Hoping your training table is full today

As I was driving my friend Wynn Silberman to the airport the other day, I asked him what training table was like for a Northwestern football player.

“If we beat Michigan or Notre Dame, we’d get steak and lobster,” said Silberman, who was a receiver on the 1996 Big Ten championship team. “If we lost, we got ostrich.”

Ostrich?

“Yeah, Ostrich. It tasted really bad, but it’s high-protein. We put a lot of hot sauce on it.”

University of Hawaii athletes aren’t getting such exotic fare, probably for the better. But the Rainbow Warriors and Wahine in various sports are now enjoying a supplemental meal that helps them replace needed calories and also allows them to not skip meals because of schedule conflicts.

Wednesday’s column and accompanying video (above) was about the athletes’ reaction to receiving this additional meal, but also touches upon how the NCAA’s new rule allowing unlimited meals and snacks is widening the gap between Division I’s financial haves and have-nots.

Today, I feel very fortunate that my “training table” includes a wide variety of food in plentiful amounts to share with loved ones. I hope Thanksgiving finds you in a similar situation.