StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - SEASON PREMIERE: 2019 Big Game Special, with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly kick off Season 4 of Playing with Science covering the science and spectacle of the Big Game. Featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, sports physicist John Eric Goff, sports economist Victor Matheson, and former NY Giants WR and Super Bowl XLII ring holder Brandon London. Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Please subscribe to our channels on:Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360 GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjq SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-science Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2s86W6olMuRwgGJ2cKELkzStitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-science TuneIn: https://tunein.com/podcasts/Science-Podcasts/Playing-with-Science-p952100/ NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/season-premiere-2019-big-game-special-with-neil-degrasse-tyson/Photo Credit: StarTalk. 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 Nice. And this is Playing With Science. Today we find out why Super Bowl is a bad day to be an avocado. Yes, stick around, you'll find out why. A good day to go to the mall, and why the day after we're all going to be talking about it, whether we like football or not. talking about it, whether we like football or not. And grinding out the hard science will be our good friend,

Professor Eric Goff, whilst taking us behind the curtain of being the host city will be sports economist Victor Matheson. And providing us with the all-important player's point of view is former NFL wide receiver, actor and TV host, Brandon London, who just happens to own a Super Bowl winner's ring. And last but not least, making a special appearance just for you, will be your personal astrophysicist, the one, the only, like you don't know who it is, right? Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're going to tease you with the great man. But first, straight into our very, very good friend, professor of physics and a sporting guru,

Professor Eric Goff, the author of Gold Medal Physics, among other stocking stuffer. Yeah. Best-selling, fabulous, must-get-your-hands-on books. Eric Goff lives at the intersection of sports and science. He does. What's happening, Professor? Yeah.

Just getting anxious for the Super Bowl. Okay. All right. All right. So, hey, burning question. Are you or are you not related to the Rams quarterback? Full disclosure. Well, all humans share a common ancestor, but, you know, I am from West Virginia,

so if he is, too, we have a one in three chance of being related, I guess. Is that a West Virginia joke? It sure is. All right. So if I had to give you a dollar and say, which quarterback do you put it on, what are you going to spend big? Well, I got one quarterback who just finished his third season and I got another quarterback

who's been in the league about 17, 18 years and he's finished half of his seasons in the Super Bowl. So it's tough to go against Brady and Belichick. I mean, if I'm just betting a dollar, I think I might be pulling for the Rams,

but if I had to bet money, I'd probably put it on the Patriots. Any science behind why you would go there? Or is that just a complete gut feeling? Well, I don't know if you watch the overtime game. I'm sure you watch the conference title games. But, I mean, Brady is throwing into some really tiny windows to make those third and ten completions he did in overtime those those three passes I mean threading the needle is a good

description because when you look at the camera view from behind the quarterback you see where he's throwing to a spot where the receiver is yet to reach and I mean sometimes those receivers they're just turning their head around and bam oh the ball's right there in their their hands and they got a you know defender draped over the back of them. I mean, that guy, he's not going to break under any pressure. He's not going to care if they're down 14. I mean, he's been there before and look how they came back against the Falcons a couple of Super Bowls back. What sort of times are we talking about in the pocket for a player like Brady? What sort of numbers are we looking at in terms of I've got to get the snap, and by the time I've released it, I've got how many fractions, how many seconds?

So, you know, Brady's going to get the ball out sometime in under two and a half seconds, you know, between two, two and a half seconds. And that's going to be really quick. He doesn't have to be that mobile to escape a rush. And that's going to be really quick. He doesn't have to be that mobile to escape a rush. He's talented and deft enough over his career to be able to sidestep some of the rush. But he doesn't have to do any major scrambling.

I mean, he's going to be able to get that ball released very quickly. Let me just say this. Tom Brady, and I will preface what I'm about to say by saying that he is pretty much the best quarterback ever. Okay. Just going to go with that. And that being said, Tom Brady is a crying little baby if you hit him. And so that's what the Rams have to do. Every team that gets to Brady beats him. And that's really what it comes down to. It's like, you know, people don't know that he's actually made of cotton candy. And if you get to him, guess what? You win.

So I really think that's what it's going to come down to. Your inner Eagles fan is screaming right now. What? Who? Who? What team? And all they have to do is pick up that deflated football to help wipe the tears, right? Yay.

