Jake Sankal is the one turning Florida football’s nutrition plan into something a lot closer to a science experiment than a guess.
Walk into his office and the first things that jump out are NFL jerseys on the walls and a whiteboard covered in what looks like mathematic equations. For Sankal, that’s the whole point. Those numbers drive the Gators’ nutrition program, and under first-year coach Jon Sumrall, they’ve become part of the engine behind Florida’s offseason physical makeover.
The staff around him changed fast. Florida brought in a new coaching staff, renovated the weight room and overhauled the strength program under Rusty Whitt.
But Sankal stayed put, one of the few holdovers from Billy Napier’s staff, and he’s quick to give Whitt and the players plenty of credit for the transformation. Still, Sankal is the one building the framework.
“I really think that my biggest job is making sure that we are all on the same page for each and every player on this team,” Sankal said. “I’m the person that is the go between departments (and) that is always talking with the football coaches.”
Napier had made a point of bringing Sankal in after his years with the Washington Redskins and Commanders, where he spent eight seasons. But Sankal’s route into football was anything but standard.
He was a Division III baseball player who first worked in the Cleveland Indians organization from 2010 to 2015, where he started sharpening his approach. At the time, team nutritionists were still a fairly new idea, and Sankal began his career as a strength and conditioning coach.
“My rough plan was that I was hopefully going to be the first full-time dietitian in Major League Baseball,” Sankal said. “So the strength coaches kind of became the dietians per se.”
He moved to the NFL in 2016 after Washington hired him, and by then about half the league had full-time dietitians. Even then, Sankal viewed nutrition as one part of a much bigger performance equation.
“You try to use nutrition as a piece of the puzzle to make an elite athlete better,” Sankal said. “Nutrition is this slice of the pie, but it’s an important one. If you don’t get this slice of the pie then you are missing out on performance.”
That same approach came with him to Florida, where Napier wanted an NFL-style nutrition program. Sankal wasn’t exactly looking for a change, but the timing pushed him toward it.
“I wasn’t looking to leave,” Sankal said. “But at that time the organization just got new owners and a new coaching staff, front office, everything. We didn’t necessarily know our fate.
“It was a time I felt like I could move on and felt like had done great work there, and maybe a new challenge would be the right thing for me.”
Two years later, Napier was out.
“I certainly didn’t expect that,” Sankal said.
Sumrall, though, has wasted no time leaning into what Sankal built.
“Coach Sumrall loves what we do, and he thinks it’s a total game changer,” Sankal said. “It’s something I don’t think he’s had ever quite to this level at the places he’s been.
“Anything we need to do, he’s all about it.”
The work itself is far more detailed than just handing players meal plans. Sankal has built his own system for figuring out the macronutrient split for every position on the field, and he adjusts it as the program changes. Recently, he altered his numbers for wide receivers because of how much they run in Florida offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner’s offense.
GPS data from practice helps him track yardage and player loads, and that information feeds into the nutrition side of the operation.
“We’ve already changed them this year based on our yardage and how much our skill guys are running,” Sankal said. “We realized it in spring ball when I started to see real practices.”
During the season, Sankal sets nutrition goals the way a strength coach might build a workout card. Some players can take in more than 5,100 calories. The program also includes 10 body-composition assessments across the year.
Florida uses an InBody machine to measure body-fat percentage and lean man, while a DEXA scan gives a more exact picture of body composition, bone density and bone structure. At Washington, every player got a blood test to help identify nutritional deficiencies and tailor supplements. At Florida, the cost limits that to 12 blood tests, so Sankal saves them for players who will either have the biggest impact or the biggest nutritional needs.
Supplements matter too, and Sankal even has injury protocols built into the system.
“I’d be shocked if there’s a program that utilizes supplements more than we do,” Sankal said.
For Sankal, it’s all one long, constantly shifting math problem. But it’s not just about the numbers. He sees the nutrition program as part of the structure behind Florida’s work away from the field, and he ties it all to the same bottom line.
“It all come down to winning,” Sankal said. “The offseason we had was incredible because we had so much positive change with their bodies.
“But if we don’t win it doesn’t matter. If we win then great, hopefully that was one of the main factors.”
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