StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - NCAA – March Madness, Money, and Minds

Episode Date: March 29, 2018

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Investigate the money, minds, and madness of the NCAA with hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice. Featuring bracketologist Chris Dobbertean, author Andrew Zimbalist, neuroscientist Heather Berlin, and sport psychologist Leah Lagos.Photo Credit: 3dfoto/iStock. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Knight. And this is Playing With Science. It's late March, so it's simple. We're all still bonkers. Our brackets are busted, we've lost a bundle, and our productivity has tanked. But if your bracket is still intact and you're facing a perfect Final Four,

then you, my friend, are in the money. Yeah, and that's probably not what's happening at all. And giving us a thought-provoking view on the state of the NCAA and the socioeconomic impact of March Madness, we will have renowned sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, co-author of the recent book, Unwinding Madness, What Went Wrong with College Sports and How to Fix It. Yeah, that's going to be interesting to hear what he has to say. And then bringing us an inside track on a player's psychology and their coping mechanisms will be neuroscientist Dr. Heather Berlin and sports psychologist Dr. Leah Lagos. Yeah, but that's not all.

Our good friend, bracketologist Chris Daubertine, who is the author of Blogging the Bracket and also works for SB Nation. He is here right now to tell us all about what's going on in the NCAA tournament. Chris, my friend. Welcome back. And are we nuts yet? Are we completely nuts now after everything that's happened? Yeah, I think so.

Tonight, you know, Friday, we go into the second half of the Sweet 16, which will be a little bit calmer because it's not the wild side of the bracket. That was the Thursday night, which you're going to see playing for the national championship in San Antonio on the first Monday in April, one of Michigan, Florida State, Loyola Chicago, and Kansas State. Michigan's the only one of those teams that's actually ever, Michigan and Loyola Chicago have both won national championships. Michigan's last came in 1989. Loyola is way further back. You have to go all

the way back in the 1960s. Curiously, Loyola is the only team in Illinois to ever win a national championship. So, you know, Northwestern, you know, made the term for the first time last year. Illinois has never won one. DePaul has never won one. Will Loyola win? Will Loyola win? Come on, Sister Jean. Sister Jean. Everybody loves this sister. Now, by the way, Chris, and everyone listening, we are talking to Chris before the Elite Eight starts and before the second half of the Sweet 16 starts.

So we only know the first half of the Sweet 16 as we speak. But with that in mind, is Loyola going to be there? Because that's all everybody cares about at this point. I think Loyola has a really good shot to be there on a week from Saturday in the Final Four. I think that the matchup against Kansas State is one that they can actually take. And then, you know, we'll see what happens

if they can actually win the two games to win the national championship in San Antonio. The competition will be a lot tougher simply because of what's out there on the other side of the bracket, potentially waiting in the national championship game. So as we speak right now, how many number ones are left? The only number one seeds we have left are two. They're on the other side. They're on the Friday side, and that's Kansas in the Midwest and Villanova in the East. Right, so Nova is still, and they're defending right my favorite juke oh juke is

for some reason i put a j in there when you're english you say there's a silent j i have to go and take a juke oh i don't know what that means however sounds wrong um very well i'm like five years old. What is wrong with me? Okay. Do they have a shout? I mean, they're a second seed. Do they have a shout in this big time? Oh, very much so.

Very much so, especially in that region. They play Syracuse in their Sweet 16 game on Friday night, a team that they beat pretty handily in Durham. But the thing is, is that they end up having to play Kansas and Omaha in the regional final. That could be a little bit difficult because Omaha is not that far from Kansas' campus. So I want to ask you something about this because you're a basketball guy too. All right. What's going on with the foul shooting, bro?

Seriously. Like, what is the deal? I watched that Kansas game or Kansas State game. Okay. Like, what is the deal? I watched that Kansas game or Kansas State game. OK. And Kentucky should have been up by at least five. If they shot 50 percent, if they only shot 50 percent from the line, they would have been up by five and the game would not have gone down to the wire. What is the deal with this poor foul shooting in this tournament? I think that it's teams not really focusing on it in practice, and that's something that you really kind of have to think of,

especially when you get into these games. There were an absorbent amount of fouls called in that Kansas State-Kentucky game, and you would think that if you're going to know that these officials are calling the games pretty closely, which when you get in the NCAA tournament they do, you're going to spend more time working on your foul shots because you're going to end up spending more time on the foul line and those points are going to be more and more important. So I don't understand why that's not really more of a point of emphasis for coaches and going into future seasons. Maybe they should be because i don't see you know games being called any looser than they

are you know when the stakes are this high okay let me let me throw in another scenario here the pressure that it's now been created because so many number one seeds, so many top seeds are blown out early. The guys left are feeling an inordinate amount of pressure. And every time they're stood there, and Chuck and I were discussing, they're going to sit there with a basketball in their hands and they're looking as if they're trying to throw it through something the size of a dime. And that just crowds the head. And we'll get into the psychology of this later on in the show. But it must really, because how often have these young players been in this particular situation and had all of this other good stuff go on without them having to throw a pass? Yet they're finding themselves in this position and they're getting crushed.