So, Professor, Brady's got a snap. He's in the pocket. The Rams head coach, Mr. C. Nice, has directed him to make mincemeat of him. What kind of forces can we expect a quarterback, particularly Tom Brady, to be under in an impact from, say, a 300-pound massive offensive lineman? So unless the quarterback's really running fast, you know, if the quarterback's back in the pocket, maybe backpedaling slightly, getting hit. And remember that the linemen, you know,

they've gutted the defensive attack so much over the years that we've seen all you have to do to Brady is just kind of drape your arm around it, barely get it near his helmet to get a roughing the passer call. So, you know, they're going to be backing off if they see the ball coming out of his hand, but they're going to be kind of grabbing and pulling down. You know, the really hard collisions are going to happen when you get two players moving,

you know, so if Brady was able to scramble or run, you know, very fast out of the pocket, this would be the case. But one of his running backs or his receivers colliding at, you know, moving at 20 miles an hour, hitting a, you know, defensive back coming in or a linebacker at that speed. You're talking about average forces in the 500-pound range, and the instantaneous maximum forces can get up to 1,500 pounds. I mean, this is— So when you say instantaneous maximum forces at 1,500 pounds, is that the equivalent of a 1,500-pound weight just slapping you at that speed? Not quite because—

That's what I'm saying. Can you explain that, please? You could put a force like that on a hard object like a helmet or a pad. That's not going to be the same thing as if your skin is feeling it. So you're talking about distributing that force over a larger area where the players get hurt if their arm gets hurt or something. That's where you're really getting the force concentrated in one spot where the pressure is really going up.

You know, it only takes about 100 PSI or so to puncture the skin. So when you concentrate the force in a small area, that's where you're going to get the possibility of damage to your body. So you're talking about 1,500 pounds per square inch? No, no, 1,500 pounds total force. Total force, okay. What you don't want is for that force to be just the helmet to helmet or just pad to pad. You're talking about the whole, these 250-pound bodies with 20-plus pounds with pads and helmet colliding into each other.

I mean, you've got 500 pounds of weight crashing into each other. You've got a quarter ton right there, and that's about the size of the average force. quarter ton right there and that's about the size of the average force so you know and to give you an idea of what these collisions are i mean you can actually get 100 g's for a very tiny fraction of a second on some of these collisions you compare that to a car crash yes 30 g's you got a fighter pilot and a dive maybe 10 g's now they're experiencing that acceleration for a lot longer time, but these football players are getting an order of magnitude more acceleration on a very short amount of time than fighter pilots. Wow, that's amazing. All right. Okay, so let's focus on the venue. I mean, this is an awesome looking stadium. The dome, looks like a work of art once that roof opens.

What is in play in an environment like that, Professor? Well, if the dome is closed, you're going to have a very well-controlled environment in there. You know, you shouldn't have too many swirling winds. You shouldn't have a whole lot of environmental factors influencing the trajectory of the ball. So this is being played in Atlanta. And Atlanta is going to be somewhere around, what, 33.5 or so degrees latitude. And the closer you get to the equator, the more the Coriolis effect becomes an issue. But now you've got to break down the Coriolis effect for the listeners.

What is that? And how does it pertain to football? So it doesn't play a very big role, but you know, you look at the earth turning and we're sitting on the earth turning. So we don't really notice that. But whenever we kick a ball up into the air, you know, the earth is kind of turning while the ball is in flight. So what we notice in the northern hemisphere is when you project something outward like that it gets a little bit of a bump to the right and the field is actually laid out in an east to west fashion so you know any kind of field goals or anything like that are going to be kicked east or west and just doing a really quick calculation uh before the show here um including

a little air resistance if the uh ball is kicked pretty hard i mean we're talking you know getting into 50 60 mile an hour kick range um you're talking about a maybe a quarter to a third of an inch deflection on the uh the coriolis effect so That's actually significant. It could be. If we're just scraping the upright, you really felt sorry for the poor kicker.

Chicago Bears, yes, and I did not feel sorry for him at all. I mean, come on, Professor, you know I'm an Eagles fan. That was one of the greatest days in Eagles history. You can root for the Eagles, but you can feel a little sadness for poor Cody Parkey. So he hit the left upright. Now, that's a little higher elevation at Soldier Field, so the Coriolis effect's not quite as influential as it will be at Atlanta.

But even though it hit the left upright, the Coriolis was actually pushing it in the direction that would have been good. Had the Coriolis not been there, it would have been slightly more toward the center of the post. So Coriolis really didn't play a role in the miss. Yeah. So even with Coriolis helping the guy, he's still screwed up. Oh, well. Yeah.

You've got a smug factor 10, haven't you? What are you talking about? I don't know what you mean. You'll be in overdrive in a minute. Hey, listen, what can we say, you know? Anything else? Sometimes the bear eats you, sometimes you eat the bear. There you go.

When you're watching the game and you see those nice, tight spirals, so those balls are spinning about 600 RPMs, that's about 30% faster than the rotor blades on a helicopter. So those balls have some pretty good spin on them. And that's why that helps the angular momentum vector keep the ball from

wobbling too much and you get a lot of reduced air drag that way. Okay. All right. All right. So listen, we're about out of time for this segment, Professor, but from a physics standpoint, I don't know if you were, you probably weren't anticipating this. If you have an answer, that's good. If you don't, I understand. From a physics standpoint, which team would you think is going to win? When you look at the physics of the game and considering each team, which team would win? Let's see.

This is what? Super Bowl 53? Yep. So that's L-I-I. So the L is angular momentum vector. Three is Newton's third law. So I'm going to go with the guy that can throw that football. I'm going to go with Brady if I had to put any money on it.

