StarTalk Podcast
Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson
How are the universal laws of matter, energy and motion expressed on the football field?
9,210 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your host, and I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where I also serve as director of the Hayden Planetarium. Joining me is my special guest host, Chuck Nice.
Hey, man.
Nice Chuck Nice.
That's Nice Chuck Nice. Thanks for having me back, Neil.
People might want to know why I said Nice Chuck Nice.
That's because you can follow me on Twitter at @NiceChuckNice.
Chuck Nice was already taken, was that?
You know what? Oddly enough, it was.
So, welcome back. This is our special Super Bowl Break edition of StarTalk Radio.
Yeah.
I know you're a football fan from way back.
Huge.
Out of control football fan.
Huge. I love it. I love it. It's like crack to me.
You get in a football mood?
Yes, I do.
You just love?
I love everything about it. I'm telling you right now, I got a little stiffy just talking about it right now.
TMI, TMI. For today, I brought in one of my longtime friends and colleagues, Professor Charles Liu. He's a professor of astrophysics at the City University of New York. Charles, welcome to StarTalk Radio.
Thank you so much for having me. Hi, Chuck.
Let me say why I've got him on here. A couple of years back, he wrote an essay on the physics of baseball, and he did all kinds of cool calculations about what baseball would be like on the moon. And I figured, well, I need him for my football show, because then he'll do all these weird, crazy, geeked-out calculations for what goes on in football.
Cool.
And he'll get to comment on our interviews that we have for this segment. Do you know who we... Chuck, do you know why you managed to get?
No.
Three football players from the New York Giants.
That's very cool.
It was very cool.
It's odd for the fact that they're from the New York Giants, because I'm an Eagles fan.
You're an Eagles fan. Well, get over it. Three of them, tight end Travis Beckham. Okay. And special teams captain and linebacker Chase Blackburn. Okay. And another linebacker Jonathan Cough. Good guys. Yeah, good guys. That's pretty cool. And on the very first segment with them, we talked about what makes the best tackle? And how you might try to take someone down who's in motion? So let's see what they have to say. And Charles, when we come back, I want your analysis of this conversation. I'll do my best. All right, let's check it out.
Do you actually invoke laws of physics you learned in your engineering class to become a better linebacker?
Could say, yeah, but it's actually something that you learn as a young football player. And that's the low man wins.
Low man wins. I've heard that.
Leverage.
And so you want to come in at what point in the person's body?
You want your hat under their hat.
Oh, okay. Oh, you call them hats?
Yes.
How polite.
Well, my cap, yes. Okay, so you want your cap, your helmet, under their helmet? What does that then do for you?
Oh, it gives you better leverage and puts you in a better position. So if you're a smaller guy, it puts you in a better position to control the blocker.
And so it helps if you can crouch a little lower than others can?
So why aren't people just slithering along the ground to get to their people's ankles? To get as low as humanly possible?
You need some power.
Oh, you start losing power when you get real low. So it's the whatever's the best combination of how low you get, yet still get to use your leg strength?
Yeah, right.
With the speed coming down, you know, obviously you meet force with force when you come out.
That's where I come from. A lot of people think that it's your upper body. It's really your legs and what you have underneath them.
So Jonathan, tell me about leg power. If you're going to block someone, the most obvious thing you're using is your upper body. So how do the legs play out?
Your legs are, your legs and your hips, those are the most important things. But that's where you generate all of your power, all of your momentum, that it gets started, you know, with your legs. You don't need to have phenomenal bench press to be able to deliver those big hits? Or to create separation between yourself and a blocker? It all starts with your legs. And if you can get good acceleration with your legs going, then everything else comes.
If you had the choice of tackling a tall person or a short person, who would you be most effective at tackling?
Tall.
Yeah, I mean.
Bigger target.
Get the legs and wrap them up. They can't drive. Same thing, if you're tackling, you hit a guy up high, they can still move their legs and drive.
And there's still, there's still something going on in the play, if the legs are still touching.
If you can get a taller guy and you take him on thigh level or waist level, the legs can't go anywhere.
He's out. So why aren't there more little players, or are there, in football?
A lot of running backs are shorter.
We've got Ahmad Bradshaw back there for us.
How tall is he?
He's gotta be five nine.
Five two?
He might be like five nine.
So he's a little fireplug then?
And what does he weigh?
Much more than two hundred.
Two hundred, plus or minus, yeah?
There's a lot of guys in the league that, it's starting to come back, like Barry Sanders, one of the greatest running backs of all time. He may have been five ten.
And Darren Sproles?
Darren Sproles, yeah.
My data says he's five six, maybe?
Yeah, a lot of the running backs now are, but they also have those thick legs that drive too.
Just let me alert the listening audience that Jonathan Koff, linebacker for the New York Giants, majored in mechanical engineering in college, and Chase Blackburn was a math major. Charles, what does that do for you?
Well, that explains why it sounded a heck of a lot like a NASA engineer conversation just now at Goddard Spaceflight Center.
Rather than the New York Giants locker room?
