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Ruining football.

If any of you like a football team and are from your hometown, well, bad news. None of the players are from your hometown. They change every year, and they switch cities. Say a sandwich is your team. Over time, everything changes. The turkey gets traded to Denver, the tomato gets suspended for dog fighting, and the bread can't close the stadium deal. So, a philosopher would ask "Is it even the same sandwich?" That's what's so weird about being a sports fan. Everything but the name changes year to year, but we still love our team just as much. It's like we're really just a fan of the logo. Oh, the playoffs don't pick which team is best. In fact, the playoffs are a random and chaotic system that's a little better than a coin flip. Which team is better at football and want me to tell you? Gladly. Like I was saying, the playoffs don't do any such thing. In fact, they more or less pick the winner at random. Historically, the team with the best record wins the Super Bowl less than half the time. It's actually more common for a worse team to win. If you're a Giants fan, you would say "My Giants were the champs in 2011, they were number one." Sorry, but no. They were actually number ten. The Giants regular season record that year was nine and seven, the worse record of any team to ever win a Super Bowl. But in the playoffs, they beat the Packers who only lost a single game all year. I hate to tell you this, but the Giants weren't the better team. They were definitely the worst team and they just got lucky. Any team can win a game. The only problem with the playoffs is they have way too small of a sample size. Some would go "Sample size, like Halloween candy?" No. I'll make it easy. Let's compare Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. Over his career, Billy has won six Grammys. Bruce has won twenty. But on February 25th, 1981, Billy beat Bruce for Best Rock Vocal Performance. If you decide the whole contest based on one day in February, Billy wins. It's exactly the same with the playoffs. Just because you win on one day, it doesn't make you a better team. It's luck. Now, a person will go "Okay, Mr. Spreadsheet, fine. Maybe football does have a small sample size. But what about the World Series? Best of seven." Oh, baseball's even worse. It's actually the most random major sport. Since 1995, the team with best regular season record has won the World Series just 16% of the time. A person will say "I don't believe you. You're not a sports nerd, just a regular nerd." Well, maybe you'll believe the ultimate sports nerd, legendary Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane, who once said, quote, "My s**t doesn't work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is f*****g luck." Long story short, you might as well skip the Super Bowl and award the championship to whoever wins the coin flip. "Ladies and gentlemen, the NFL championship is: Heads!" Now a person will say "But I love the playoffs. I get to yell at Joe Buck. You'd be surprised at what his name rhymes with." and "And I like a little randomness in my sports. The playoffs give a person's crappy underdog team a chance to win." Exactly, that's why the playoffs are fun. Because that's when the objectively worse underdogs can beat their athletic superiors. Face it, we don't like sports because they're rational. We like them because they're random and make no sense.

Dehydration is largely an overblown marketing myth. I'll tell you everything you know about dehydration is wrong. Actually, the risk of dehydration is way overblown. In America, we've become obsessed with the dangers of dehydration. People think that if they're not constantly drinking water, they risk death. But that fear is totally baseless. Some will go "Yeah, right. Everyone knows you have to drink 8 glasses of water a day." Yeah, everybody knows that but it's not true. No study has ever shown or even claimed that. It's just something people say. Does water prevent cramps? Where'd you hear that from? No matter because you never heard it from science, science says that it's not true. How much are you supposed to drink? You can just drink when you're thirsty. Our body's already possess an extremely sensitive measure of dehydration. It's called thirst. As long as we drink when we feel thirsty, we really won't dehydrate. That's how humans have done it for millions of years, and it's worked out fine. The fact is, truly dangerous levels of dehydration are incredibly rare and only occur in cases of extreme sickness or isolation. As long as you have free access to water and you drink when you're thirsty, you'll be fine. Why do you do this to yourself? Hmm, maybe because beverage companies have spend decades drowning us in ads like these: "Hardworking dehydration, keep at it." "Hydrate the hustle." "G2 from Gatorade, the low-calorie off-field hydrator." "Lucozade Sport hydrates and fuels you better than water." "'Cause the more water you drink, the better you'll feel. Drink more water." These companies have consistently portrayed dehydration as a serious threat for one simple reason--it gets us to drink more. The International Bottled Water Association publishes a hydration calculator that can recommend you drink two liters of water a day. Dasani tells you that hydration is healthy so, drink up, preferably Dasani. Paid spokesman Dustin Pedroia says he always hydrates with Vita Coco because it prevents cramps, even though it doesn't. And in 'Runner's World' magazine, Gatorade ran an ad masquerading as an article titled "Hydration 101". It included tips like "drink early and often", "don't wait until you feel thirsty" and "always drink sports drinks on long runs". Some people will say "But that's real science right?" Ah, here is where it gets sticky. That ad was sponsored by the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, which was founded by Gatorade in 1985. Its scientific mission? To discover exciting new reasons people should drink their product. "Our unbiased study found that people should drink a lot of Gatorade." "Terrific work, alert the media!" "We also may have found a cure for cancer." "Was it Gatorade? Damn it! Get back to me when it's Gatorade!" Gatorade also sponsors sports science research at universities across America, and this can influence their findings. The American College of Sports Medicine once recommended..."When exercising, you should drink as much as tolerable." Other companies soon followed suit. Evian's parent company founded Hydration for Health, a group that promotes healthy hydration habits by sharing scientific research. "Important research, everybody! Drink Evian! Science says so." And, after decades of bad science and marketing, we now believe dehydration is a dire threat. Now, a person will say "Well, it's not like drinking too much liquid's gonna kill anybody." Actually, that's exactly what it can do. All this scaremongering over dehydration has created an entirely different problem: overhydration. "Phooey. You drink hard, you pee hard." Not if you're exercising. Exercise stops you from peeing by putting your body in water conservation mode. And if you overhydrate then, all that extra fluid has nowhere to go. It's called Exercise Associated Hyponatremia and it can be deadly. In a study of the 2002 Boston Marathon, nearly one-sixth of the runners studied were found to have hyponatremia. These runners drank so much liquid during the race, that by the finish line, they had actually gained weight. "And she wins by a belly." Okay, now, that's a joke, but this is a serious problem in sports. At least 12 athletes have died from overhydration. It's terrible and it's true. Overhydration is dangerous. Most researchers think that it's the marketing of the beverage industry that's responsible for the surge in fluid overlord hyponatremia. Death by hyponatremia is extremely rare. The truth about concussions is really interesting.