Professor, I absolutely love that. That was amazing. You know what? That was amazing. Yeah. I got to give it to you. E equals MC squared. Right.

That reduction into a very tight little nugget of information. You pulled that one out of a black hole, my friend. That was great. Professor Eric Goff, brilliant to talk to you as always. And if the Patriots do win, it's all down to physics, apparently. Yeah. Right. That's it from the good professor.

We'll be back very, very shortly. Please don't go away. Welcome back. Playing with science in our Super Bowl big game special. All right. Time to talk some numbers with sports economist Victor Matheson. Now, you've got to give us a full explanation because we will see you as an economist. But I guess your title is far grander than that. So I don't know about that. Some people call me a sports economist.

about that uh some people call me a sports economist oh and uh and on top of that i do lots of fun things like i'm the president of the north american association of sports economists i edit the journal of sports economics uh and uh i do lots of fun things looking at the intersection of sports and economics so let's talk about the economics of the Super Bowl. You know, it's the biggest cultural event of the year here in America. I mean, it's like we have the World Cup every single year, but it's just this one game and it's become more of a thing. It's become more of a happening, a thing. It's not really a sporting event. You know, you think about it, how many people are going to get together on Super Bowl Sunday,

and, you know, they're going to eat, and they're going to watch the game, and they're going to talk about commercials and all that kind of stuff. But really, they're not even football fans. You know, what they're a fan of is conviviality. Let's get together and have a little party. You know, let's drink.

And so, is there any data that lets us know what that day, not as a sports team or not as bringing the game to a city, but that day itself, what kind of impact does that have on the nation economically? Well, certainly we know for individual products, it's a huge day. For example, it is the single largest day of consumption of avocados in the United States. What? You got to have that. You got to have that guacamole for the big game. So for individual products, boy, you are really depending on having a good Super Bowl because it's a long wait for the avocado growers until next Super Bowl Sunday. So it's avocado Christmas.

It's avocado Christmas. Okay, so it's a bad day to be a chicken because Neil deGrasse Tyson told us the number of chicken wings that consume. So it's also a bad day to be an avocado. Yeah. So what kind of numbers are we talking here? Because it's beer, chicken wins,

I suppose now gambling. What's our TV audience? Who wins the TV game? CBS, who have this year's Super Bowl? Or is it the guy on Madison Avenue? Or girl?

So we have a bunch of winners here, right? Certainly the NFL comes out as the big winner uh we're gonna have maybe 100 or 110 million people uh tuning in wow far and away the biggest tv event by at least a factor of two um of any annual event uh that's uh either number one or number two in the world uh it may be uh at this point being eclipsed by the Champions League final, since that has a little more of a worldwide footprint

rather than just exclusively the U.S. But it is without question the largest annual TV event in the United States. On top of that, think about selling 70,000 tickets that the NFL is doing in Atlanta. Those tickets are averaging over $1,000 a piece. Wow. Tax-free to the NFL. That means that the NFL is generating in the vicinity of $100 million just on ticket sales from the games.

Before even anyone buys a hot dog, buys a hamburger. Before you go any further, I need you to just, because you said something that a lot of people don't know. You used two words in that description, tax free. What's up with that? Why is that? The reason that is, is because the NFL has a game that everyone, every city thinks they want, at least. And because they are in the driver's seat, they can drive a very hard bargain. One of the really fun things that we saw actually last year in Minneapolis, for the first time, someone got a hold of the bid book.

So this is the whole list of things that the NFL demands out of host cities and published that so that everyone could read it. out of host cities and published that so that everyone could read it. In that document, the phrase, at no cost to the NFL, appeared 47 times. And so they get a huge party that someone else throws for them, and they get to collect all the money. At least two crazy things here. Let's imagine you're in Atlanta during the Super Bowl and you decide, I want to get away from all the crowds and congestion and the football, just not my thing. And you decide to go to a movie Sunday night and you pay $10 for the movie. You as a movie theater goer will pay more taxes into the Atlanta coffers more taxes into the atlanta coffers than that person buying a 1500 super bowl ticket being played just next door in the super bowl stadium you buying that 10 movie ticket or paying more

in taxes than the person buying the 1500 super bowl ticket so where where does where's the host city benefit surely because hotel rates get hiked flights get get hiked, car rental, I'm sure, all these other things. Does the host city not get tax windfall from all of this revenue? So the host city is hoping that all of those hotel rooms outside of the hotel rooms that the NFL is using. So, for example, Tom Brady's hotel room, he's getting that tax free this weekend. So is Bob Kraft and all of the other folks in the NFL. They get an entire hotel tax-free. The spectators, the fans coming down, they'll be paying sky-high rates along with sky-high taxes along with that. is that all of that money that they're going to generate is going to pay for the roughly $40 or $50 million in added costs

and giveaways that the city is giving to the NFL for the rights to host that game. So does it work out? Now, you know, so I do stand-up comedy for a living, or at least you might want to. At least I like to say I do. I'm not going to go there. Anyway, in my business, we call that a door deal. So what happens is you go to a club and you say, hey, man, I'm really popular. I'm going to sell this club out, and I'm going to sell it out on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