And you bring up a very good point, especially when you talk about Kentucky, because that's a squad that is pretty young. It's a fresh dominated team they're not used to really kind of dealing you know with that pressure and you know and it's a lot of pressure because you're playing you're Kentucky you're playing in Atlanta it's a virtual home game it's right down I-75 for those guys you know for those fans so it's it was a pressure-packed environment last night so yeah you know the youth and that pressure really, I think, combined to make that an issue for Kentucky. All right, buddy. So here's the deal. Today is Wednesday, and we are looking at the final four, okay? And now for those of you

who are listening, I say that because that's how you're hearing this show. But the truth is, today is Friday, and we're not even finished the Sweet 16. Okay, so time travel. Let's time travel, Chris, and here's what I want you to do. Give us the final four and then give us your championship game based upon who is left right now. Alright, based on

Friday afternoon, and we've done this in the past, so this has the potential to be very, very, very wrong. Yes. Extremely wrong. No one cares. It's going to be worse than my Sweet 16 predictions, I'll tell you that now. Yeah, exactly. We're going to go out of the Saturday games with both Loyola and Michigan. Michigan is, of course, one of the few Final Four teams from my actual original bracket still alive, so I'm going to stick with them. And I think Michigan will take out Loyola. I think Michigan, their offense right now is just so

it is running so... It is running so smoothly. It didn't run so smoothly the first weekend. Ran very smoothly on Thursday night against Texas A&M. I think they have a great shot. So they'll be in the final. Let me stop you right there. Let me stop you right there. On behalf of Sister Jean, you go to hell and you die.

All right. Continue. I remember Sister Jean had them going out in the Sweet 16, so she even underestimated her own team. This is true. Yeah. On the other side, I'm going to go with Villanova and Kansas with the two number ones going through. Ooh. Yeah. Nice.

Yeah. Villanova and Kansas, and I think that Kansas will have a little bit more than Villanova. And then in the championship game, I think Kansas will end up taking down Michigan. Well, there you have it, people. And listen, that's as good a prediction as you can get because every prediction is exactly the same. Okay, so after all of the upsets, Chris predicts the number one seed wins. I love it. Hey. Yeah, I love it. All right, so, well, let's see. By the way, that's smart money. That's smart money seed wins. I love it. Hey. Yeah, I love it.

All right, so, well, let's see. By the way, that's smart money. That's smart money the way you just did it. You know, everybody wants Loyola to win it all, but the truth of the matter is the smart money is on the number one seed. So, I like what you did there. We got to go. We do.

Chris Dobatine, thank you so much. Been a pleasure. Thanks, guys. All right, buddy. We'll see you later. Okay, next up, Professor. All right, buddy. We'll see you later. Okay. Next up, Professor Andrew Zimbalist. He is going to give us an inside track into the NCAA.

Is it busted? Is it broken? Is it flawed? Can we fix it? Andrew, welcome to the show. Or should I call you Professor? Which would you prefer? How about Andy?

Andy is even better. Thank you. I like that. I'm going with Professor Andy. Yeah, so Professor Andy has been at Smith College since 1974, has consulted in the sports industry for players, associations, cities,

companies, teams, leagues, and probably a few other things as well. Author of just 26. Just 27. Or is it 27 books? Yeah, just 27. I said i was 26 years old yeah that's that's not the wish list i've done one one book per year since i was born there you go and you're a slacker man 26 yeah such a slacker we must mention a book that's relevant to march

madness unwinding madness what went wrong with college sports and how to fix it. Yeah. And how to fix it. So Chuck, get in with the first question and we'll move on from there. Yeah. So the first thing, uh, when you talk about unwinding March Madness, the first thing I'd like to know is, so I look at the NCAA as a business, like, uh, like the NFL, like a cartel. What exactly is the NCAA? Yeah, I think it's fair to say it's a cartel. You know, there are about 1,100 schools nationally that belong to the NCAA. And as you know, the NCAA is divided into three divisions. Division one has 350 schools. They're the largest schools and the ones that have the largest sports programs.

