BLOCKING AND CHOWING.(eating habits of Randy Thomas, and other New York Jets players)(Brief Article)

If you are an offensive lineman, the Netherlands cafeteria, at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, where the New York Jets hold their training camp, has a couple of things going for it: the portions are unlimited, and the food doesn't cost anything. "Shit, if it's free it's for me, you know what I'm saying?" Randy Thomas said recently, dipping a piece of fried chicken into a puddle of blue-cheese dressing during his lunch break, between practices. Thomas, the Jets' starting right guard, has a fast metabolism, and he weighs three hundred pounds; his appetite can be expensive. "I'm known to eat, like, seventeen pieces of chicken," he says. "By the way I eat, you would think I'm a big fat slob. But I just keep myself lean."

"Lean" is a relative term in the Brobdingnagian world of an N.F.L. cafeteria. Thomas is not quite the largest of the men who, for the past month, have lumbered into the Netherlands four times a day, like trucks rolling up to a gas station, dressed in sleeveless T-shirts, green shorts, and sandals, with their ankles, knees, and elbows wrapped in tape. Jumbo Elliott--"still the biggest guy on earth," according to the Jets' head coach, Herman Edwards--is three inches taller; Kareem McKenzie is twenty-five pounds heavier. But Thomas is the undisputed king of consumption, and when he pushes back his chair, raising his arms above his head after polishing off a plate of pecan pie, he reveals an ample midsection.

While there is no direct meal-by-meal oversight of Jets players' dining habits, the strength-and-conditioning coach, John Lott, has a few basic recommendations for some of his bigger, hungrier charges: avoid fried foods and sweets; drink water instead of soda. To this end, the cafeteria menu, prepared by the team trainer and a certified nutritionist, is color-coded by fat content: green for lentil soup; yellow for a mesquite-turkey club; red for meatloaf with gravy or fish and chips. Thomas was unaware of these traffic signals, but would probably not have heeded them anyway. "I don't worry about my fat," he says. "I just fuckin' eat. It makes me happy and comfortable and relaxed, you know? 'Cause if I'm hungry on the field I don't perform--I'm thinking about fuckin' eatin'."

Once the season begins, ...