So you give me the door minus like 10% because you need to cover your electric and all that kind of stuff. So you're going to give me like 85% of the door and you're going to collect all that alcohol. And the alcohol sales are going to be so high that it makes perfect sense for you to let me just keep the covers as they walk through the door. Does that actually work for these cities? They walk through the door. Does that actually work for these cities? Are these cities making out? So that's really one of the real questions that we always have. What the NFL will claim is that the economic impact of the Super Bowl to the host city is somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 or $500 million.

And I've even seen estimates as high as $700 or $800 million of benefit to the city for hosting these games. The catch is that when economists not associated with the NFL go back and actually look at data from cities who have hosted the game, and we look at things like employment or personal income or GDP or tax collections or hotel room sales, all these things. We get a number that's positive, but we get numbers somewhere between 30 and 130 million dollars. Now, mind you, not something you sneeze at, but it's also a fraction of what the NFL is claiming. of what the NFL is claiming. And of course, we haven't talked about the biggest elephant in the room is how much the taxpayers have already given to the NFL

in terms of stadium subsidies to build these billion dollar stadiums that we're seeing nowadays. Yeah, because the stadium is always going to be in an NFL city. So the stadium that's there, what do most cities have as a deal? I'm ignorant here. What do most cities have as a deal with the NFL when it comes to the stadium that's being built?

Does the NFL actually throw into the kitty? Or is it one of these things where it's, well, we're going to float municipal bonds, or we're just going to raise property taxes or I mean how's it really work does the NFL pay for their stadiums because if the Super Bowl is always in an NFL city and the NFL doesn't pay for its stadium man this is the sweetest deal ever made and I want to own a team yeah you want to own a team because Yeah, you want to own a team. Because, of course, if you're a team owner, that means you'd be at least a billionaire. So that's not a bad thing to be. This is true. That being said.

Yeah. Go ahead. I'm sure you're close already. So this is the way it works. Almost every stadium in the country is some sort of public-private partnership. And the real question is, you know, how much is public and how much is private? In the two decades before the Great Recession, which started in 2008, in the two decades before that, what we had was roughly two-thirds of all stadium costs were paid for by taxpayers with private entities,

that's the NFL plus the local owner, were covering about one-third of the cost. Since the Great Recession, those numbers have actually flipped. So it's now about two-thirds private money and about one-third public money, All those stadiums have gotten so expensive that that amount of private money has actually gone up, even though it's only one-third of the cost. So, for example, a typical NFL stadium today costs at least a billion dollars and possibly more. Back two decades ago, like Gillette Stadium,

obviously where the Patriots play, that was only about a $250 million stadium, only 20 years ago. And I should point out one of the very few stadiums in the NFL almost entirely privately financed. So stadium deals vary widely, but on average in the last 10 years, the public has picked up about a third of the cost with the NFL and local owners together picking up the other two-thirds. I've got to say that's pretty significant when you think about the number of people

who are actually attending games. You're talking about an entire municipality picking up the third of the cost of a stadium that maybe a fraction of the population is actually going to use. Is it worth it? Does the city make money off of this deal? I mean, forget the Super Bowl now, we'll get back to that. But now I'm interested in just stadiums itself. Am I better off with

a franchise than I am without one? So you certainly might be off with a franchise than I am without one? So you certainly might be happier with a franchise. In terms of dollars and cents, there's no evidence that you're richer in any way. Oh, my goodness. Before you go, here's a thought. In the week leading up to Super Bowl, four economists sit in a bar. They're talking about what it goes on. What algorithm fact number is going to give those four economists a nerdgasm? Which one is going to spark outrageous debate and focus?

That's a good question. So I think probably the biggest one is, can we measure people's happiness and not just the dollars and cents because we do spend money on things that don't necessarily have a dollar rate of return we spend money on parks parks make us happy but they don't generate dollars so yeah maybe this super bowl does make us millions of dollars poorer but if it makes us tens of millions of dollars happier, that's a good trade-off. And if someone makes that argument to me, I'm not going to complain. But when they come and tell me this is going to make us all rich, that's just not what the data says. That's very cool. Well, all I can say is that the scenario you just unfolded only works if the Philadelphia Eagles win the Super Bowl. And that ain't happening this year, so we're not, yeah.

You had a whole year of being number one. It's just costing us money. It's just a waste of money now. He's got problems. Victor Matheson, sports economist and someone we've enjoyed the company of immensely. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Professor. Hey, gentlemen.

It's been my pleasure being here. That's it from Victor Matheson, our sports economist. Now, if you thought it was all peaches and cream when it comes to hosting a Super Bowl, maybe, like us, you think slightly different. We're going to take a break. Stick with us. We'll be back very Playing With Science.

