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

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly

• 0:10Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nighy

• 0:11Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 0:30Chuck Nice?

  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 socio-economic 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.

• 0:51Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 1:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but that's not all. Our good friend, bracketologist Chris Dobbertean, 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!

• 1:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back! And are we nuts yet? Are we completely nuts now, after everything that's happened?

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. Tonight's, you know, Friday, we go into the second half of the Sweet Sixteen, 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...

• 1:52Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Loyola is way further back. You have to go all the way back in the 1960s.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Curiously, Loyola is the only team in Illinois to ever win a national championship. So, you know, Northwestern, you know, made the tournament for the first time last year. Illinois has never won one. DePaul has never won one.

• 2:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Will Loyola win?

• 2:22Chuck Nice?

  Will Loyola win?

• 2:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Come on, Sister Jean.

• 2:24Chuck Nice?

  Sister Jean. Everybody loves this sister Jean. 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 gonna be there? Because that's all everybody cares about at this point.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  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 a game or 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.

• 3:13Chuck Nice?

  So, as we speak right now, how many number ones are left?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  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.

• 3:24Chuck Nice?

  Right. So, Nova is still, and they're defending, right?

• 3:27Gary O'Reilly?

  My favorite, Duke.

• 3:28Chuck Nice?

  Our Duke is a Duke.

• 3:30Gary O'Reilly?

  For some reason, I put a J in there.

• 3:31Chuck Nice?

  When you're English, you say Duke.

• 3:33Gary O'Reilly?

  There's a silent J, even though it's not written.

• 3:36Chuck Nice?

  I have to go and take a Duke.

• 3:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, I don't know what that means. However, it sounds wrong.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Very well.

• 3:43Chuck Nice?

  God, I'm like five years old. What is wrong with me? Okay.

• 3:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Are they, did they have a shout? I mean, that there is their second seed. Do they have a shout in this?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 3:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Big time?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Very much so, very much so, especially in that region. Um, they play Syracuse in their Sweet Sixteen 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's campus.

• 4:11Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. 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? And Kentucky should have been up by at least five. If they shot 50%, if they only shot 50% 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?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  I, I think that it's teams not really focusing on it in practice and, and that's, 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, you know, in that Kansas State Kentucky game. And you would think that, you know, 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 know, 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, and, you know, going into future seasons, maybe they should be because I don't see, you know,

• 5:28Speaker 02

  games being called any looser than they are, you know, when the stakes are this high.

• 5:33Gary O'Reilly?

  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 have blown out early.

• 5:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 5:45Gary O'Reilly?

  The 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 gonna 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.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  And you bring up a very good point, especially when you talk about Kentucky, because that's the squad that, you know, 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 seventy five 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.

• 6:48Chuck Nice?

  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 Sixteen.

• 7:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so time travel.

• 7:05Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  All right, based on Friday afternoon and and we've done this in the past. So this has the potential to be very, very, very wrong.

• 7:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Extremely wrong.

• 7:24Gary O'Reilly?

  So who's gonna be worse than my Sweet Sixteen predictions? I'll tell you that now.

• 7:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  We're gonna 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 gonna stick with them. And I think, I think Michigan will take out Loyola. I think Michigan, their offense right now is just so, it is running so smoothly. It didn't run so smoothly in the first weekend. Ran very smoothly on Thursday night against Texas A and M. I think they have a great shot. So they'll be in the final.

• 7:54Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  I remember Sister Jean had them going out in, in, you know, in the Sweet Sixteen. So she even underestimated her own team.

• 8:10Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. On the other side, I, I'm gonna go with, with Villanova and Kansas with the two number ones going through.

• 8:18Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:20Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  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.

• 8:28Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you have it, people. And listen, um, uh, that's as good a prediction as you can get because every prediction is exactly the same.

• 8:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. So after all of the, all of the upsets, Chris predicts a number one seed wins.

• 8:42Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 8:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey?

• 8:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Gary O'Reilly?

  All right. So, well, let's see.

• 8:46Chuck Nice?

  By the way, that's smart money. That's smart money, the way you just did it, you know? Everybody wants Loyola to win and all, but the truth of the matter is the smart money is on, uh, the number one seed. So, um, I like what you did there. We gotta go.

• 8:58Gary O'Reilly?

  We do. Chris Dobbertean, thank you so much. Been a pleasure.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Thanks, guys.

