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Sports Illustrated
Coronavirus Pandemic Magnifies an All-Too-Real Issue for Some NCAA Athletes
A 2019 study found that nearly one-quarter of Division I
student-athlete respondents had suffered recent food insecurity. What
does that mean in the age of a pandemic?
Priya Desai
April 21, 2020
Before the world turned upside down, University of Mississippi senior
linebacker Sam Williams would eat five-to-six meals per day at campus
dining halls—each one necessary to fuel his 6’3”, 250-pound body. His
scholarship came with a meal plan, ensuring that he could get the
calories necessary to train and perform at the level expected of him.
But like many of the 460,000 NCAA athletes who were suddenly sent home
last month, he now has to scramble to afford the food he needs.
In late March, he tweeted out his frustrations from his family’s home in Montgomery, Ala.
“We worked so hard to get out the hood but forced back to the hood,”
Williams wrote. “Still gotta pay rent so all our money be gone and I
can’t swipe my ID nowhere in Alabama. Then if we get help it’s a
‘violation’. I just don’t understand.”
Speaking over the phone last weekend, he explained, “I still need to
pay my rent back there [in Oxford] and so after that and my car
insurance, it’s whatever is left to pay for groceries.”
The challenges Williams is facing are almost certainly widespread:
According to a new report out Tuesday from the Hope Center for College,
Community, and Justice at Temple University, 24% of the 452 Division I
athletes it surveyed in the fall of 2019 suffered food insecurity in
the previous 30 days. The numbers were 26% and 21% for the Divisions II
and III student-athletes respectively, and 39% for athletes at two-year
schools (3,506 student-athletes were surveyed in total). Among the
general college population, the center found that 39% suffer food
insecurity, defined in the report as the “limited or uncertain
availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food, or the ability to
acquire such food in a socially acceptable manner.”
Those numbers, of course, predate the pandemic, which has crashed the
economy and made it more difficult for millions of Americans to afford
food. That includes athletes—both ones on scholarship, who are no
longer able to rely on campus dining halls and training tables, and
those without scholarships who were already struggling.
The coronavirus crisis is likely to exacerbate another major problem
included in the Hope Center survey: Nearly 14% of D-I student-athletes
reported experiencing homelessness in the previous 12 months. The
number was 19% for D-II, 13% for D-III and 20% for two-year schools.
Mississippi athletic director Keith Carter tells SI that when he
learned of Williams's situation from Twitter, the school adapted on the
fly. Any athlete who asks can now receive a weekly meal card valued at
$105—an amount that had to be approved by the compliance office—that
can be used at “fast-casual” restaurants, like Subway. A grocery store
option could be added in the future.
“We couldn't load those meal cards up with unlimited dollars, if you
will, and so we had to find a number that we felt comfortable with and
that we could use,” Carter says. “It's just not the same when we have
them on campus, where there's just so many ways that they have access
to so many resources.”
But not all schools have made that type of change and, for most
athletes, even receiving help is complicated: Williams intends to play
for Mississippi this fall and, to maintain his amateur status with the
NCAA, must be careful not to accept money or help that could be
construed as resulting from his status as an athlete (the NCAA did not
respond to request for comment). Since coming home, he’s continued
training and conditioning in his backyard as best as he can.
“The outcome [of a violation] is bigger than the pandemic,” Williams
says. He spoke out for a simple reason, he says: athletes like him need
to eat.
“I just think that we should get something, especially for food,
because we don’t have that resource on campus anymore,” he says.
****
Six years ago, just hours before playing in the national championship,
star UConn guard Shabazz Napier told reporters, “We do have hungry
nights that we don’t have enough money to get food in.”
Napier wasn’t out to make a statement. He was responding to a question
about Northwestern players pushing to unionize. (The National Labor
Relations Board eventually denied their request.) Nevertheless, the
interview went viral and caught the attention of lawmakers, who then
put pressure on the NCAA. Almost immediately, the association lifted
restrictions on how much food could be provided to athletes.
Stories of universities with million dollar food budgets appeared to
show how the NCAA had stepped up and solved the problem, but the Hope
Center survey complicates that picture. While scholarship athletes at
D-I schools may have access to meal plans, thousands of other athletes
nationwide do not. According to the report, across the three divisions,
only about 60% of student-athletes receive scholarships, many of which
are partial.
Sara Goldrick-Rab a professor of higher education policy and sociology
at Temple University and the founder of the Hope Center, has done
annual surveys on food insecurity on college campuses since 2015, but
had not previously broken out results for athletes.