Chuck, should we speak to somebody? Just anybody about Super Bowl? Not just anybody. I believe that we need to put the Neil signal in the sky. It's a big mustache and a big lighted mustache that we shine into the clouds. Oh, that's my favorite one.

That's my favorite one. And you know who shows up when we actually put that signal in the sky? None other than your own personal astrophysicist, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yay! My mustache?

Yeah. Oh, man. How do you know Magnum PI won't show up if you're just putting mustaches up there? Because it's your mustache. Oh, my mustache? Yeah. Oh, man. How do you know Magnum PI won't show up if you're just putting mustaches up there? Because it's your mustache. Oh, my mustache. Yeah. I got a special mustache.

You got a mustache. Yeah. And you don't own a Ferrari. It's a Cosmos. It's true. Cosmos stache. Do you know I have never shaved my mustache in my entire life? No.

It is a life. So, I mean, of course, I trim it, but I've never had it. No, you never cut it off. I never cut it off. Yeah, just shaved it down to a bare lip. Just a lip. That's all we got. Now I have something on my bucket list.

Okay. What were we talking about? The Super Bowl? Super Bowl. It'd be great to get your musings on the Super Bowl. General musings? General musings on the Super Bowl because, you know... I think there are other kinds of bowlers.

Do we have to salute if he's general musings? You know what I think there are other kinds of bowls. Do we have to salute if he's general music? You know what I think? I think the number... The team that loses and then whatever was the third place team that didn't get into the Super Bowl, they should play each other

in like the salad bowls or something. Just some kind... No, just some... Think of the other bowls that are, you know... There's a lot of bowls. The soup bowl.

Right. The salad bowl. Right. The other kind of bowls you can have out there. That would be called the loser bowl. The loser bowl. What we The salad bowl. Right. The other kind of bowls you can have out there. That would be called the loser bowl. The loser bowl.

What we would call the wooden spoon. So, you know, the Super Bowl is such a ritual. It's become like the thing in America. Yeah. It's the one day where we're all doing the same thing at the same time. America. Which otherwise doesn't really happen. It's the last bastion of event television.

It really is. Because you are not going to DVR the Super Bowl. That's not how that works. No. And no one is going to be looking at some other thing unless they're social media-ing the fact that they're looking at the Super Bowl. Nobody's doing anything

except people who love puppies. Because they're watching the puppy bowl. Oh, no. You got to hand it to Animal Planet. Yeah. Because not everyone

is into football. Right. No, counter-programming. So you got to hand it to them. Yeah. Shout out to Animal Planet for thinking that up. The puppy bowl.

Yeah, was there a kitten bowl at one year or two, I think? Every year, there's a kitten bowl. That's on the Hallmark channel. It really is. That's just back on the road to Super Bowl. No, we're getting back on the road to Super Bowl.

Super Bowl, sorry. Come on, focus. Okay, get back on the on-ramp to the Super Bowl highway. All right, so that's my comment about the commercials. Now, about the teams that are, you know, they're like so hyped. They're so pumped. And one of the big worries was that if your energy doesn't sort of keep its momentum, then a Super Bowl can become lopsided and then they're uninteresting for the second half.

Which really kills the sponsors. It kills everything. Kills everything. People start eating their chips and not paying attention to the TV. It kills everything. Kills everything. People start eating their chips and not paying attention to the TV. So I don't know how to assure

that you have a good game all the way to the end. Pay the refs. No, I'm joking. Pay the refs. Pay the refs, no. You went there, didn't you? You went there. But I got something to look for.

I don't pick winners or losers in the game because I just like sports in general. Sure. And the athletic competition than that was um and i remember being invited to the seattle seahawks training camp because i'm latter-day buds with their coach right um and uh and just to watch them train yeah they're like gazelles just as they run and you know how often do you see them on field level you don't the camera's always above you're on field level they're bigger than you The camera's always above. You're on field level.

They're bigger than you. No matter how big you are, they're bigger than you. And they're moving like gazelles. And they're more graceful. Because you get that proximity and you get on a natural eye line with them, it does change everything about your perception. You know what they need? They need camera bots on the field.

So you get a sense of what the quarterback is experiencing. Because you can say, oh, there's an open guy right there. No, there are five 350 pound people standing in front of him. And there's someone ready to block it. So he has to fake like he's looking this way and throw this way. You don't see that in the replays.

So in the future, we're going to have little mini drone cameras that will follow. They have to survive a tackle, obviously. No, no, no. Oh, drone. Yes. Okay, I'm going to give them insect form, and they're going to fly above just by a certain height, and they'll come in if it's the quarterback.

And you might lose a few of them in a thing. Collateral. Collateral. Yeah, I'm happy with that. So then you're going to get that view of the running back. Of the. Collateral. I'm happy with that. So then you're going to get that view of the running back. Of the actual running back.

