LOS ANGELES — Gotta have carbs in the morning, USC sophomore defensive lineman Braylan Shelby says. His definition of carbs is different than most.
For months, his breakfast has been the same. Egg scramble – not three, not four, but five eggs. Waffles. Yogurt parfait. Banana. He is listed at 250 pounds on USC’s spring roster, up from 245 in the fall; he really put on 20 in the offseason, he asserted Tuesday. He took pride in checking the scale, seeing the number rise, Shelby beamed.
Mason Cobb exhaled Tuesday, shaking his head, when asked about Shelby’s diet. Everyone’s diet around USC, this offseason. Cobb himself put on 10 pounds of pure muscle – one of the hardest winters he has gone through in his football life, he says.
“Ah, dude, it’s insane, bro,” Cobb said.
This was the directive. Since a disappointing 2023 season wrapped on an uptick in the Holiday Bowl, USC head coach Lincoln Riley has been adamant in a variety of public settings about a program-wide philosophical change to simply get bigger, particularly up front. And in private settings the past few months, the change has been grueling but welcomed, hearing USC players’ testimony on Tuesday. The program made meals mandatory, Cobb said; if players missed their target weight at weigh-ins, Shelby said, they’d be assigned plate-pushes as punishment.
Guys had to eat, Cobb said. And once you ate a lot, he added, “your stomach gets used to it.”
“I feel like they want us a lot stronger … just having that mentality, like, we gon’ go out there and we gon’ go mess something up,” Shelby said after USC’s practice Tuesday, energy popping from bulging biceps. “Like, we gon’ go out there, and we gon’ wreck havoc, we gon’ be there, we gon’ cause a scene.”
“That definitely helped, I guess, install in all our minds that – that’s the plan,” Shelby continued, animated. “That’s what we need to do this year. That’s what we need to change. That’s why we…
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