Rice's 42-10 victory over Tulsa last Thursday night was a standard game for Daniel Domian. A strength and conditioning intern for the program, Domian helped clean the locker room, hopped in the shower, grabbed his postgame catered meal and headed to the bus to decompress with the rest of the team.

Once he'd settled into his seat, he checked his phone to find a text from Rice's assistant strength and conditioning coach, Morgen Cote, with a video attached.

"You're famous, kid," the text read.

Aaron Smith, Twitter user @Aaron_Smith95, posted a clip of Domian on the sideline that was going mini-viral. Domian, sporting a Rice polo buttoned to the top, black sunglasses, a fine mustache and a mane of hair tied in a ponytail spilling from underneath his cap, stands with a group of massive football players. With a black-gloved hand, he reaches into a comically large Ziploc bag filled with sour gummy worms and drops a couple each into expectant athletes' open palms, who in turn toss them in their mouths and chomp on them while discussing schematic adjustments for their next drive.

The video already had a couple thousand views when Domian saw it on the bus. By the time they reached the airport, other angles of Domian were getting posted. Domian put his phone in Airplane mode for the flight, thinking it was all pretty cool. Then he landed, turned his phone back on, and realized it'd gotten insane. The views on the original video were climbing into the 30,000 range while popular Barstool Sports podcasts like Pardon My Take and Unnecessary Roughness tweeted it out. 

The concept was funny but compounded by how the football players in the heat of battle nonchalantly interacted with Domian like he was a trainer giving them a shot of water instead of a mustachioed man dishing out gummy worms. They were used to what the entire world witnessed for the first time. Domian was Rice's "Gummy Worm Guy."

"I've been doing this for the past seven or eight weeks, and one dude with his phone just blew me up,” Domian said.

Rice has been passing around some variation of simple carbohydrates on the sidelines since strength and conditioning coach Hans Straub was hired in January 2018. They used applesauce and fruit snacks the first couple of seasons, but the athletes soon grew weary of the same mid-game fuel-ups and started refusing them. Then Rice hired Cote, whom Straub tasked with finding an alternative for players experiencing taste fatigue. Straub looked over one day and saw Cote handing out Sour Patch Kids. Bingo.

The sour gummy worms that Domian passes out aren't just a tasty snack. Players burn through carbohydrates and their glycogen reserves in glycolysis during a grueling football game as they push their muscles. Eating gummy worms provides a quick dose of glucose, which spikes glycogen, which leads to more energy. Plus, a handful of gummies doesn't cause any gastric distress. 

"It's easy to break down in the bloodstream and get to where it needs to go and elevate your blood sugar levels," Straub said. "The same reason why we don't feed it to our kids before bed - 'I'm all hyped up, jazzed up.'"

Domian is actually a senior at Texas A&M who's working with the Rice program this season as part of a nine-hour internship course to finish his degree and graduate in December. His duties include setting up and breaking down weight room workouts three times a week, stocking the nutrition center daily, and making sure everyone's got their gummy worm fill. He lives with his aunt in Houston for the fall while he works for a Division I football program on his path to working in strength and conditioning postgrad.

"I want to get to somewhere where I can help others find their limits and go past them," Domian said.

And those simple sugars help the Rice football players push their limits. But much more work goes into providing those worms than can be gleaned from a Twitter video.

Rice has yet to figure out how to buy the product in bulk to feed its hungry, hungry football team. Instead, Domian spends time before every practice and game ripping open hundreds of individual bags of gummy worms and dumping them into his Ziploc bag.

"We've made Costco very wealthy in the gummy department in the past six to eight weeks," Straub said.

Once on the field, there's a method to the madness. You don't just toss out worms willy-nilly. The fuel each guy gets depends on how long the drive is and their position. The linemen get three to four worms each and also an apple sauce. The defensive backs and receivers get about two. The reserves get two or three a game to stay alert on the sidelines.

Now that he's midway through the season, Domian has a feel for how each guy likes his snack. Left tackle Clay Servin is a gummy gobbler, so Domian has to find him quickly after a drive ends. Wide receiver Rawson MacNeill only eats circular lifesavers, and if Domian gives him a worm, MacNeill will jokingly let out a deep sigh and roll his eyes. JT Daniels is a gummy fan, but he's so focused during games that Domian has to quietly approach him from the side and drop them over his shoulder so the QB can stay locked in.

So what's his secret? How has he honed his craft?

"It's really just God-given talent at this point," Domian said. "You've either got it, or you don't."

His newfound fame has brought interview requests and candy brands like Trolli to comment on videos of him, but now it's time to get back to business. Rice hosts No. 22-ranked Tulane this weekend, and the players need him. Rice must win two of their final five games if they want to go to a bowl game, and they probably need to win out if they want a chance to play for an American Athletic Conference championship.

"I made it very clear as the director of strength and conditioning that we can't lose our guy for a marketing deal," Straub said. "We've got a big game this weekend."