They're running and then look you need the breath too. You know like a Darth Vader kind of. Oh yeah. And the person's coming after them

and they're and you just so yeah maybe inside the helmet. Fiber optic cameras within the form in the helmet. You heard it here first on StarTalk.

Oh, yeah. We invent stuff here, by the way. Because it was interesting enough to have a camera that follows the kickoff. Right. Sure. They got the spider cams. The spider cams. The suspended.

Okay, next thing is drone cams. Very good. I like the drone cam. Providing we can legally allow them in a certain space. Yeah, just do it. Just do it. Plus, no one is going to get hurt by the drone cam. Right.

Because these are big people tackling each other, and the drone ain't, you know. Exactly. If it's in the way, it's too bad for the drone. Maybe the refs. Maybe the refs can get hurt. You've got a downer on refs, haven't you? So something else to watch for,

and I'll probably tweet about this on the day. There's an interesting, mildly mysterious fact that when a foot a spiral pass is thrown go ahead perfect spiral you see the spiral go up and then come down okay wait a minute point down it goes up and then when it hits the top of its arc it levels off then on its way down it points down points down yeah that's an amazing physics fact. Because if it's spin stabilized, what you would expect, naively, is that it would just spin, come up, and then come down

in the same orientation. In the way gyroscopes maintain their orientation no matter where you put them. That's why they put them in planes. That's why they put them in planes and in spacecraft. To make sure your orientation is stable. So that's why when the football is thrown

and the receiver is ready to catch it, the ball aims straight into their arms. They don't have to sort of readjust it as they catch it. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. Just watch it as it happens. It's an aerodynamic effect. If there was no air, then the football would not do this.

It would just keep its orientation all the way during the pass. Oh. Yeah. So just watch for that. Okay. So the air is affecting, there's a friction What is it?

It's trying to do. By the way, they worried about this in the Apollo mission. This might be the first time ever Apollo This is awesome.

This is it. Apollo and the Super Bowl have been put together. Okay. They're designing the capsule. Right. Okay? So the capsule is that little bit.

Oh, we've got a... Oh, it's not on camera. This is my office and I have a Saturn V rocket, of course, in my office. And by the way, it's to scale, people. It's a scale.

It's a big office. It's not one-to-one scale, but it is to scale. So at the very top is the capsule. Right. That's where the three astronauts, the Apollo astronauts, sat. And here's this Saturn V rocket, but it is the scale. So at the very top is the capsule. That's where the three astronauts, the Apollo astronauts, and here's this Saturn V rocket, 34 stories tall,

which is mostly fuel, a controlled bomb. This takes them to orbit, it takes them to the moon, it brings them back to Earth. There's enough fuel to do that. Most of the fuel is to carry the fuel you haven't burnt yet so that you can use it later so you can get back home. Okay? Understood.

So the fuel is not just to carry the payload. It's to carry the fuel you haven't burnt yet so that you can use it later so you can get back home okay understood so the fuel is not just to carry the payload it's to carry the fuel you haven't burned that that's why you have this mismatch and how big the engines are relative and the fuel tanks are relative to the people all right so now right so here's what happens all that's left is the capsule coming back it has heat shields down at the bottom well how do you make sure it comes in heat shield first you get a quarterback to throw it doesn't spin stabilized uh uh capsule so you design it so that no matter what orientation it hits the atmosphere the aerodynamics rights it. You play with the center of gravity.

Yes. There you go. Yes. So it is aerodynamically stable coming in heat shields first. Right. And nothing else will work in the physics of that encounter. So when you throw the ball and it has an upward arc, the lowest air resistance

is pointing upwards through the air. Now it's going horizontally. The minimum air resistance is only when it angles this way. Because there's more air hitting the back of it than the front. It tips it more. Now it's trying to come down. There's air hitting the back,

and so it will move itself to the minimum air resistance that it can. And so that's really what's happening here. And so it's minimum air resistance pointing up, horizontal. And then minimum air resistance pointing down. Pointing down. That's great. So if you threw a capsule.

Yes. A capsule. No matter how you threw it. It would orient so that it then goes that way. That convex side would point down, and you would kill the receiver. That's awesome. And a quick thing.

Capsule ball. Capsule. You wanted to land on the ref. This is what you want. Oh, by the way, the same thing with the shuttlecock. Okay. Watch your mouth. The shuttlecock.

Yes, I know what he... Forget it. Okay, forget him. He's here. So if you hit a bad button... I thought that was weight, not the... It's weight distribution matters. Okay, gotcha.

So, in a shell cock, it's got feathers, be they fake or real, and a round, hittable ball, but that's the heavy part, okay? If you hit that, no matter how you hit it, okay, it is going to go heavy part first down. Right. So that when you hit it again, the racket hits the rubber part of the ball. It always ends up in that orientation. That's correct.

It's a center of mass thing and where the air resistance is. And it minimizes the air resistance. That's exactly why I play badminton with a cat. Where did you get? How did you? I don't know. We've got a returns policy, I think. Is that right?

