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Football Players? Or Lab Rats Who Can Run and Pass?

Emily Kask for The New York Times

BATON ROUGE, La. — The new training room in the $28 million football operations building at Louisiana State features jetted tubs, antigravity treadmills and sodium-infused water coolers. A room nearby holds another piece of equipment tucked out of sight: a centrifuge.

It is another example of how modern efforts to improve performance in big-time college athletics have moved beyond smoothies and sleep monitors. The centrifuge is used for blood work for injury treatments such as platelet-poor plasma therapy and stem-cell injections.

L.S.U. players also regularly have their sweat analyzed for nutritional deficiencies.