfork work out at the Patriots’ training facility. “Now, if (he) was at a healthy bodyfat percentage, would he still have a job in the NFL? You can’t say for sure. I struggle with that.
“If not for football, he’d probably be picked on and made fun of. Instead, he’s a superstar athlete.”