Division one is then subdivided into three subdivisions. One is called the FBS or the Football Bowl subdivision that has about 128 colleges. They are the most serious athletic schools within Division one. And FBS is divided into at least two divisions. One of them is the Big Five or the Power Five conferences, which has 65 schools. And in fact, those 65 schools and the Power Conferences pretty much run the NCAA. The NCAA sets a bunch of rules. Many of those rules are limiting in terms of what the marketplace would do. They tell schools that they can't pay the players. The players are supposed to be students and supposed to be

amateurs. They tell the schools how many hours a week they're supposed to be allowed to practice, how many games per year they're supposed to be allowed to play. And so they set a lot of rules. Many of them are economically related that they wouldn't be able to set if they were rules, although they don't have free reign. Back in 1984, the Supreme Court said that the NCAA football television contracts were illegal because they were a restraint of trade. But basically, a cartel is when independent producers come together and they act like one producer. And that's what happens with the NCAA. So it is a cartel. I remember reading just recently that the kentucky basketball program was costing something like 342 million dollars is there that's too much that i don't that not for one year it doesn't cost that no i could i can i i thought that too so thank you for clarifying yeah okay

so if we take that number out ask a generic question is there a ceiling on the amount any college or university can spend on its program? And well, is there is there a restriction on the percentage of money that relative to the amount of money that they make or relative to the services that they provide the other students in the school? For instance, if I had a college and I wanted to say the only reason I have this college is so I can have this awesome basketball team, could I screw all the students who go to that college and throw all my efforts and money into that basketball team or that football team? Yes, you could. Oh my God. You're going back to college. I'm starting a business. I found my new business. When you ask questions about percentage, it sounds like you're asking if there's a salary cap, which, of course, is what they have in basketball and football and in hockey.

Yes. There's a certain percentage of total revenues that goes to the players. Right. However, in the NCAA, the amount of revenue that goes to the players is zero. Basically, they're not allowed to receive salaries. They do get scholarships. They do get cost of attendance, supplements to those scholarships. They get some other benefits, but they're not allowed to receive a salary. And so a salary cap or any percentage of revenue rules wouldn't make any sense.

Wow. What about a coach? Is there a ceiling on a coach's salary? I know the answer. Unfortunately, there is no such ceiling. College presidents at NCAA schools get, say, between $300,000, $700,000, $800,000 a year. And the coach's salaries go up, as we've read, up to $10, $11 million a year, plus very nice perquisites and bonuses, opportunities for outside income. Professor Andy, step back.

$10 to $11 million a year? They go up that high, yes. They go up that high? Wow. I think Nick Saban is $11 million this year. Yeah, that makes sense. That's right. I think you're right.

You know, but when you look at it, when you look at the type of success that these coaches have exhibited throughout different programs, I guess from a business standpoint, if I'm running the college program, it makes sense to me to hire somebody who's going to bring in the wins because bringing in the wins brings in the television contracts that brings in the money. So, you know, it promotes the program. Therefore, you're so fulfilling the prophecy of attracting better talent on an ongoing basis. Yeah, it still doesn't make it right. However, let me chime in here.

Go ahead. Yeah, yeah, do. It's quite possible. And one could make the argument that Nick Saban this past year generated an increment in revenue for the University of Alabama of $11 million. I don't know what that number is. It could be more than 11, could be less, but it's a reasonable argument that you can make. He brings the team to the football championship playoff, brings them to the final game. Sometimes he brings them to the national championship, gets a lot of attention,

and a lot of donations and other money comes into the program in large measure because of Nick Saban. So I think you could make that argument for Nick Saban. And there are probably a handful of others in basketball and in football where you can make that argument. You can't make that argument, though, for the schools that have, say, winning percentages below 500. The schools that don't make it to March Madness. Schools that don't make it to the FCP, the football championship playoff. These are coaches who still might be getting $2 million, $6 million, some other number that's up in the millions of dollars a year. They have assistant coaches who are getting that kind of money.

They're not generating that money. The reason why coaches are getting paid that is because the players are not getting paid. So the coaches are fundamentally being paid for the value that's is because the players are not getting paid. So the coaches are fundamentally being paid for the value that's created by the players they recruit. If the players were paid, there's no way the coaches would be getting that kind of salary. If you look at the salaries of the coaches in the NFL, that NFL has 32 teams, of course. Compare that to the top 32 coaches' salaries in FBS, part of Division I. You see that the salaries are almost identical, small variations. And probably the college coaches have

more perquisites than the professional coaches. Yet, the NFL teams are generating on average something like $300 million a year. And the top 32 teams in the FBS are probably generating somewhere on the order of $70, $80 million a year, maybe one third, one fourth the amount in the NFL. How could the coaches be being paid the same if the revenue that their organization generates is one fourth of that in the NFL? So is the system broken? Even though you can say Nick Saban might in a particular year earn it, or you could point to somebody else who might, it doesn't mean that the system is evaluating these guys according to their economic worth.