I just got to check the date. No matter how you hit that cat, it's coming down on its feet. Feet first. All right. So now that we've- Actually, if you take a cat. Oh, they haven't. I've done this.

If you take a cat, hold it upside down. Yes. You do this over a pillow. Right. And you just rapidly drop your hands out. Right. It doesn't have any angular momentum. Right.

And it cannot turn over. It can't turn. It just falls on its back. Really? But cats that jump or fall or toss, there's always some movement of their body so that they can curl up the way an ice skater does, pulling in their arms, and they spin faster.

And then they can turn. They pull in its arms, spin, get oriented, because it knows which way it's falling, which way gravity goes, and then when its feet are down, and then it opens up, stops rotating, and then lands on all four feet. So it's a simple act of skating physics applied to cats. But it needs some angular momentum to do this. I do the same thing with my children.

Oh, is that right? They land on their feet. I always use a pillow, though. Okay. And that's been our Cats on Ice show. I hope you've enjoyed the physics and the madness. That's another one.

Right, so Super Bowl. While you're watching Super Bowl, while you are fixated on Brady and Goff leading their teams, just remember, just like us, they're playing with science. Welcome back to Playing With Science and our look at the big game from a lot of different aspects,

from the economics, from the physics, from the wonderful mind of Neil deGrasse Tyson. And what better way to get to grips with Super Bowl itself than have a player's point of view? Yeah. All right, so Brandon London, former NFL wide receiver, a man with a Super Bowl winner's ring, Chuck. So, I think we're in the right place. Yeah, we are.

That's very cool. Hey, Brandon, how are you? I'm going great, man. I'm down here in sunny Orlando, Florida at the Pro Bowl, covering the Pro Bowl for the New York Giants. Very nice. So, you know, we're talking about the big game, man. You've actually been, you know, from a player standpoint,

what is the run-up to, what is the feel of the team? What is the run-up to the actual game itself? How do you keep emotions in check? What are these guys saying to one another? What's it like? Well, you know, since you have two weeks to prepare um 2007 our year we you get all the hard practices in that first week because that's when you're at your team facility that's when you're in your city you go through your basic routine and you try and keep everything the same you You know, you don't, you don't want to try and overemphasize it too much because then you start working in the guy's nerves or guys trying to

over-prepare or, you know, you, you, you just, instead of going through your routine and doing the things that you're used to do, you get in the guy's head if you try and put too much pressure on them. So that first week, you know, you're working hard, you're going through your normal routine, then you fly out there. And that second week, you're still practicing and you're still going through some more of a routine, but you're in a different practice facility. You're in a different place.

You're not waking up at home with your family. You're waking up in the hotel room and then you throw in the media day and you throw in all the things that what some people would call distractions you know that that last super bowl week it could be filled with distractions because you're doing so much so 07 my year tom coughlin had us practice and then when we went out to arizona because that's where the super bowl was that that year i was there it was yeah it was uh i wouldn't say practice was a little bit lighter.

You know, you don't want anyone to get hurt during that week, but you fine tune everything. You're double checking everything. You're making sure that, you know, guys know what their job is, what the play is, what they're supposed to do, because the last thing you want is to lose the game off of a missed assignment in the Super Bowl. So you try and keep things relaxed, but at the same time, you already know, you're thinking, yeah, I'm going to the Super Bowl. I'm playing in the Super Bowl.

So you just, you go through the same routine, but since it's the Super Bowl, man, once you run out that tunnel, the fireworks hit, those emotions, I don't care who you are, your emotions are running high. In the run-up, in the week before, you're going through these practice drills, you're doing the things that you know you've got to do. But my experience involved in big games in terms of soccer, you're looking at the teammates around you, you're looking at the way your drills are going,

and you're saying, you know what, we need to sharpen up or this stuff is in such a sweet moment. This is going to be beautiful. Did you get that vibe? Did you pick up on anything like that in the week running up to the big one? No, I noticed everyone was pretty much focused. You know, going towards the end of that year, we had to go on a run just to make it into the playoffs so to us it felt like every week was already a playoff game because it was losing you go home sort of thing and then when it comes to looking around at your your teammates you're not so much looking around at your teammates everyone knows that it's an accountability thing

where you have to look within yourself and make sure that you're prepared. You're not that guy. You're not that guy that's messing up. You're not that guy that's dropping balls. You're not that guy that doesn't look like he's preparing for a Super Bowl. I think one thing that helped us that year was being in the predicament we were in where we had to make that run towards the end of the season just to get in. So you look at it and we prepared just like it was any other week because for, what, eight weeks before that,

it was a lose-or-go-home situation. Mm-hmm. I got to ask you and you, Gary, so you guys, when you're looking at a big game like that, how important is the coach to keeping the guys kind of focused and relaxed? You know, you talk about being relaxed. How important is the coach to making that happen for the players? Or is it really like you're like, hey, man, we're professionals. Like, you got to handle this on your own.

