Weight Problems Seen in High School Football

Concerns about dangerously overweight players in the National Football League have garnered more attention from the news media and professional-football officials in recent years. Now, a study published last week suggests that high school football linemen may also be at risk of being overweight or obese and susceptible to related health problems.

The study, which appears in the Jan. 24 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association , looked at the body mass index, or BMI, of 3,683 offensive and defensive linemen who played for Iowa high school teams in 2005. Data for height, weight, and grade in school were noted from the publicly available rosters.

Joey C. Eisenmann, an assistant professor of health and human performance at Iowa State University, and Kelly R. Laurson, a graduate assistant, used the standard calculation of BMI of weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. Forty-five percent of the players were classified as being overweight, with BMIs at or above the 95th percentile, including 9 percent who met adult standards of severe obesity. Another 28 percent had BMIs classified as at risk for being overweight, or between the...