Well, Professor Andy, it sounds to me like you would be an advocate for paying players. No. You would not be an advocate for paying players. All the money should come to the professors, particularly the... No, I'm not. Let me say, wait, let me stop you. That was the best

argument I have ever heard against paying college players anything. All the money should come to the professors. Because they've said it, not me. Okay, so the professors know what to do with the money, the students wouldn't. No it not me okay so the professors know what to do with the money the students wouldn't skip on from that all right so let me look yeah go ahead look here my my position on the players is that they're exploited and there should be very serious

structural reforms but i i think rather than paying players we should be talking about educating players which is what purportedly is supposed to be happening at American universities. Absolutely. So if you want to abandon the educational model and you want to turn college sports into a minor league system, you know, triple A baseball, then sure, let's pay the players. But as long as we're using the branding and the umbrella of education, let's first make sure that they get an education. So I would say, look, what is an amateur? An amateur, in common understanding, I think, this is not what the NCAA says. They have their own silly definitions that keeps changing

year to year. But the common understanding of an amateur is somebody who does an activity and doesn't get paid for doing that activity. So if you play basketball and you don't get paid, you're an amateur basketball player. I think with that definition, and which this is what college sports and the NCAA insist upon, with that definition of amateurism, all you have to do is say, we're not going to pay you a salary for playing, but you can go out and use your names, images, and likenesses or your publicity rights, make deals with Nike, make deals with some EA, and likenesses or your publicity rights. Make deals with Nike. Make deals with some EA, Electronic Arts, or some other company and get paid publicity rights. You also are entitled to have free medical care, which they don't have today in U.S. colleges.

And you're entitled to a lot of other benefits. So I think the system needs reform. The exploitation of college athletes at the top level needs to be changed. But moving directly to a professional model, as long as we're using the umbrella and the branding of college sports, is not appropriate. Yes. Let me just say this. Let me just stop. I'm going to stop you there because you're very passionate.

I know this. Everything you say, I think we agree with. By the way, Gary is a former professional soccer player. And you've got young college athletes that aren't far off becoming major league, NBA, NFL players. They're almost at that standard. You see players from last year's March Madness playing in the NBA now. So they were never that far away. So if you're looking at an equity of standard, it's there. Not every player, but it's certainly there in certain cases.

I think what you're talking about is a system that is best flawed and possibly broken. It is broken. And I'm going to agree with you, Professor. What we need is a broader debate with people like your good self to address the parity between coaches and the players. Maybe the players don't get paid immediately, but there could be a fund set up for them at a certain period of time that they could access after. I don't know. With respect to that, and here's my solution. Here's the deal. You need to allow players who are on

scholarship to attend school whenever they want period so you play if you put in a certain amount of time at a school on that court you get to come back to that school when you are not a student even when it's over and go to school for free and get an education for free that's the real answer here because that's what you're supposed to be in school for in the first place. I think that's a significant part of the answer, and it's something that we recommend in Unwinding Madness. Yeah. Okay, cool. Let's move on really quickly. The idea that March Madness supposedly causes $4 billion of lost productivity in the first week of the bracket.

Is that just some news story that they like to float out there every year for people to go, what? Or is that real? Well, I guess you can make that argument for any form of having fun or relaxing, can't you? And nonetheless, we do it. We do it. What about adding up all the value we lose because people play golf? They can be working in a factory or working in the office place.

At the end of the day, doing the stuff that you like to do helps helps you feel productive, helps you emotionally, helps you live longer. So I'm not sure that I would I put a great deal of stock in either the actual estimate that they're making or in the notion that this is something that harms the economy and we should worry about it. And with respect to playing golf, there's no need for you to attack our president. Thank you. Anyway, no, I'm joking. Is it as simple as... As long as he doesn't kick his golf ball into the fairway,

I have nothing to say about it. Okay, at least at last we have some etiquette. If we took the money out of March Madness, would that be the solution or create more problems than it did in solving just one? Well, you know, almost all the money in March Madness is money that the NCAA depends upon to run its show. And then they distribute about $250 million of it to the universities according to how many games they win in the March Madness. This is money that helps fund the university programs, almost all of which run in substantial deficit, by the way. And this is money, because it helps fund those programs,

also helps funding the coaches and their salaries that we talked about, and also helps to fund the elaborate, more and more elaborate facilities that are being built, arenas, stadiums, training centers, tutoring centers, and so on. So you can take money out of it. That's fine. And colleges would have to tone down their expenditures. It would be a very, very different system than what we have right now. But I think that rather than saying, don't pay the NCAA for broadcasting March Madness,

