A group of hungry students have used their end-of-the-semester feeding frenzies as an excuse to create an official competitive eating team at the University of Maryland.
In what could be the first collegiate competitive eating club in the nation, founder Keith Solomon rounded up 30 students to sign a constitution which allowed for the group to become a club.
Solomon explained that the "University of Maryland’s motto is 'Fear the Turtle' " and that the "[club] motto is 'Feed the Turtle'."
It all started freshman year when Solomon and his friends realized that their meal plans at the college’s dining hall expired by a certain date. At that point, he and his friends decided they were going to eat every speck of food that their money paid for.
"If you have too many points on your dining plan after a certain date, they just cut whatever you have left," Solomon told AOL News. "So we'd just buy 20 pizzas and all these chicken fingers and devour it all."
But what is the point of a collegiate competitive eating team if there are no other teams around? Solomon, an environmental engineering major, has been trying to gather a network of competitive eating clubs at other colleges that could become their rivals.
It all started as a joke, but Solomon and his friends wanted to make it official, which they did last week.
"We're completely serious about this," he reassured. "We're going to do some practices, then we'll head out to local contests and competitions. When other schools start up these teams, we'll start practicing for the specific events."
Solomon drafted a club constitution that the 30 members would follow during their meetings which "will occur on a regular basis." According to the club’s constitution, the members will begin by "stretching and [a] warm-up lap" followed by "speed training" and "endurance training."
Major League Eating president George Shea explained to AOL News that the creation of this club validates his "sport."
"Finally, we've scaled the ivy-colored walls of academia," he told AOL News. "In the dark past, there was stigma related to this sport. For me to see it come full circle is really a triumph."
Shea isn’t the only one excited about the birth of the competitive eating clubs in college. Competitive eater and Louisiana State University graduate Adrian Morgan told AOL News that he wishes he had an opportunity to participate in a competitive eating club.
"I definitely would have been in it if it was around when I was in college," said Morgan, the 14th ranked eater in the world. "It gives them an outlet to talk to other people about it, get excited about it and even have little events."
Solomon wants the club sport to sprout up throughout the nation and hopes it will someday grow to the level of interest such seen in college basketball and football.
"I'm trying to leave my legacy here," he said.
