Texas and A&M both supplied their players with supplement packs containing substances banned by the NCAA from 2000 to 2004, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram via CNNSI. Bad: one of the ingredients in a weight loss packet was synephrine, a substance similar in composition to ephedra, the subtance implicated in "over 150 deaths" that the Feds have had off the market since 2003. Ridiculous: the other concern is the inclusion of amino acids in the packet.
The NCAA bans certain "muscle-building" supplements, amino acids included, in a well-intentioned but inane bylaw linked here. Now, we spent most of high school chemistry asleep-it was 7:30 in the morning, and we'd been up 'til three playing Mutant League Football and...well, doing the sort of things sixteen-year-olds with Cinemax in their own bedroom do. (Damn you, Night Stalkers 5: Passions of the Amazon. I could have been something...) But we remember enough to know that amino acids are the basic building blocks of proteins, which happen to come in forms like steak, chicken, ostrich, or in adorable mascot forms like Bevo and Albert the Alligator.
Bevo: chocked full of NCAA-banned substances.
Under these rules, if a trainer gives a player a sack of beef jerky after practice, is he breaking the rules? It's more than 30 percent protein, it's not one of the four approved forms of supplement, and it's full of those sinister amino acids. Just like Bevo. Or baked beans. Or Slim Goodbody, who simultaneously failed to stimulate an interest in healthy eating habits in youth while terrifying them with grisly, prancing visage of a man with a perm whose body had been inexplicably turned inside out.
The face of terror, 1981.
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