• 9:03Chuck Nice?

  All right, buddy. We'll see you later.

• 9:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. Next up, Professor Andrew Zimbalist. He is gonna 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?

• 9:21Chuck Nice?

  How about Andy? Andy is even better.

• 9:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you.

• 9:25Chuck Nice?

  I like that. I'm going with Professor Andy.

• 9:27Gary O'Reilly?

  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. Um, author of just 26.

• 9:42Chuck Nice?

  Just 27.

• 9:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Or is it 27 books?

• 9:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, just 27. That's all. I thought you said I was 26 years old.

• 9:48Gary O'Reilly?

  That's on, that's on the wish list.

• 9:51Chuck Nice?

  I've done one, one book per year since I was born. There you go. Uh, and you're a slacker, man. 26. Yeah. Such a slacker.

• 9:59Gary O'Reilly?

  We must mention a book that's relevant to March Madness, Unwinding Madness. What went wrong with college sports?

• 10:07Chuck Nice?

  And how to fix it.

• 10:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. And how to fix it. So Chuck, get in with the first question and we'll move on from there.

• 10:13Chuck Nice?

  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?

• 10:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's fair to say it's a cartel. You know, there are about eleven hundred schools nationally that belong to the NCAA. And as you know, the NCAA is divided into three divisions. Division one has three hundred and fifty schools. They're the largest schools and the ones that have the largest sports programs. Uh, division one is then subdivided into three subdivisions. One is called the FBS or the Football Bowl subdivision. That has about a hundred and twenty eight 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, the, the big five or the power five conferences, which has sixty five schools.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  And in fact, those sixty five schools in 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, would do. They, they, 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, 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 a for-profit, private sector company.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  But, but because the government has basically treated the NCAA as a part of an educational enterprise, they are able to set many of these rules, although they don't have free rein. Back in nineteen eighty four, 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.

• 12:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Cool. I, I, I remember reading just recently that the Kentucky basketball program was costing something like three hundred and forty two million dollars. Is there a

• 12:30Speaker 03

  That's too much. That I don't, not for one year, it doesn't cost that much.

• 12:34Gary O'Reilly?

  No, I could, I can, I, I thought that too. So, thank you for clarifying.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:37Gary O'Reilly?

  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?

• 12:46Chuck Nice?

  And, and, and, and, well, is there, is there a restriction on the percentage of money that um, um, uh, 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 could 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?

• 13:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, she could.

• 13:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God. I was

• 13:21Gary O'Reilly?

  You're going back to college.

• 13:22Chuck Nice?

  I'm going back. I'm starting a business. I found my new business.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  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.

• 13:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  There's a certain percentage of total revenues that goes to the players.

• 13:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  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, uh, supplements to those scholarships.

• 13:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  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.

• 14:02Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 14:03Gary O'Reilly?

  About a coach? Is there a ceiling on a coach's salary? I know the answer.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  Fortunately, uh, there is no such ceiling.

• 14:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so

• 14:09Speaker 03

  You know, college, college presidents at NCAA schools get, say, between three hundred thousand, seven, eight hundred thousand dollars a year. And the coaches' salaries go up, as, as we've read, up to ten, eleven million dollars a year, plus very nice perquisites and bonuses.

• 14:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, please.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Opportunities for outside income.

• 14:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor Andy, step back. Ten to eleven million dollars a year?

• 14:31Speaker 03

  They go up that high, yes.

• 14:32Chuck Nice?

  They go up that high? Wow. Well, you know

• 14:34Speaker 03

  I think, I think Nick Saban is eleven million this year.

• 14:37Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 14:52Gary O'Reilly?

  It better make sense.

• 14:52Chuck Nice?

  Bring in the, uh, bring in the wins because bringing in the wins brings in the television contracts, that brings in the money. So, uh, you know.

• 15:00Gary O'Reilly?

  It promotes the program, therefore you're self fulfilling the prophecy of attracting better talent on an ongoing basis.

• 15:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it still doesn't make it right. However.

• 15:09Speaker 03

  No, wait a minute. Let, let me chime in here.

• 15:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Go ahead. Yeah, yeah, do, please.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  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 eleven million dollars. I don't know what that number is. Could be more than eleven, could be less, but it's a reasonable argument that you can make.

• 15:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  He brings the team to the, 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, in basketball and in football where you can make that argument.

