Most college students have the luxury of setting their own bedtimes. University of Pittsburgh football players are excluded from such freedoms.
In fact, their bedtimes aren't just handed to them -- they're enforced by one of their dormitory mates.
The man in charge? Head football coach Pat Narduzzi.
"I feel like I'm back in college!" said Narduzzi, according to a feature in The Wall Street Journal. A first-year coach bunking with his players might sound like an effort to create a chemistry within the team, but Narduzzi's reasoning is far more practical.
He wants his players to get enough sleep every night. Sleeping in the same building as them helps establish those sleep hygiene habits. And Narduzzi's concern doesn't merely lie with the trouble players can find when out late at night. He's leaning on science that encourages his athletes to get healthy amounts of sleep every night.
Across the college football landscape, one of the hottest statistics among its head coaches concerns the number of hours players sleep on a given night. Coaches are pulling out all the stops to make sure their student-athletes are well-rested.
Narduzzi's strategy is to enforce a lights-out policy in the dorms. Other coaches are more intensive in their approach: Tennessee's Butch Jones brought in sleep coaches to help the team through summer football camp, and sensors are hooked up to players to measure the quality of their sleep.
At the University of Houston, head coach Tom Herman schedules time for afternoon naps.
"We dived into the science of that a little bit," Herman tells the WSJ. "Nowadays you've got to tell them how [a lack of sleep] negatively affects your body and performance."
Narduzzi's approach is simpler -- lights are out every night at 10:30. He says proof of his program's success is out on the field. In such a competitive landscape, every extra bit makes a difference.
Northwestern began experimenting with sleep schedules in 2012.