It was a while back when I begged out of some of the expected and regular duties here because I was going to be working on some stuff for the summer. Some of that stuff has happened, will soon happen and will happen even later, but we at the Daily Mail are in the midst of a fun summer series that focuses entirely on the wave of NCAA reform.

Obviously I won’t e giving it away here, but it goes without saying a slice of the various conversations has revolved around the proposed and approved unlimited meals, or as we call it here, the deregulation of eating. I’ve had a couple of people from different walks of college of athletics tell me they won’t be surprised, and almost expect, to see that backed up a year, or at least until the New Year.

Now, will that happen? I don’t know and neither do they, but their opinion has some weight, doesn’t it? We kind of covered this before, but there are a few issues attached to the proposal and WVU isn’t entirely sure what it’s going to do.

Whenever the Mountaineers get to do whatever they get to do, it is their belief they’re in a favorable position. They have a full-time sports dietitian, which is a big part of a growing wing of college athletics. WVU has one, while Georgia has six, but the point is WVU has one and the sports on campus can be better because of it. The student-athletes have the resource to be healthier, better conditioned, more durable and now even worldly.

She does more than tell student-athletes what to eat, what to buy and how to make meals. A lot of her work is enlightening students about foods. There are occasional food-tasting nights where a bunch of foods are spread out for student-athletes to try.

“Maybe they’ve never had hummus and don’t want to spend $3 on that for fear they might not like it,” Freshour said. “So we buy it and spend the money on the food and they’re not nervous to taste it since it’s in a team setting with me educating them and showing them how easy it is to do. We’ve made spaghetti squash in the microwave in quite a few different training facilities on this campus because it’s so easy to make it. You put marinara sauce on it and you’ve got a meal in 20 minutes.”

Every now and then she’ll put something new on the training table, a tactic that’s converted many to guacamole, acorn squash, jasmine rice, broccolini and all sorts of things players never would have thought to try.

“We have a lot of picky eaters and I tell them all the time, ‘You’re only picky because you choose to be picky. You may be missing out on your favorite food and not even know it,’ ” she said. “I had an athlete earlier this semester say, ‘What’s this? White broccoli?’ It was cauliflower. A lot of times they don’t even know, but they end up liking it.”