Dave Ellis, RD, CSCS • Veteran Sports Dietitian (Sports RD) • Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach (CSCS) • Major League Baseball and MLB Players Association Joint Registered Dietitian • 719-502-1276

Short Bio

Dave Ellis holds a one-of-a-kind position in sports as the Joint Dietitian for both Major League Baseball (MLB) and the MLB Players Association (MLBPA). The position was created in 2016, when a jointly negotiated clubhouse nutrition policy was added to the collective bargaining agreement (CBA).

Dave was the unanimous candidate for the newly created position, which he has held since its inception. He became a full-time staff member in May 2023 when Minor League Baseball athletes became part of the MLBPA. Dave plays a vital role as part of the MLB and MLBPA Player Health and Safety Team and serves as the central dietitian resource for the MLB Commissioner’s Office.

In 2027, Dave will begin his 45th year of working in sports. His peers recognize him as a true trailblazer who helped launch the sports registered dietitian profession and as a thought leader in the adulterant-mitigation space.

Dave completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Nebraska, where he became the first full-time sports registered dietitian for the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Department of Athletics. His breadth of experience in sports over his career is simply unprecedented (www.daveellisbio.com). Dave’s skill set makes him a uniquely qualified problem solver in the high-performance fueling space.

Dave was a co-founder and the first President of the Collegiate and Professional Sports Dietitians Association, now the American Sports and Performance Dietitians Assn. (ASPDA). He is a committed advocate for Sports Dietitians and for athletes’ health and safety.

Career Highlights:

-May ‘23 finalized negotiations with Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Assocation and arrived in Melbourne Beach FL shortly afterwards for a better location to work from for flights to Dominican Republic and to jump around FL spring training locations when necessary. Official title is Joint Registered Dietitians over Food and Supplement Safety issues. Work with the Health and Safety side of MLB and MLBPA. One of a kind position in sports that evolved from consulting with MLB and MLBPA starting back in 2016. New Minor League (MiLB) collective bargaining agreement stimulated the move to make my consulting position a full-time position with a rapidly expanding role on all things fueling related in the sport of Professional Baseball.

-Aug. '18 I accepted a position to return to Nebraska where I got my start working in athletics in 1982. This is actually the thrd time I have worked at UNL over the course of four decades of work in athetics. I consider it an honor to get back to my athletic roots at a time when Nebraska athletics needed help returning the football program to the consistent winner that emerged during the Tom Osborne era.  You can be sure that all of us who were around during Coach Osborne’s three national titles won’t rest until we have this program back on track. It’s a mission I can pour my soul into because we all owe Tom Osborne.. Like Coach Osborne, Coach Frost and Athletic Director, Bill Moos are all about creating and environment that brings out the best in our student-athletes. All of the support services involved with the high performance mission live by this credo. My office is located in the football weight room next to another Husker athletics veteran in Zach Duval who is the Direct or of Strength and Conditioning. Zach was instrumental in recruiting me back to work at UNL along with Scott Frost. Our long standing tradition at UNL of setting the bar on high perrformance fueling with a self-op training table with the highest operational budget in collegiate athletics made returning to UNL attractive. I have also been tasked with designing a bar setting training table that will continue our tradition of feed all of our student-athletes as part of a new football complex under construction starting spring of ‘20… https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/nebraska-announces-go-big-athletic-facility/

Nov. 28th, ‘22 was my last day with the Huskers and shortly afterwards I was off to work with MLB and MLBPA with a move to FL. Never a dull moment!

-Dec. '16 I accepted a consulting position with Major League Baseball and MLB Players Assn. as the Consulting Sports RD.  It's a one of a kind position in sports to manage the fueling related policies of the latest MLB/PA Collective Bargaining Agreement.  My skill sets in the food and supplement security space are put to the test daily in this new role.  This position demands that I add to my GMP and FSMA training annually and track closely with the anti-doping community.  This position precludes my ability to consult with dietary supplement companies to avoid any conflicts of interest with reviews of products on behalf of MLB/PA.  MLB/PA requested I continue advising them while I am at working at Nebrask athletis, but I have let all my other consulting relationships go to focus on the task at hand in Lincoln NE.