• 15:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  You can't make that argument though, for the schools that have say winning percentages below five hundred. The schools that don't make it to March Madness, schools that don't make it to the FCP, the football championship playoff. Uh, these are coaches who still might be getting two million, six 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 created by the players they recruit.

• 16:30Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 16:30Speaker 03

  If the players were paid, there's no way the coaches would be getting that kind of salary. If you look, if you look at the. The salaries of the coaches in the NFL, that NFL has thirty two teams, of course.

• 16:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Compare that to the top thirty two coaches salaries in, in FBS, a part of, of division one.

• 16:48Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  You see that the salaries. are almost identical. Right. Small, small variations. Uh, and, and probably the college coaches have, have more perquisites than the professional coaches. Yet, the NFL teams are generating on average, something like three hundred million dollars a year. And the top thirty two teams in the FBS are probably generating somewhere on the order of seventy, eighty million dollars a year, maybe one third, one fourth, the amount in the NFL. How could the coaches be, being paid the same? Uh, if, if the revenue that their organization generates is one fourth of that in the NFL. So is, 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.

• 17:34Chuck Nice?

  Well, Professor Andy, it sounds to me like you would be an advocate for paying players.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  No.

• 17:39Chuck Nice?

  You would not be an advocate for paying.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  All the money should come to the professors, particularly at, no, I'm not, actually.

• 17:47Chuck Nice?

  Let me say, wait, bud, wait, wait, let me stop you, 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.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  Because they, they. They said it, not me. Okay, so the professors know what to do with the money the students wouldn't. Skip on from that.

• 18:07Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  No, 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. Absolutely. At American universities. Absolutely. So, it, it, if you want to abandon the educational model and you want to turn uh, college sports into a, a minor league system, you know, triple A baseball. Uh huh. Uh, 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, uh, let me ask. I would say, look, let, let, what is an amateur?

• 18:50Speaker 03

  An amateur, in in common understanding, I think, it's not, this is not what the N C A 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.

• 19:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  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 N C A 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 could go out and use your names, images, and likenesses or your publicity rights, make deals with Nike, make deals with some uh E A Electronic Arts or some other company, and get paid publicity rights. You also are entitled to have uh free medical care, which they don't have today

• 19:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  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.

• 19:53Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and let me just say this, let me just stop, I'm gonna stop you there because you're very, you're very, you're very passionate, I know this. Everything you say, we, I think we agree with. By the way, uh Gary is a, is a former professional soccer player.

• 20:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Parity, and you've got young college athletes that aren't far off becoming major league, N B A, N F L players, they're almost at that standard. You see players from last year's March Madness playing in the N B A now.

• 20:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:22Gary O'Reilly?

  So they were never that far away. So if you're looking at a, an equity of standard, it's there. Not all, not every player, but it's certainly there in certain cases. I, I think what you're talking about is a system that is uh best flawed and possibly broken.

• 20:37Chuck Nice?

  It is broken, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna agree with you, Professor.

• 20:40Gary O'Reilly?

  And I think what we need is a, a, 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.

• 20:58Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna say, with, with respect. To that and here's my solution. Here's the deal. Um, 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.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  I think that's a, that's, that's a significant part of the answer and it's something that we recommend in Unwinding Madness.

• 21:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, okay, cool. Um, let's move on really quickly.

• 21:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 21:36Chuck Nice?

  The idea that March Madness, uh, 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?

• 21:52Speaker 03

  Well, I guess you can make that argument for any, any form of having fun or relaxing, can't you? And we, nonetheless, we do it.

• 21:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  We do it. What about adding up all the value we lose because people play golf? They, they can be working in a factory or working in the office place.

• 22:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, no, no.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  But at the end of the day, doing the stuff that you like to do, uh, helps, helps you feel productive, helps you emotionally, uh, helps you live longer. Uh, so I, I'm not sure that I would, I'd put a great deal of stock in, 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.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  And with respect to playing golf, there's no need for you to attack our president. Thank you. Anyway, no, I'm just.

• 22:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Is it, is it as simple as?

• 22:33Speaker 03

  As long as he doesn't kick his golf ball into the fairway, I have nothing to say about it.

• 22:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, at least at last we have some etiquette. Um, 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?

• 22:51Speaker 03

  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, 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.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  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.