A person will go "Hey, before you get started, okay. We known a plenty about concussions. They talk about on Sports Center and they've instituted all these new rules. The NFL is on it, problem solved!" Problem not solved, because the truth is everything you know about football and brain injuries is wrong.

The NFL claims to take concussions seriously. But the rate of diagnosed concussions keeps rising and those are just the ones we know about. Concussions-2014/206 & 2015/266. The truth is, our national conversation about brain injuries in football misses the point entirely, because concussions are just the tip of the iceberg. The brain disorder found in football players is called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or C.T.E., and here's the hard truth, it's not just caused by concussions. Really. It's also caused by the tiny run-of-the-mill hits that happen dozens of times a game. These are totally routine tackles and plays that happen over and over again in every game, especially to linemen. But research now shows that even little hits like these cause C.T.E., which can lead to lifelong memory loss, aggression, depression, dementia, anxiety, and even suicide. Now, few people will say "Hold up, hot shot. How do tiny little baby hits like that cause dementia?" Good question. Unfortunately, it's true. C.T.E. isn't just caused by concussions. It's also caused by the small sub-concussive hits that build up over time. If you play football at any level, the chronic hits to the head will cause brain damage. A person will say "Well, that's easy, why don't they just build better helmets?" That will never work. When the body and head suddenly stop, the brain stretches, breaking its internal structures. Unless you can fit a helmet inside your skull, there is no way to stop it. Some people will go "Yeah, but that can't happen to, like, anybody, right?" Unfortunately, it does. People have discovered C.T.E. in over 96% of former professional players' brains they studied. The fact is, their research shows that it's practically impossible to play football without suffering irreversible brain damage. The NFL does know about this. In fact, the NFL has admitted that playing football is linked to C.T.E.. They just don't take it seriously. When asked whether football was dangerous, NFL Commissioner Rodger Goodell said "There's risk in life. There's risk to sitting on the couch." I don't know about you, but if my couch was giving brain damage to 96% of the people who sat on it, I would throw out that couch. But hey, I guess it's easy to ignore the truth when you're getting paid 34 million bucks a year to protect the status quo. A few would go "Well, the players are millionaires, too. I'd take that risk for that kind of cash." Oh yeah, NFL players can make their own decisions. They're adults. But you know who can't? Kids. Yeah. Forgot about the children, did you? There are less than 2,000 current NFL players, but more than 1,000,000 high school students play the game, as well as hundreds of thousands of straight-up kids. Children's brains are especially susceptible to brain damage. The truth is the brain isn't even finished developing until age 25. It's difficult to say this but children simply should not be allowed to play football. Isn't that a little overboard? Well, why don't you ask the players.

Troy Aikman-If I had a ten-year old boy, I don't know that I'd be real inclined to encourage him to go play football.

Mike Ditka-If you had an eight-year old kid now...would you tell him you'd want him play football? I wouldn't. And my whole life was football.

Harry Carson-Especially me, knowing what I know now, there--there's absolutely no way, no way in hell would I do it all over again.

Look, it's hard to hear the game we love is killing people and hurting kids. But it's true. There's another way to play football. It's true, if we keep playing football the same old way, players will keep dying, parents will pull the next generation of athletes out of the sport, and the game we love will slowly fade from prominence just like boxing and horse riding did. Tastes do change. But they don't have to. We can save football just by changing it. Now, people will go "Like how? You just said almost all hits cause brain damage. So what, we ban tackling and get rid of linemen?" I mean, yes, that would work. "But that won't be football." Yeah, that's exactly what they said back in 1905. Back then, the sport was so violent, the college players were getting trampled to death. There were 18 deaths nationwide that year alone. "Yes! The sport was far too brutal, even for me, Teddy Roosevelt! That's why I insisted football legalize a forward pass. It made the game safer by opening up the field. Yes, that made the game fundamentally different forever, but it was still football." It seems hard but we have choice: we could either do the hard thing and make real changes to the game, or we can keep ignoring the problem, and in 50 years from now football will be dead. Why is the one part that's killing people the part we decided we have no power over? Let's change sport we love by changing it for the better.

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