Ben Bartch was the only Division III prospect at the NFL Scouting Combine this year, and the former tight-end-turned-offensive-lineman is turning heads – and stomachs – with his position change. Bartch used an odd smoothie concoction to go from a 250-pound tight end to a 309-pound tackle.
The ingredients? Seven scrambled eggs, a tub of cottage cheese, grits, a generous serving of peanut butter, a banana and Gatorade.
Did Bartch actually enjoy drinking this?
“I enjoyed the results,” Bartch said on The Zach Gelb Show. “Desperate times called for desperate measures.”
The smoothie, while effective, was a work in progress.
“It definitely got better,” Bartch said. “It was an art to perfecting it with the exact combination of peanut butter and Gatorade and banana ratio, but after a while, I kind of enjoyed it. I’ve had much worse things.”
Bartch relied on his coach, and the Internet, to devise the ideal smoothie to achieve his desired results.
“I got a nutrition packet from my strength coach, and I started to research online some really good, healthy, protein-rich ingredients, and essentially I needed to eat them all fast and in massive quantities,” he said. “I decided to blend them all together using Gatorade as my lubricant, so to speak, to get it down and to water it down.”
The smoothie kept Bartch full, at least for a little bit.
“Absolutely,” he said. “You’re full for about an hour-and-a-half to two hours, and then the PB&J encore begins.”
Bartch, a St. John’s University standout, explained his transition from tight end to offensive line.
“The team kind of needed a boost in offensive line, and the coaching staff thought it would be an appropriate idea to ask me to convert,” he said. “The rest is kind of history. I think it was pretty easy [to convince me]. I enjoy playing football, and if it meant I was going to be a starter and to be able to contribute a lot, I was all for it. I was never some big baller with the ball. I was gritty. I was grimy. I liked to think I had pretty good hands. Apparently my coaches didn’t think so as much, and they moved me. But overall I was kind of the guy who did a lot of the dirty work blocking. I really prided myself on that.”
Bartch, who enjoys six-egg omelettes with tomato, spinach and feta cheese for breakfast, no longer drinks the smoothie.
“I don’t,” he said. “I do not. I don’t know if I’d be living if I drank it every single day at this point. No, I don’t have to. I’m not as desperate, no.”