LOS ANGELES — Breakfast was served on the terrace that summer morning in 2018, the menu featuring grass-fed flank steak, sweet potato hash with diced chicken and chocolate-chip pancakes.
This buffet on the UCLA campus befitted a faculty celebration or lavish donor event. It was neither, just the football team gathering to eat before the start of training camp.
Later, after stretching and drills, the Bruins returned to the Wasserman Football Center, where brunch selections included salmon and Cornish game hen. For dinner that evening? Grilled flat-iron steak in a balsamic reduction.
"We definitely liked the food," former linebacker Josh Woods said.
Under coach Chip Kelly, who sees nutrition as key to the making of a football player, the fare has gotten decidedly better — and decidedly more expensive. In 2018, his first year at UCLA, the budget for non-travel meals more than doubled to $2.6 million. The following year, the tab grew to $5.4 million, dwarfing spending at higher-profile programs and raising questions about a UCLA athletic department that reported an $18.9 million deficit for last year.
Through a public records request, The Los Angeles Times obtained more than 500 pages of invoices and receipts that shed light on food costs. Among the menu selections: Guajillo chili chicken, coffee-braised brisket, and pork chops smothered in candied apples and onions. During offseason workouts last year, UCLA spent more than $40,000 to import five barbecue meals from an Arizona-based restaurant. On other occasions, the program ordered hundreds of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches from a Los Angeles caterer at $4.95 each.
"You can obviously feed an entire football team great and nutritious food for a lot less money," said David Ridpath, a past president of the Drake Group, which advocates for reform in college sports. "UCLA is not that great in football and does this mean a couple extra wins versus, I don't know, spending $2 million on non-travel food?"