• 24:00Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Yeah, that's great. We are out of time. You are fascinating. You've got to come back and talk to us again.

• 24:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor Andrew Zimbalist, thank you, because there is so much more we can mine in here, and with your knowledge of all college sports and other sports. So if you would be our guest again, that would be fabulous.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  I'd love to do that. It's fun to talk to you guys. Thanks for having me on.

• 24:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Pleasure's sake. Thank you. 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. Lea Legos. So don't go away. Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 24:39Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 24:41Gary O'Reilly?

  This, 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.

• 24:56Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 25:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Isn't it?

• 25:06Chuck Nice?

  Heather, how are you?

• 25:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, how are you?

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Hey, good to see you guys.

• 25:09Gary O'Reilly?

  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 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, seasoned NBA or Major League Baseball superstars, but young college athletes.

• 25:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. And so you'll see, like what Gary just said, the the young sea, 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?

• 26:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, please.

• 26:03Heather Berlin?

  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.

• 26:44Heather Berlin?

  Reactivating your prefrontal cortex, you actually mess up your performance in 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 reengage the prefrontal cortex is you if you start to think about your own performance in the moment. How am I doing? What are people thinking? Um. You become too self-aware. It reengages the prefrontal cortex. It takes your brain out of that automatic system. And you lose the flow state and you mess up your performance.

• 27:27Heather Berlin?

  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 gonna mess this up? And that in itself will mess up your performance. It's like a self fulfilling prophecy.

• 28:03Gary O'Reilly?

  So chemically, chemically, what changes? Because we know that the, the external influences, the thought that, oh, I can't, I don'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 synapses for you to have this flow. I don't know, maybe this is the wrong analogy, but please, is there a, a, a change and an imbalance of some sort chemically?

• 28:28Heather Berlin?

  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 gonna 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.

• 28:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 28:50Heather Berlin?

  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. Um, so that's one aspect of it. But the, it's about the types of circuits that are being activated in the moment. So when things are automatic and unconscious, you're in the flow state, you're getting these sub-cortical areas, like the basal ganglia, that are active.

• 29:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 29:20Heather Berlin?

  And when you start getting prefrontal cortices, areas that become more active.

• 29:26Heather Berlin?

  It kind of messes up that circuitry where things were automatic for. 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.

• 29:37Chuck Nice?

  I love it. I love it. I love it. What you really just said in neuroscientific terms is you're overthinking it.

• 29:45Heather Berlin?

  Absolutely.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 29:49Heather Berlin?

  You don't need to know about the biomechanics of the brain to know that this is just, you know, let yourself go. That's really the simplest advice you can give to an athlete. It's just the moment you find yourself because starting to think, to overthink it, you've got 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.

• 30:14Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 30:14Gary O'Reilly?

  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, 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.

• 30:30Chuck Nice?

  Well, you want fame? Here's where you start paying for it. Okay, all right, we gotta go.

• 30:40Heather Berlin?

  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.

• 30:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely.

• 30:56Heather Berlin?

  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.

• 31:17Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 31:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Heather Berlin, as always.

• 31:34Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 31:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Heather Berlin?

  Thanks. It's a pleasure.

• 31:37Gary O'Reilly?

  So joining us now in the studio is Dr. Leah Lagos.

• 31:39Speaker 05

  Thank you for having me.

• 31:41Chuck Nice?

  It's a pleasure.

• 31:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Fabulously welcome. So.

• 31:42Chuck Nice?

  And you are a clinical sports psychologist.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 31:46Chuck Nice?

  All right, cool.

• 31:47Gary O'Reilly?

  So picking up from Dr. Berlin about choking.

• 31:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Where would you see it from the way that you approach this particular sport or any sport?

• 31:58Speaker 05

  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. Um, muddles your thinking can.

• 32:20Chuck Nice?

  Gary is pointing at me right now because that right there is a uh very, very apt description of who I am all the time.

• 32:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Unless he's traveling.

• 32:27Speaker 05

  So we should talk.

• 32:28Chuck Nice?

  Unless I'm doing about buck sixty-five on a Ducati down I ninety-five.

• 32:33Speaker 05

  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.

• 32:44Chuck Nice?

  So um 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 foul shooting. Okay, 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 wanna 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.

• 33:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay, you can shoot it underhand and these guys are missing more foul shots than you could ever. I mean, seriously.