I think we should look at the underlying structural features of college sports and concentrate on reforming those. Nice. Yeah, that's great. We are out of time. You are fascinating. Professor Andrew Zimbalist, fascinating thank you because there is so much more we can mine yeah in here and with your knowledge of all college sports and other sports

so uh if you would be our guest again that would be fabulous i'd love to do that it's fun to talk to you guys thanks for having me coming up next to help us get inside the athlete's head and understand what it's like to cope with that kind of pressure we'll have neuroscientist dr heather berlin and sports psychologist dr leah legos and don't go away welcome back i'm gary o'reilly and i'm chuck nice, of course, is Playing With Science. We're talking March madness. As mad as a March hare. Well, that's just me, really.

And joining us now is neuroscientist Dr. Heather Berlin, our very good friend, Dr. Heather Berlin. Friend of the show and StarTalk all-star and cognitive neuroscientist and assistant professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Wow, that's a mouthful. Heather, how are you? Yes, how are you? Let's get our manners right.

I want to discuss what happens in the brain when we are under enormous pressure. What makes people choke or some rise to the occasion? This is a natural phenomenon we see time and time again. But in this particular case, the NCAA March Madness. So we're talking with young collegiate basketball players, not seasoned NFL season, NBA or Major League Baseball superstars, but young college athletes. Yeah. And so you'll see, like what Gary just said, the young unseasoned player is really the big key here. You'll see these guys throughout the season.

They are killing it. And then in this one game where it's all on the line, it's a completely different player. It's like, what the hell happened? This kid's supposed to be the best thing ever. So what's going on in the brain from a neurological standpoint, Heather? Yeah, please. So what happens with athletes is that initially, when you're learning, when you're training,

you're really consciously focusing on the skill set, right? You're doing these drills and you're, ultimately what you're trying to do is get so good at it that it becomes implicit, that it becomes unconscious, that your body just knows how to throw the ball in the right way. Because if you have to consciously think about it and break it down, actually it ruins your performance. So the idea is you get to a state where your body, it's sort of a muscle memory,

understands the physics and the dynamics so well that you don't need to think about it. And when you get to that state, when it becomes implicit and automatic, then if you bring in consciousness and start to think about it and start reactivating your prefrontal cortex you actually mess up your performance and that flow state so one of the key aspects that many athletes talk about is that when they're in this flow state and they're letting their body just kind of do what they've trained it to do they lose their sense of self and time often and place and they're just in the moment. And that's when

everything is working right. But what can re-engage the prefrontal cortex is if you start to think about your own performance in the moment, how am I doing? What are people thinking? You become too self-aware. It re-engages the prefrontal cortex. It takes your brain out of that automatic system and you lose the flow state and you mess up your performance. And so when you have a seasoned athlete, they've become, uh, they've almost habituated to the fact that there's all this pressure and people watching and they can still get into the flow state, even with all the cameras on and all the people. But if you're new to this and that's a kind of relatively novel situation,

they have trouble not being self-aware. And that's when their performance, that's when they start to choke. It's when the thought in your head becomes, oh my God, there's all these people. What are they thinking? How am I doing? Am I going to mess this up? And that in itself will mess up your performance. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy so it's chemically chemically what changes because we know that the the external influences the thought that oh i can't i didn't miss but chemically something must be happening to to to all of a sudden uh it's as if all of a sudden there's a chemical roadblock on the synapsis for you to have this flow i don't know maybe this is the wrong analogy but please is there a change and an imbalance of some sort chemically? It's less chemical than I would say, um, functionally the types of networks that are active. So I'd say in these high stakes situations,

yeah, there's always going to be a huge amount of adrenaline and cortisol, you know, and, and, and everything is going at kind of high, high octane, right? It's like a fight or flight response and you're engaged in that. And that I don't think changes. However, I think some people can either, uh, dampen it down. So they remain cool and calm and collected even when they're in these states where there's high cortisol and adrenaline. So that's one aspect of it. But it's about the types of circuits that are being activated in the mind. So when things are automatic and unconscious near the flow state, you're getting these subcortical areas like the basal ganglia that are active.

And when you start getting prefrontal cortices areas that become more active, it kind of messes up that circuitry where things were automatic. So I would say it's more of a change of pattern of activation than it is necessarily a change in sort of the chemical composition in the brain. I love it. I love it. I love it. What you really just said in neuroscientific terms is you're overthinking it. Absolutely. You don't need to know about the biomechanics of the brain to know that this is just, just, you know, let yourself go. That's really the simplest advice you can give to an athlete is just the moment you

find yourself because starting to think, to overthink it, you got to to try to switch out of that brain state somehow or that thought pattern. And, you know, you don't even need to know what's happening in the brain. It's just change your thoughts and then the behavior will follow. Wow. That's great. But there's TV cameras and there's not one or two. There's a dozen. Your whole family, the college, the university, your future as an NBA player.