How does it go down? Well, first and foremost, you know, you're a professional. You have to handle things. And then, like I said, it goes back to that accountability thing. I don't want to overuse that word, but that's a theme when it comes to playing professional football. Guys look at themselves. I have to be accountable. I have to make that play.

I have to make that tackle, that sort of thing. But I think Tom Coughlin did a great job, not only during that week or two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, I think throughout that entire year with his demeanor and his temperament and the way he addressed the teams, you know, he joked around a little bit. And that's what people were saying was a little uncanny when it comes to Tom Kaufman, his personality. He joked a little bit, but at the same time, he's very stern. You know, he made sure guys not only were on time for things, but you looked professional with the way you dress. You acted like a professional when you were in the building

and when you were off, you know, you were out in the public eye as well. So I think that he did a great job, not only those two weeks, but just that year and getting guys ready to be a professional or and to be accountable in the biggest moments and you saw guys all throughout the year step up and make big plays interesting brandon my experience and you can maybe relate to this or say it's different there are some individuals you got to bring down and some individuals you got to bring up and some individuals you just know just need steering just gently did kaufman did the staff know exactly which players to work with to just boost up which ones they had to just keep a lid on just keep them

quiet not so much keep quiet you ask guys to when they're doing interviews you ask them not to give another team billboard material yeah locker room material you know you not call guys out that sort of thing um i think during that year we all did a great job of saying the right things to the press um you no one really got in trouble that year. There was no outside distractions when it came to that. But like I said, professionalism, accountability. You know, you shouldn't, if you're in the NFL, no one should have to go and rev you up to get you up for a game. Because in the NFL, every game is a playoff game. You know, the first three games are so important, or just as important as the last three games because when

you're talking about home field advantage throughout the playoffs or even trying to get a last wild card spot you start off on three you know you're and then you're having to fight the last three games you know so i i think guys understand the situation they're in and you understand that the nfl is a high, high production league, high production business. So if you're not producing, you're on your way out of there. So whether you have to get yourself up or you have to calm yourself down, it's not up to one grown man to go up to another grown man and try and get him revved up for a game. You understand the situation you're in. And then the thing is, he goes that A word again, the accountability word, because you're not just playing for yourself. You're playing for that guy across from you that just had a baby and could use that extra money, you know, for his family, that sort of thing.

You're playing for that guy who, in the case of Michael Strahan, you're playing with a guy who this is his last year. And he's such a great teammate, such a great mentor and leader. You want to play your butt off to make sure that he rides off in the sunset for the career that he had, that sort of thing. So the biggest thing Tom Coughlin did that year was getting guys to not only play for themselves but playing for the guy that's right next to them. So check this out, man.

We're pretty much out of time here. We can't let you go. It's Wednesday before Super Bowl Sunday. We're looking at the Rams. We're looking at the Patriots. Who do you like and why? Oh, man, I'm team Tom Brady. I don't root for the Patriots.

I root for Tom Brady. It's the same reason why I rooted for Michael Jordan and I root for LeBron James. Because anyone, when they're chasing or they're going for what they call that goat, trying to be the greatest of all time, like Jerry Rice, I want Tom Brady to play forever

and I want him to shatter every record book there is because there's so many Tom Brady haters out there and he just consistently goes out there and puts on some of the greatest performances we've ever seen so I think I'm blessed to be able to I was on the been on the field against that guy a couple times not only in New York but down in Miami when I play with the Dolphins as well and just you hear the stories about this guy his preparation and how you know you people say about this guy and his preparation and how people say the separation is in the

preparation and that guy prepares. That's why he's the greatest. So I root for Tom Brady. Okay, okay. Let me just say that Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time and I hope he suffers a humiliating defeat. Brandon, you're dealing with an Eagles fan here, dude this this is a conversation that

goes nowhere but i'm not a hater i'm not a hater brandon i was on the sideline the year you guys won the uh the the super bowl in arizona and as an eagles fan i was standing on the giant sideline and halftime halftime i was like know what? I'm jinxing these dudes. Let me go over to the Patriots' sideline and you guys won the game, so you're welcome. That's all I'm saying.

Brandon. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's bad luck, there's bad luck charms out there too. You know, let's say I had my rabbit foot

in my pocket and you went over to the other sideline. There you go, buddy. There you go. All right, Brandon, I hope you still got that rabbit's foot.

Sounds like you had, but considering you you go. All right, Brandon. I hope you still got that rabbit's foot. Sounds like you had. Considering you're acting and hosting TV shows, must be all good. Brandon London, thank you so much for your time and your insights on what it takes to be in Super Bowl. And good luck in the rest of your career, man. I wish you all the best. Thank you.

So, Chuck, there you go. Super Bowl show. That's it. Whether your team's in it, whether your team is a winner, come the end, we wish you the best of luck. Hope you've enjoyed it

and we look forward to your company very, very soon. From Gary O'Reilly. And Chuck Nice. It's been Playing With Science. Bye, bye, bye. Thank you.