• 33:34Gary O'Reilly?

  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 hardened. They're not just gonna look at that crowd and see those TV cameras and go. Yeah, been here, done that.

• 34:02Speaker 05

  And guess what? It's not just a cognitive response, all the worrying and thinking. It starts with their physiology and.

• 34:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's interesting right there.

• 34:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Please explain.

• 34:11Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute. So that's a bubble up approach you're taking. This is bubbling up. It's not, it's not trickling down.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  Top down.

• 34:19Chuck Nice?

  Wow. The physiology of this.

• 34:22Speaker 05

  Well, there's a survival response that kicks in. And it's, it's meant to help us. I mean, if, 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, and prepare us for that moment?

• 34:40Chuck Nice?

  It depends on who's driving. Is it my wife? Cause if it's my wife, I'm getting the hell out of there.

• 34:44Speaker 05

  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. Uh, even speaking publicly, we're, our autonomic nervous system, sympathetic and parasympathetic are in balance. So our parasympathetic is our breaking action. What actually helps us calm down, mediate, um, and flexibly respond to a situation. Sympathetic is, ah, it, it's what helps us fight or flight. And in those moments, those choking moments, we see an imbalance where the sympathetic, 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.

• 35:28Gary O'Reilly?

  You've taken an athlete to a place they wouldn't normally be. Cause 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.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  That's exactly right.

• 35:40Gary O'Reilly?

  That's what you're saying. That's what quite literally, pun intended, throws them off.

• 35:44Chuck Nice?

  All right, so now, um.

• 35:46Speaker 05

  Well done.

• 35:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, throws them off. 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? Or?

• 36:15Speaker 05

  It's helpful.

• 36:16Chuck Nice?

  It's helpful.

• 36:17Speaker 05

  But we have more precise ways now with science, thanks to science and feedback. So we can actually monitor your heart rate, your brainwaves, 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 or your physiology.

• 36:35Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Wow.

• 36:37Gary O'Reilly?

  I like, I love all the science. How?

• 36:40Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 36:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Talk to me, please.

• 36:42Speaker 05

  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 on inside you're having a different reaction. Let's make the two fit.

• 37:06Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, nice. So you could not just faking it until you make it, but actually making it without faking it?

• 37:14Speaker 05

  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, they're not able to perform because the stakes are so high. And that's what we're training, the physiology under pressure.

• 37:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay, we gotta get more into this.

• 37:40Gary O'Reilly?

  But we gotta take a break.

• 37:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's do that.

• 37:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so we'll take a break. Um, when we come back, we'll have more from Dr. Leah Lagos and particularly about biofeedback. Don't go away.

• 37:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 37:57Chuck Nice?

  I'm still Chuck Nice.

• 37:58Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is still

• 37:59Chuck Nice?

  Playing with science.

• 38:01Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 38:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Could well be the future. So please expand upon what we were talking about before the break with biofeedback.

• 38:20Speaker 05

  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.

• 38:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. So I can look calm and actually be calm.

• 38:33Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 38:34Chuck Nice?

  Right. So now, first of all, when you're, you said, we can hook you up. What are you hooking us up to, to get these readings? What are you reading 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. This is all good, baby. You don't even know. I'm ice. I'm ice, baby. Ice, ice, baby.

• 39:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Back singing again. Badly, I might add.

• 39:05Speaker 05

  So let's say you came to my office and we had a chat. You're about to enter March Madness. And, 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 1,042.

• 39:31Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that sucks right there.

• 39:33Speaker 05

  It's a little stressful. Okay.

• 39:35Chuck Nice?

  Lovely. Exactly.

• 39:37Speaker 05

  Playing a video game, a racing game. The Stroop test, where you have a word like red, but it's in blue. But, 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, 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, which it's normal to see a twenty beat or so jump under stress, that's normal. But you see with some players and even non athletes, a jump of forty to sixty.

• 40:20Speaker 05

  Well, that's going to compromise your your skills and abilities if we're seeing that big kind of cardiovascular jump.

• 40:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Other tells are there that you notice?

• 40:30Speaker 05

  Uh, brainwaves. So I'll put a little sensor right here and it's called.

• 40:34Chuck Nice?

  The crown of your head.

• 40:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. And it's called CZ and I'm looking for what's called beta. Beta or what I call the squirrels in the brain. They run around, they keep you um. Busy in your brain, but not focused on the external world. So I want to see how many squirrels you have in your brain under these pressure moments.

