In Collegiate Athletics – Performance, Training and Recovery is Ever Evolving

There have never been more resources for student-athletes at the highest levels of collegiate athletics.

Teams of sports psychologists, physical therapists, and nutritionists–resources once reserved for professional sports teams–are now commonplace in college sports, and USC is no different.

The school has more than 200 employees listed under its athletic staff directory, and reported more than $100 million in intercollegiate athletic revenue for fiscal year 2018.

And now, for the first time student-athletes are set to start profiting after California passed a bill in September that will allow college athletes to earn money from their name, image or likeness starting in 2023.

So, while historic financial change is on the horizon, a student-athlete’s experience off the field and resources on it have been evolving for decades.

Sam Cunningham, an all-America fullback on USC’s 1972 national championship-winning football team remembers a time at USC when players fought for limited resources.

"We only had a training table during the season and the first two spots on the roster got training table, so you can imagine how competitive our practices were,” said Cunningham.

Cunningham roomed with future NFL Hall of Famer Lynn Swann, who was recently forced out as USC athletic director. Their apartment cost $138 a month, or $69 per person.

"No air conditioning, but we had the pool. By the time we paid that and food, we didn’t have a whole lot,” Cunningham said.

Today’s scholarship athletes receive a stipend check just like the one Cunningham collected all the way back in the early 1970s. It’s meant to cover rent, food, and basic living expenses for student-athletes.

The football team receives breakfast and dinner each day during the season. Sponsors like Muscle Milk provide protein shakes and snacks for recovery.

“It’s such a godsend for these kids. They don’t even understand. They have no comprehension. They think this is the way it’s supposed to be,” Cunningham said.

“If they went back in a time machine 40 or 50 years, they would be crying like little bitches.”

In today’s era, recovery is the new frontier of performance. Getting eight hours of sleep a night is a top priority, and student-athletes are encouraged to take ice baths and receive massages.

“Everything that we do is just a stress or a stimulus to an athlete,” says USC strength and conditioning coach Tim Ojeda.

Ojeda calls recovery “the biggest missing piece” in trying to increase performance. USC athletics has prioritized it to the point that Ojeda says he will lighten training during midterms to “help them get through.”

In Cunningham’s era, recovery was not emphasized as a point of performance like it is today.

“They don’t practice as hard as we did. The only time we were in shorts was Saturday, when we had a walk-through. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday we were in full pads,” Cunningham said.

“We were always banging, always banging.”

For Cunningham, double days were “very severe” and recovery wasn’t something athletes paid much attention to, but he did have one secret: stretching.

“My flexibility is what saved me from a lot of serious injuries.”

Cunningham, who played nine years for the New England Patriots and is still their all-time leading rusher, recently visited with Patriots head Coach Bill Belichick.

“Sam, if you were playing today, you could probably play for 20 years because we don’t do nothing,” he recalls Belichick telling him.

In the race for continued athletic excellence, USC–which currently stands third overall with 107 NCAA Division 1 team championships, trailing only UCLA (118) and Stanford (123)–has added support staff far earlier than many other programs.

Robin Scholefield, USC’s director of sports psychology came to the school in 1998. Sports psychology was in its infancy, still breaking out from its forbearer of positive psychology and barely considered a science.

She started seeing patients only part time, and now estimates her team of four sports psychologist sees more than 100 athletes a week.

Her programs run the gamut from mental health services, to sports performance, to team building. That could mean an athlete is struggling to balance his or her busy schedule, to something more serious like contemplating retirement.

Cunningham says there was a stigma around mental health when he played at USC.

“It was a gladiator culture, and you kind of had to work your way through your problems,” he said.

Scholefield says that culture still persists but has lessened thanks to the trend of elite athletes talking about getting psychological help.

“Historically, that sort of stoic athlete persona and stigma has precluded athletes from coming in,” Scholefield said.

Cunningham, for his part, acknowledges that many of those athletes who dropped out or fell through the cracks in his time likely had mental health problems that needed to be addressed.

“We probably needed a sports psychologist; we probably needed a nutritionist. We probably need everything and all they have now,” Cunningham said.

One of the best things Cunningham said he did for his own mental health was his annual drive from New England to California, after completing each grueling season as a fullback for the Patriots. The drive took three weeks. He said it allowed him to clear his mind and visit family and friends. By the time he was back in California, he was ready to begin his off-season training.

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Krysten McCaughey is one of the four dietitians on staff at USC. She became the dietitian for the football team just before the start of training camp in August. Previously, McCaughey was with Exos, a professional sports performance services company that trains athletes at the highest levels for competition or events such as the NFL Combine.

Her job is to make sure athletes are eating the right foods. As with her time at Exos, she develops meal plans for athletes in one-on-one sessions that optimize performance and body composition. What she’s found challenging is just how busy student-athletes are.

“They are so busy between class, training and practice,” McCaughey said. “It’s making sure they can eat. With their schedule, sometimes it can be a little tricky.”

For Cunningham, just getting food–rather than finding time to eat–was the difficulty.

“We would always run out of food and chipping in with one another,” Cunningham said.

Each week before games, McCaughey “hydration tests” the football team and the athletic medicine department tests for vitamin D. But much of what the program does and does not do is influenced by finances.

Food sensitivity, or allergy testing, a protocol McCaughey says is “up and coming in the industry,” is not covered by insurance, so not every athlete is tested. If there is reason to believe an athlete has a food allergy, the program will refer the athlete to an outside doctor.

Yet, according to McCaughey, the biggest innovation in athletics taking place at USC is not within her specific field, but rather the full integration of each department.

McCaughey, a dietician, Scholefield, a sports psychologist, and Ojeda, a strength and conditioning coach, all spoke of their communication and integration as a way of maximizing the performance and well-being of each student-athlete they work with.

As performance, training and recovery protocols at the collegiate level professionalize, the NCAA continues to fret over the professionalization of an athlete’s compensation.

All of it a far cry from the student-athlete experience of Sam “Bam” Cunningham.

“In ‘72 we won the National Championship Rose Bowl and we got our ring and it just had a rimstone. So, I asked coach, where is the little shiny thing? And he said man, go win a Super Bowl to get your shiny thing.”