Even though 26-year-old Ryan McKillop retired from professional eating only a mere month ago, the Sacramento State graduate is already hatching a plan for a new competitive eating league.

McKillop is teaming up with two bloggers, Brett Webb and Pat McKinney, who run www.donsturdy.com. McKillop said this is a great blog not only for poker but mainly competitive eating.

“We really want to make something fair for the professional eaters out there,” McKillop said. “Major League Eating restricts you with a three-year contract; you cannot eat in any other contests and you cannot do any challenges. We found a way to do a league without a contract and expand it to challenges and contests.”

McKillop attributed some of his business sense to volunteering for UNIQUE during the four years he attended Sac State.

“While I was working there I started seeing how much concerts cost and could really see the profit potential,” McKillop said. “This (new league) really gives me the opportunity to see what my potential is and expand on it. If this works out, I could easily leave my job.”

McKillop said he was always able to eat a lot of food and still drinks up to 41 cans of diet soda a day.

After winning his first contest at Capitol Dog in 2008, McKillop began entering all the local competitions he could find including a backyard hot dog eating contest. In June of 2009, he signed up for his first Major League Eating contest at the Colusa Casino Resort.

“I came in fourth place and ate about three pounds of cold tri-tip in 10 minutes,” McKillop said. “I wasn’t even full afterwards. I saw what I did and that I could have gotten third if I had done a couple different things.”

When training for a competition, McKillop said he used to start by drinking a gallon of water to stretch out his stomach.

“I try not to do water anymore; I try and use Gatorade because of the electrolytes,” McKillop said. “The water training is dangerous. If you drink too much water, without the electrolytes it will saturate your brain cells to where they cannot communicate.”

According to an MSNBC article, a Sacramento woman died in 2007 during a radio contest “Hold Your Wee for a Wii,” and the coroner’s office said it was from water intoxication.

McKillop said he also began to watch what he ate before a contest and had even become a vegan because meat can stay in one’s system for up to two weeks and he wanted to keep his stomach empty, but stretched.

“I just never broke out of my shell as a competitor,” McKillop said. “Something I learned was, with my job as a sales representative, I am just amazing at business. I can spot an opportunity and I can see profit. It’s not a totally untapped market, but I can see the potential for a new league.”

McKillop said he and his partners are really trying to put the focus on the competitive eaters rather than the sponsors.

“I never made any money off of this thing,” McKillop said. “It would be nice to have something where the eaters have more potential of making money and at the same time have some kind of representation at the contests. I have traveled more than 1,000 miles for a contest and still had to pay for my travel and hotel room. A lot of us do it for fun, but at the same time it’s not fun if it’s going to cost us everything out of our pockets.”

Ben Dewey can be reached at [email protected].