• 40:59Chuck Nice?

  It's like an open attic.

• 41:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Just bring a bag of nuts, that'll tell you. That's all you need to do, bring some nuts.

• 41:04Chuck Nice?

  Oh, it's out of control here, alright.

• 41:06Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 41:18Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 41:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Not making them worse.

• 41:20Speaker 05

  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 um challenges that each player is facing. So it's 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.

• 41:56Chuck Nice?

  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?

• 42:24Speaker 05

  It's similar. Yes, yes, very much so. Um, and the the idea is to address the core so you can transfer it to different domains, different different areas. So what you may learn is 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. Um, so so there's different.

• 42:50Gary O'Reilly?

  All portable techniques in into into a stress related situation.

• 42:54Speaker 05

  Hundred percent.

• 42:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Here's one for you because I I used to be a professional soccer player and.

• 43:00Chuck Nice?

  You still are. You're just not playing anymore.

• 43:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, I yes.

• 43:03Chuck Nice?

  It's like being president.

• 43:04Gary O'Reilly?

  I've taken a break.

• 43:05Chuck Nice?

  You're president forever.

• 43:06Gary O'Reilly?

  So no, the thing is.

• 43:07Chuck Nice?

  Not serving as president.

• 43:08Gary O'Reilly?

  I I have a 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 you just say, I don't, I can get out?

• 43:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow, I that's an awesome.

• 43:34Speaker 05

  It's an awesome question.

• 43:35Chuck Nice?

  That's see, that's what happens when you've been a professional athlete.

• 43:39Speaker 05

  Right.

• 43:39Chuck Nice?

  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?

• 43:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Because if we've got a team and I'm out there thinking, I don't, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, you're not playing for the team.

• 43:55Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 43:55Gary O'Reilly?

  So.

• 43:56Speaker 05

  That's right. And that's where.

• 43:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you do you work with those? Have you worked?

• 43:59Speaker 05

  I have.

• 43:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, you see.

• 44:00Speaker 05

  But what's interesting is they're oftentimes not self-referred. They're oftentimes referred by the captain, other players, or the coach.

• 44:06Chuck Nice?

  That why would I refer myself when I'm totally awesome?

• 44:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Duh. Please, I mean, clearly I'm the best. 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.

• 44:19Speaker 05

  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.

• 44:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, if not more so.

• 44:35Speaker 05

  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.

• 44:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Do they feel that you're taking away? See, the guy who's stressed.

• 45:04Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 45:05Gary O'Reilly?

  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?

• 45:19Speaker 05

  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.

• 45:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Gotcha. You talked about the overconfident athlete.

• 45:50Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 45:50Gary O'Reilly?

  We won't name them.

• 45:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Tom Brady. They come down. I'm joking. And the way I'm imagining you sell that is, it's temporary. You are managing it down.

• 46:02Speaker 05

  And then you can bring yourself back up, so you have flexibility.

• 46:05Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 46:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:16Gary O'Reilly?

  So therefore this one's for the team.

• 46:18Speaker 05

  That's exactly right. So let me introduce a little bit of science to go with this.

• 46:21Chuck Nice?

  He's dead. That's what we're here for.

• 46:24Speaker 05

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

• 47:07Speaker 05

  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, 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.

• 47:35Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  But we can shift our physiology to shift our psychology. And it's fascinating and it, it's, it's part of the world of kind of this biohacking. Using, using technology and science.

• 47:47Chuck Nice?

  Giving us something for a new show.

• 47:48Gary O'Reilly?

  We like this.

• 47:50Chuck Nice?

  Biohacking, that's our next show. This is awesome. Well, we're out of time, but man, oh man, is this some really cool stuff.

• 47:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. You have opened a window, a door in this.

• 48:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah, there's a lot here.

• 48:01Gary O'Reilly?

  We see. Thank you.

• 48:03Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 48:04Gary O'Reilly?

  No, thank you.

• 48:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, awesome. Oh, man, this is good stuff.

• 48:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Biohack.

• 48:08Chuck Nice?

  Biohacking, that's our new thing, man. Gotta get into it.

• 48:11Gary O'Reilly?

  We can rebuild you. Mind you, we're gonna wrap the ante, it's no longer the $7 million 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.