-Since 2001 I have been flying around the US consulting to a pretty remarkable list of teams at all levels of sport.  For the details on that adventure, you can flip through the other pages on this bio website.  My goal as a consultant has always been to help expand the vision of value for a full-time Sports RD of which I have placed many with my clients.  My current role with MLB/PA still allows me the latitude to work with teams, just not individual MLB teams.  My consulting firm is called Sports Alliance Inc. and I own a few trademarks like Fueling Tactics®, Sports Nutrition You Can Trust®, Sports Alliance Inc.®, Making Food Coachable For Over 30 Years!™

-Starting in '82 I got a job working for Nebraska athletics as a freshman in college on the strength side of the operation because I was studying dietetics.  Sixteen years with Nebraska athletics and four with Wisconsin athletics.  Working for Tom Osborne Ph.D. (Dr. Tom) was the highlight of my 20 years working in the collegiate ranks.  Tom was single handily the reason I had a chance to transition to a full-time nutrition role in '94, another first for sports here in the US.  Dr. Tom got the value of fueling his athletes long before the rest of head football coaches.  I can't say enough about Tom's influence on my career.  We all went to work every day with the goal of not letting Dr. Tom down.  He was a High-Performance Director before we had a name for them! The impact of the system speaks for itself… Sporting News ranks 1995 Nebraska as top team ever

Sporting News emphasized the '95 Huskers' dominance en route to a second-straight national championship. Nebraska averaged 52.4 points per game in 1995. The Huskers won every game by 14 points or more and averaged 399.8 rushing yards per game and seven yards per carry.

Nebraska had seven players rush for at least 300 yards on the season, while its defense allowed just 13.6 points per game. The Huskers featured All-Americans Tommie Frazier, Aaron Graham and Jared Tomich, as well as other notable players such as Ahman Green, Lawrence Phillips and Grant Wistrom.

https://cornhuskerswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/cornhuskers/football/2026/08/14/nebraska-football-1995-named-greatest-college-team-sporting-news/91289150007/?

-I routinely spend a couple of hours per day tracking research in the High-Performance fueling space.  It's a genuine curiosity for the ever changing landscape of research that impacts our best practices in sports and what drove my daily quest to make sense of a field that thrives on forward based conjecture.  I routinely attend 5-6 conferences per year to stay up on the research and to get to know the researchers themselves. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, get past what is published and get inside the heads of the researchers because what is published is old news.  If you want to be a thought leader in your profession, wake up daily and seek the truth for what is best for the welfare of your athletes.  To me, that is what defines an authentic stakeholder and leader in the field of athletics.  Dr. Tom instilled that athlete centered focus in me to treat everyone on his roster equally and with respect.

-Sharing key learnings with my profession is something I have also passionate about.  I am an advocate for the positive impact that full-time Sports RDs can deliver for a team and there is no school to develop the skill sets necessary to achieve in sports, but the school of hard knocks that we work in daily.  That is why I help found and served as the first President of the Collegiate and Professional Sports Dietitians Assn. (CPSDA) back in '10.  We needed to cultivate real-life exposures for aspiring Sports RDs so they could understand what they were getting into and the kind of resilience required to achieve in hyper-competitive environments.  The flexibility I had as a consultant allowed me to pour my energy into ramping up CPSDA with the help of one paid Ops position and a nucleus of highly motivated volunteers.  This young groups advocacy achievements were really amazing, but none greater than stimulating the NCAA to deregulate antiquated feeding rules for student-athletes back in '14.  I also helped nudge the MLB Sports RD’s towards getting organized in December of ‘23 after some COVID related delays in that process. They are organized under CPSDA as are the NFL Sports RDs. Today you will find CPSDA leadership at the policy table at every level of sports working to ensure athletes are fueled equitably and safely with conventional foods and dietary supplements that are free of banned substances and adulterants.  As Dr. Tom always said, "be part of something bigger than yourself" and that is just what CPSDA volunteers do.  We pay it forward daily and I still volunteer as one of the Ambassadors for CPSDA.