“There's a part of me that really thought, though, that athletes get so
much extra attention that they really would be substantially less
likely to deal with these problems, and I was really wrong,” said
Goldrick-Rab.
The survey did not break out which sports the students play or whether
they are on scholarship. An additional in-depth survey that will
include a larger sample size is planned for the fall, but Goldrick-Rab
says there’s already a clear message in her data.
“Even if these results don't extrapolate, meaning that they just don't
apply to anybody else, we have 452 just Division I athletes in here,
and 24% of them have been food insecure. That’s concerning,” she says.
“In the midst of this pandemic, I know that everybody's worried about
whether there's going to be a football season this fall, but there's a
real chance that these athletes become completely disconnected [from
their campus support systems].”
****
What does life look like for a student-athlete with no scholarship or meal plan?
Travon Williams is a senior wide receiver at Temple University. After
spending three seasons as a preferred walk-on for the Owls, in November
2018 he finally was awarded a full scholarship for his upcoming senior
year. His coach surprised him with the news after a game and the video
made its way to ESPN. It was a feel-good story—but also an ending to
three years of intense struggle for Williams.
“Because football is all during the day, you're going to work at
night,” Williams tells SI. “You start work around 10 p.m. and by the
time I look at the clock again, it's time to wake up for football.”
Williams says he averaged 3–4 hours of sleep a night between school,
work and football. The money helped cover whatever financial aid
couldn’t, but that still didn’t leave enough for a meal plan. If he had
practice in the morning, he was guaranteed breakfast, but that would be
all until dinner-time unless he could find some snacks in between
classes, “and then that would be it.” His coaches noticed that he was
losing weight, but he would convince them everything was fine.
“They asked. Like, my strength coach was always asking like, ‘Why are
you weighing in so light?’ I’d say ‘I didn’t eat enough yesterday
coach, my bad. I'll fix it.’”
Williams didn’t want to bring any attention to his situation and risk
not being able to play, so he dealt with the consequences, which
included intense migraines. “You don't eat and so your head just starts
hurting. So you start getting migraines from not eating. I would get
those in class.”
Meals would sometimes consist of nutritionally deficient food that was
cheap. Food insecurity isn’t only about being hungry—it’s also about
the inability to eat the type of food your body needs to sustain
itself. Sometimes, as he was trying to go to sleep, it all just became
too much for Williams. “Mad screaming into the pillow,” he says, his
voice quiet. “Like wanting to cry, especially, with on top of school,
I'd be like, ‘Oh no, how am I to do this?’”
Williams did do it, though. After earning his scholarship, he made sure
to pay it forward, offering his meal card to other walk-on players.
He’s now headed to graduate school to become a physical therapist.
One Group of Five football coach who spoke to SI on condition of
anonymity said he knows that some of his players are struggling. “I see
what these Power 5 programs are able to offer their guys. We just don’t
have the money for it. I do what I can. I wish I could do more.”
Already, according to a data analysis by the US Department of
Education, out of the 2,078 institutions that have athletic programs,
65 schools generated 54% of all college sports revenue. Essentially, 3%
of all college programs bring in more than half of all the money. Which
is to say, million dollar food budgets are not exactly common.
And the current pandemic could further shift the economics of this
entire system. Lead1 Association, which represents the athletic
directors of the 130 FBS schools, painted a bleak picture in a report
on its annual survey of its members. Released on April 2, “The State of
Athletics in the Face of the Coronavirus” warns of long-lasting
economic repercussions. One-third of the AD’s interviewed believe their
programs will have at least a 30% decrease in revenue for the upcoming
2020–21 academic year. The report adds that over half of the non-Power
5 schools have concerns of revenue reductions of NCAA distributions.
And FBS schools are the haves in the NCAA system.
The implications will play out in real time. For players who have
experiences like those of Trevon Williams, there will be limited
options. Even prior to the pandemic, students were not eligible for
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) unless they meet
specific criteria. On April 10, the USDA declined requests from 29
states to waive certain eligibility requirements in SNAP to better
support college students during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Student-athletes still need to abide by the rules set by the NCAA,
while continuing to train and condition and maintain a GPA to remain
eligible. All while being cut off from critical programs at their
universities.
Sam Williams, the Mississippi linebacker, says he’s going to try and
find a job, maybe at a Walmart. As for concerns over catching COVID-19?
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” he says.
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