The family, the college, the university, your future as an NBA player. And they're all screaming at the top of their voice in your head. And you're trying to put the rock through the hoop. Well, you want fame? Here's where you start paying for it. Fame, I'm going to live. Okay. All right.

We got to go. That's what distinguishes the really the best athletes, that it's not just the physical prowess or their agility or their speed or their accuracy. It's that plus the ability to be able to perform under pressure. Absolutely. And that highest level is probably what distinguishes. I mean, those people that can't get over that hurdle and they always crack, even though they might be the best in terms of physically speaking, if you can't get over that psychological aspect, you're not going to make it to the big leagues. So I think that's critical in being an athlete. It's not just the physical, but it's the mental aspect as well that you can master.

Oh my God, that is a perfect segue because we're going to now talk to a sports psychologist, Dr. Leah Lagos. And so you have given us the perfect means or entry point to speak to her. So thank you so much, Dr. Heather Berlin. Heather Berlin, as always. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. It's a pleasure.

So joining us now in the studio is Dr. Leah Lagos. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. You're fabulously welcome. And you are a clinical sports psychologist. Correct. All right, cool. So picking up from Dr. Berlin about choking, where would you see it from the way that you approach this particular sport or any sport? I love the question. And I view it from a psychophysiological perspective, both from the mind and the body, that we can have players of any level, discipline, gender, skill set, and anxiety, which shifts the physiology.

It tightens the muscles. It changes your focus. It adds busy brain, muddles your thinking. Gary is pointing at me right now because that right there is a very, very apt description of who I am all the time. Unless he's traveling. So we should talk. Unless I'm doing about $1.65 on a Ducati down I-95. And it can undo countless hours of training and practice.

And I've seen this happen at an amateur level. I've worked with people at a collegiate level and even all the way up to the NBA where this can happen as well. So from a psychological standpoint, how do you cope with somebody who is having this anxiety issue? Let's just take since we're talking about the NCAA and the Final Four here. What we saw in many of these games throughout the tournament is a foul shooting. OK, I don't get it because it's the one time where no one's in your face. You have all the time in the world. You can go through whatever routine you want to go through. You know how some guys, they bounce the ball six times.

They stomp one foot. They spin the ball in their hand three times, and then they boom and go through the shot. You can do whatever you want. Okay, you can shoot it underhand. And these guys are missing more foul shots than you could ever. I mean, seriously. You're a fan. If you're actually there, you might as well be naked, right,

in front of every person that's important to you in the world, every person that's going to be important to you in the world. And as the good doctor says, busy, busy brain. This whole thing is there. And these are college students. They've never been here before. They're not battled hard. They're not just going to look at that crowd and see those TV cameras and go, yeah, been here, done that.

And guess what? It's not just a cognitive response or the worrying and thinking. It starts with their physiology. Okay, that's interesting right there. You're saying, wait a minute. So that's a bubble up approach you're taking. This is bubbling up. It's not trickling down.

It's not top down. Wow. The physiology of this? Well, there's a survival response that kicks in. And it's meant to help us. I mean, if we're in the middle of an intersection and a car is coming at us,

do we want to be leisurely strolling to the sidewalk? Or do we want to be able to dart and sprint in our whole body to collect us and prepare us for that moment? It depends on who's driving. Is it my wife?

Because if it's my wife, I'm getting the hell out of there. And so what happens in this moment is the sympathetic nervous system escalates, it elevates. And when we're balanced, we're optimally performing on the court, on the field, even speaking publicly, our autonomic nervous system, sympathetic and parasympathetic, are in balance. So our parasympathetic is our breaking action, what actually helps us calm down, mediate, and flexibly respond to a situation. Sympathetic is what helps us fight or flight. And in those moments, those choking moments, we see an imbalance where the sympathetic nervous system is dominant and it can't come down.

They don't have control over it. So that's one of the areas that I work with athletes. You've taken an athlete to a place they wouldn't normally be because they're so used to doing the reps, shooting foul throws, and all of a sudden they've got an imbalance that they're not used to. That's exactly right.

That's what you're saying. That's what, quite literally, pun intended, throws them off. All right, so now... Well done. Yeah, I like what you're saying. That's what quite literally, pun intended, throws them off. All right. So now. Well done. I like what you did there. So you see some coaches who actually recreate, try to recreate these circumstances in a practice environment.

