How OU football is leaning on sports science, nutrition to prepare for 2024 season

NORMAN — Robert Sausaman doesn’t take being here for granted.

Every morning when OU’s new director of sport science throws on his crimson and cream shirt, strolls through the Barry Switzer Center or sees the Sooners ’ iconic logo, he feels appreciative. Sausaman, an alum of East Tennessee State University and the University of Memphis, always dreamed of working for one of the most storied programs in college athletics history.

So when Sausaman, who has worked for football teams like the New York Jets and Missouri before joining OU in May, saw the job listing this spring and began discussions with head coach Brent Venables , he jumped at the opportunity to work within a program with a distinct vision.

“To be part of a group and part of a culture where, for me coming in, it is already so well shaped is just absolutely incredible," Sausaman told The Oklahoman .

When OU football opened its preseason camp July 31, it did so after the most demanding offseason of Venables’ tenure where the standards were raised and players pushed one another.

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While the program is preparing for its highly-anticipated third season under Venables and its inaugural season in the Southeastern Conference, there’s a staff of people behind the scenes who fueled the Sooners’ offseason and camp. To help players navigate struggles and maximize their potential is the job of Sausaman, director of sports nutrition Brooke Helms and many others.

“(We) always push and challenge to get the best resources for our players and our staff and then you do have to produce,” Venables said. “That’s an expectation in these offices and in that locker room for all of us.

“So for us, at the end of the day, for us to live up to our standards and fight and compete for those standards every day and how we do what we do, how we practice, how we work, how we compete, how we recruit, how we build our own facilities, things of that nature.”

Following OU’s second practice of preseason camp, redshirt sophomore wide receiver Nic Anderson specifically credited Helms with helping get to his desired weight and Sausaman, who has come to be known by players as “Big Saus,” with helping his jumps and recording his hamstring health to limit injury.

For Helms and Sausaman, who work hand in hand with strength coach Jerry Schmidt , building relationships with the players is key to their jobs.

“It's not just, ‘How can we make sure that we're pushing these guys in practice,’” Sausaman said. “But how are we recovering? How are we sleeping? How are we fueling? How are we hydrating? And (Venables) has been a huge advocate and supporter for all of those things that we're doing off the field that are really going to help drive performance and long term development on the field for these guys.”

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Helms leads a team of four dieticians dedicated to football who are deeply integrated with the players, arriving at the facility before anyone and often leaving last. The group prepares breakfast for the players beginning at 6 a.m., lunch post-practice and dinner post-meetings daily, while also offering snack carts with sandwiches during meetings twice a day.

The nutrition team also holds weigh-ins with every player first thing in the morning before practice and weigh-outs after practice every day to establish their sweat loss, nutrition education and recovery post-practice. Helms spent time at Louisville and TCU and says she’s never worked at a school where the head coach cared more about nutrition.

“Coach Venables puts a high priority on nutrition and values what nutrition brings to the table for our players,” Helms told The Oklahoman . “He told me from Day 1 when I got hired that I have a direct line of contact with him, anything I need I go straight to him for. I don’t have to go through anyone else to talk to him, he wants to know what’s going on.”

Helms helped sophomore defensive lineman Adepoju Adebawore achieve his goal of matching up with other linemen weight-wise. Adebawore said he “stuffed” himself to the point where he couldn’t find anything he desired anymore.

“They’re great,” Adebawore said of the nutrition and sports science staff. “They’re definitely here to help us. They’re always on top of us, especially a guy like me who just needed to gain a lot of weight. They do their part, and I got to do mine.”

During the dog days of summer, oftentimes when Schmidt is testing players’ limits and “breaking them down and building them up,” as Anderson calls it, the Oklahoma heat is always a topic of discussion. During the Sooners’ camp the past few weeks, temperatures reached as high as 102 degrees.

Helms invented OU’s system for making sure players are hydrated, which has included refrigerated trailers and popsicles in the past. Sausaman’s team is also constantly measuring player’s heart rates.

“We're practicing every single day,” Helms said. “We get very little time to recover and so these off days are extremely valuable for our guys to get off their feet and to have that time to recover and rehydrate before tomorrow. But overall, the process is almost like Groundhog Day.”

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Both Helms and Sausaman love their jobs and look forward to working with a group of driven players who care about improving their health and performance day in and day out. They also get to work with a talented staff that deeply cares.

“One of the unique things about our environment,” Sausaman said. “From Coach Schmidt to Brooke in nutrition, to Rob Fulton with our sport medicine staff, and then all throughout the coaching staff, the position coaches, the coordinators and Coach V, it's pretty cool that we're all members of the same team. We have a very free flowing, constant communication.”

Sausaman can’t point to one specific moment that has stood out in his first three months on the job, but he’s living where his feet are. He’s excited about ushering in this new era of football in Norman.

When OU kicks off its season against Temple at 6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 30 on ESPN, people will see the work the players put in throughout the offseason. And while the work Helms and Sausaman put in won’t immediately be visible to fans, their work will fuel the Sooners’ sprint into the SEC.

“We have an unbelievable group of players from a character standpoint, from a work ethic standpoint and from an intrinsic motivation standpoint,” Sausaman said. “Guys that just want to give everything that they can and everything that they have to the team, and that are motivated to want to get better for themselves.

“Never sacrificing the team-level goals, and that's not always the case in athletics, so it's been really rewarding for me just being able to come in on a daily basis and work with a group of people that care so much, that you don't have to coach effort.

“These guys want to learn, they want to work and that makes every day very rewarding.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: How OU football is leaning on sports science, nutrition to prepare for 2024 season