Ellis Resume Snapshot:
• Graduated Omaha Burke HS ‘81
• Strength Staff UNL Athletics ‘82
• First ACSM Meeting at Northland Regional Chapter ’85
• Graduated UNL  ‘88
• NSCA & SCAN Member ’91-Present
• Strength Staff Wisconsin Athletics ’90-‘93
• Sports Nutrition Director UNL Athletics ’94-‘01
• NSCA  CSCS ‘94
• ACSM Member ’96
• NE LMNT ‘96 –‘99
• UNL Grad School & Completed Dietetic Internship & RD ‘00
• UNL New Achiever Award ‘01
• Started Consulting Practice ’01-Present (Sports Alliance Inc.)
• Level 5 USA Hockey Coach ‘05
• USOC Doc Counsilman Award Finalist ‘06
• USA Hockey NTDP '07

• NSF International Advisor '08-'17
• UK Physiological Society Member ’10

• Egg Nutrition Center Advisor '10-'17
• JCSMS Membership '11
• CPSDA Trailblazer Award ‘13
• Endocrine Society Member ’14
• MLB DR Trip Nov. ’14
• MLB/PA Consulting Sports RD Dec. ’16 -  Present
• American Physiological Assn. Member ’16
• GMP & FSMA Adulteration Certification '16
• US Anti-Doping Education '16
• USA Baseball '17

• NY Islanders Chief Consulting RD '17-'18
• Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance (FSPCA) “preventive 'controls qualified individual” Certification '17

• SafeSport Certification July '17
• Certified Professional - Food Safety (CP-FS) Credential '18

• Back to Nebraska Athletics Full-Time as Director of Performance Nutrition - Aug. '18

• Full-Time with MLB and MLBPA in a one of a kind position as the Joint Registered Dietitian over Food and Supplement Safety, May ‘23

Volunteer / Advocacy Milestone Resume:
• Co-Founder & First President Lincoln Ice Skating Assn. ’88-‘90
• Co-Founder & Board Member Lincoln Ice Hockey Assn. ‘96
• Co-Founded and First President NSCA Nutrition Special Interest Group ’04-07
• First President & Founder of the Collegiate & Professional Sports Dietitians Assn. (CPSDA) ‘10-‘12
• CPSDA Past President & Current Ambassador, May ’13 - Present
• NCAA Feeding Deregulation Jan. ’14
• NCAA 30% Protein Deregulation Jan. ’17
• MLB/PA Mandate Every Team Sports RD April '17
• Taylor Hooton Foundation Board Aug. '17 - Dec. ‘19
 

2022/2023 Milestones & Family:
• 40th Year Of Work In Athletics (45th in 2027)
• Celebrated 35th Wedding Anniversary (5/30/87)
• Turned 60 Years Old (03/30/62)
• Prior to taking the full-time job back at Nebraska Athletics my family and I lived in  Colorado Springs CO since '04.  My wife of 35 plus years, Delynn Sempek Ellis (Omaha Marian) is a skilled editor and stained glass artist. We have three kids, Madelynn, AJ and Clark.  Our youngest, Madelynn Gabel is now married and living in Duluth MN with her husband Darrin Gabel. Second oldest, AJ who got his Masters in Architecture at MT State in Dec. ‘19 and a fully certified and working in Billings MT. Our oldest, Clark has his degree in Educaiton from U. Northern CO Greeley, but makes a living as a graphic artist and musician and lives in Colorado. They all enjoy visiting us at the beach in FL. We landed a wonderful place about 200 paces from the beach in Melbourne Beach FL.