Does that really work where you've got the crowd noise blaring through speakers? You have some people standing in the stands waving. And, you know, you're trying to get the player's brain acclimated to real game time situations. Is that one way of doing it? It's helpful. It's helpful. But we have more precise ways now with science, thanks to science and feedback. So we can actually monitor your heart rate, your brain waves, your muscle tension, your galvanic skin response, how much you're sweating. And we can monitor all

of these under pressure and train you to actually regulate your arousal, your physiology. Wow. Wow. I love all the science. How? Talk to me, please. This is where biofeedback comes in. So biofeedback is a science of being able to feed back information about your physiology. I could have you hooked up to my heart rate monitor and say, oh, my goodness, you're having an elevated cardiovascular response. Even though you look dynamic, speaking articulately, it looks like inside you're having a different reaction. Let's make the two fit nice so you not just faking it until you make it but actually making it without faking it that's right we're getting to the core and and we want to see and i've worked with olympians

several olympians that that made it to the olympics because they could control their physiology in the moment there are many athletes who are so skilled and adept, but when it comes to that crunch time, that Olympic trial, they're not able to perform because the stakes are so high. And that's what we're training, the physiology under pressure. Okay, we've got to get more into this. But we've got to take a break. Okay, let's do that.

Okay, so we'll take a break. When we come back, we'll have more from Dr. Leahah lagos and particularly about biofeedback don't go away welcome back i'm gary o'reilly i'm still chuck and this is still playing with science and today we're still as mad as March and with us Dr. Leah Lagos and sports psychology and what we have just found out is biofeedback yeah could well be the future so please expand upon what we were talking about before the break with biofeedback we were shifting from just enhancing sports performance through psychology to physiology. When we shift our physiology and train it, we can shift our psychology. The two go together.

Okay. So I can look calm and actually be calm. There you go. Right. So now, first of all, you said we can hook you up. What are you hooking us up to to get these readings? What are you reading uh specifically and what are the variances that let you know that inside i am a wreck even though outside i'm like yo i got this it's all

good baby you don't even know i'm i'm ice i'm ice baby ice ice baby okay back singing again badly so let's say you came to my office and we had a chat you're about to enter march madness Maybe. You're back singing again, aren't you? Badly, am I? So let's say you came to my office and we had a chat. You're about to enter March Madness. And you say, look, I feel great. I'm thinking great. But I just want to make sure everything is prepared for the big day. Anything unexpected, can you help me?

And you come in and we do a stress test. And the stress test is essentially me putting you through small stressors, counting backwards by seven, starting with a number like 1042. Wow. That sucks right there. It's a little stressful. Okay. Love slow. Exactly. Playing a video game, a racing game, the stroop test where you have a word like red, but it's in blue, but you have to say the color

and inhibit reading the word. So what I'll do during the stress test is I'll hook you up to a computer. You can't see the physiology, but I can, and I'm recording it. It records your respiration rate, which is your breathing rate, your heart rate, your cardiovascular response under stress. And what's interesting is many individuals under stress have a heart rate jump. So one individual, it's normal to see a 20-beat or so jump under stress. That's normal. But you see with some players and even non-athletes, a jump of 40 to 60. Well, that's going to compromise your skills and abilities

if we're seeing that big kind of cardiovascular jump. What other tells are there that you notice? Brainwaves. So I'll put a little sensor right here and it's called C. The crown of your head. Yeah, exactly. And it's called CZ. And I'm looking for what's called beta. Beta are what I call the squirrels in the brain. They run around. They keep you busy in your brain, but not focused on the external world. Squirrel! That's exactly right. So I want to see how many squirrels you have in your brain under these pressure moments.

Let me tell you something. It's like an open attic up here. Just bring a bag of nuts. Let me tell you. That's all you need to do. Bring some nuts. Oh, it's out of control here all right so okay so once we've id'd all of these different components within an athlete a basketball player or whoever it might be how do we then go about implementing a positive change yes not making them worse that's right so based upon this assessment, it's a need based assessment. And, you know, there's no general algorithm for everybody. We can we can go in and do some general things. But to be really efficacious and really effective, I have to know the the exact physiology and some of the psychological challenges that each player is facing. So it's a different kind of program for each person.

But maybe you have issues with muscle tension and you have lots of squirrels and high cardiovascular response. So we're going to train different modalities based on what we see in that stress assessment. Does that training have to do with the stressors themselves? So you keep introducing the same stressors. It doesn't make a difference what the stressor is. It's actually your response to the stressor that you're training. So that even if you encounter a different stressor, like being on the foul line in front of the entire country during March Madness, that it doesn't make a difference because you've learned how to deal with basically the stress itself. Is that the idea? It's similar. Yes, yes, very much so. And the idea is to address the core so you can transfer it to different domains, different areas. So what you may learn is how to control

your muscle tension for the foul shot, how to control your busy brain under pressure. And you say, oh gosh, I can use this for public speaking too. I can use this for an interview for my next job. So there's different... They're all portable techniques into a stress-related situation. 100%.

Here's one for you because I used to be a professional soccer player. And it wasn't... You still are. You're just not playing anymore. Yeah, yes. It's like being president. I've taken a break. You're president forever. So no, the thing is. You're just not playing anymore. Yeah. Yes. It's like being president. I've taken a break. You're president forever.

The thing is. You're just not serving as president. I have an experience of what we've just been discussing in terms of the stress related. But there are other occasions where I would find teammates who are outrageously overconfident. Now, do you find and that can become a negative, do you find those guys come to you and do you work with them or do you just say, I don't, I get out? Wow, that's an awesome question.

It's an awesome question. See, that's what happens when you've been a professional athlete. That's right. Because who would ever think, everybody's so afraid in these situations, who would ever think that there's somebody who is overconfident in these situations because if we've got a team and i'm out there thinking i don't i'm this i'm this and this you're not playing for the team wow so that's right and that's where you do you work with those have you worked i have oh you see what's interesting is they're oftentimes not self-referred. They're oftentimes referred by the captain, other players, or the coach.

Why would I refer myself when I'm totally awesome? Duh. Please. I mean, clearly I'm the best. No, see, because they want that guy to fit in because there's a natural ability, but it's not working for the team's best interest. But what's really interesting is the buy-in from these kind of overconfident players comes when they see the physiology because you can't dispute it, right?

So oftentimes discussing the physiology is the first part because they're going to tell me their psychology is perfect. Right. If not more so. Right. And so we oftentimes work together from the data perspective and shaping the data in a direction that's going to help their performance. That part they will buy into. And what's interesting is the rapport then begins to build because you've shown them something they didn't know about themselves.

And then they're more apt to share their vulnerabilities and be a little more flexible. Do they feel that you're taking away? See, the guy who's stressed, you're giving him tools to apply to improve the situation the guy who's got a confidence you know the size of the moon is like you're taking away i'm not getting anything back here so how do you sell that how do you equate and balance that well you bring up a really interesting point because something like biofeedback and even the area of sports psychology is oftentimes confused with relaxation. And that's not what I do. And that's not what it is.

It's to hone physiological and psychological responses to be most effective and efficient in the moment. So sometimes that means you have to amp up. And I teach people how to do that in the business world as well as the sports world as well to amp down so they can do both that's it so you talked about the overconfident athlete yes we won't name them um Tom Brady they come down I'm joking and the way you the way I'm imagining you said that is it's temporary you are managing it down and then you can bring yourself back up so you have flexibility. So it's not, I'm not taking away and you're never getting your toys back.

I'm just saying, this is how we need you to be at this particular moment because it's the team that wins, not you. So therefore this one's for the team. That's exactly right. So let me introduce a little bit of science to go with this. Please do. That's what we're here for.

I had an NFL coach come to me a few years ago, and he came in, and he's fine with me talking about this with other people, because he said it was life-changing for him. And the issue

was a little bit of anger, and he wanted to be able to control it better. But he said, Doc, I can't be as calm as a cucumber. I need to be able to have my gusto and to let it go. And I said, that's exactly what we're going to do with increasing your heart rate variability. So when you inhale, your heart rate goes up. And when you exhale, it goes down. We need these oscillations to be as big as possible. Why? Because it corresponds with your ability to amp up and let go, amp up and let go. There's a physiological indicator of self-regulation and we can train it. We can augment it on demand. So we went through about seven weeks of training. At first, he was

very skeptical. He did not want this to interfere with his ability to be aggressive. And I kept promising and promising. He went with it. By week seven, he came in and he said, Doc, you were right. I can amp up twice as fast and I can let go three times faster. I have the ability to do both. But we can shift our physiology to shift our psychology.

And it's fascinating. And it's part of the world of kind of this biohacking, using technology and science giving us something like that biohacking that's right next show this is awesome well we're out of time but man oh man is this so leo lego stuff yeah you have opened a window a door and this oh yeah there's a lot here we see thank you thank you no thank you yeah awesome oh man this is good biohack biohacking that's our new thing man gotta get into it we can rebuild you

mind you we're gonna up the ante it's no longer the seven million dollar man is it that's a lot lot more all right i've been chuck nice that means you've been gary o'reilly yes and this has been playing with science hope you've enjoyed it more madness I'm sure but maybe not of the basketball kind look forward to your company very very soon