Yeah, pretty much. Quite amazing. But actually, they're quite right. The center of mass makes all the difference in terms of whether you're able to stop somebody. Now, what's interesting is, of course, the center of mass for most men is just above the belly button, whereas for most women, it's just below. So what that means is, the short guys you refer to, like Darren Sproles, Ahmad Bradshaw, their centers of mass are more like women in the sense of further down in their legs, which makes them more effective in driving. But I wonder if they'd rather tackle a short guy ten times, or a tall guy ten times? Because you want to hit Brandon Jacobs, who's six four, two fifty, ten times? You can stop him the first time, it'd be fun, but... I don't want to hit him at all.
It's huge. Yeah, so I don't know, it's interesting that a single tackle, you want to tackle the big guy. But by the fourth quarter, I'll bet you you'd rather go for Darren Sproles any day of the week. Because he's beating you down, the big guy. That's right.
The big guy, yeah, so the little guy is much less mass coming at you and it works for you, is what you're saying.
I think so.
And so this thing about women with a lower center of mass, is it just because they're shorter or because their hips bring some weight below the belt that would otherwise be above the belt for men?
It has to do with the anatomical structure. Ah.
The anatomical structure.
So that explains why it's so damn hard for me to tackle women.
I'll leave that to you, Chuck.
You're listening to StarTalk Radio, and let's go back to my interview with my three New York Giants football players, Travis Beckham, tight end, Chase Blackburn, he's a special teams, what do we call him, he's the, he's a...
Captain.
Captain linebacker, and Jonathan Koff. And this time, we're going to talk about sort of what it might take to escape a tackle, and what kind of force you'd feel if in fact you felt one.
An NFL lineman hitting with a full force carries about 2,500 pounds into his opponent. And that's like a VW Beetle. On that point of impact, does it feel like that in a tackle? Or is the equipment just so well-designed around your body that that's just a walk in the park?
Oh, and it's by no means a walk in the park, but it doesn't feel like you're just standing in the middle of the road as a VW Beetle, you know, that comes and takes you head on.
So it's not quite like you're standing in the middle of a road?
Right, right, no, because you're going at them also. And because he's bigger, I mean, he has more mass, and so he won't be able to move quite as quickly, and so that's where I need to use my athleticism to generate more speed than he is, and then to try to overcome the force.
The force. Yeah, you had a feel the force.
You had a big running back up high. Flushed, like, you know, squared up head to head. It's gonna feel a lot worse than you tackle a guy from the side.
To the relative velocities are very different.
Yeah, it's all about the angle to tackle and everything else.
Yeah, and but if you if you're watching where you're going, you're not really gonna have the occasion to come straight head on.
Head on.
Right, you're trying to avoid it.
Goal line.
You almost never line up and just go. It seems almost magic how a quarterback can avoid a tackle. I don't know what's going on there. They're they're ready to try to pass. Somebody's running after them and they just sort of stepped to the side and the guy just falls on his face. Or they spin a little bit with just a little bit on the shoulder. What's going on with the quarterback? They just have high experience away from heavy people?
Looking at your peripherals, I think that Vic would probably be the best person.
Michael Vick.
About, yes. And the way he just sees people and then he does a spin move a lot.
Plus, he's quick, so if you're gonna tackle where he is at this moment. In the next split second, he's in another place and your body is out of position.
Really got it. You'd never really.
You never really got a handle on him.
Plus, I also think with all the rules in place for the quarterbacks to protect them. A lot of the defensive players are so nervous about that they're such a small target on a quarterback you can hit without a personal foul. That it's kind of like when you're going out and rushing full speed as defensive player and you have to think for that split second. That's it. Once you think in the game of football, it's over. You can't. You have to react.
So it has to be your life experience.
Telling your body what to do without even processing it.
So they're telling you not to think on a football field. What does that mean, Chuck?
Well, look at that. It it means that I could play football.
Anything that requires no thinking at all. I'm a Viking. Wow, it's like a learned instinct.
A learned instinct, yeah. I think Charles, is that what they're meaning there?
Yeah, you see, the typical rushing lineman is moving about 20 miles an hour, which is about 30 feet per second. Average human reaction time is about two tenths of a second. So if you have to react after you see something. You're already six feet past the quarterback. You really have to rely on that animal instinct, that learned instinct that has nothing to do with the thinking processes in your head in order to catch him. Otherwise, he's long gone by the time you thought, oh, I gotta go that way.
So this one is is split second timing of the action and the reaction of the tackle.
Yeah, and that's what the training is so important, the repetition, so that your body is used to moving without having to think about it first.
Yeah, plus, the guy ready to tackle the quarterback is probably much more massive than the quarterback himself. So presumably, the quarterback is more nimble.
Right.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be quarterback.
And a hell of a lot more scared, which helps you not have to think.
There are big quarterbacks now, actually.
Ben Roethlisberger.
Right, as just as you're getting smaller running backs, you're getting bigger quarterbacks. These guys, not only are they tall enough to see over the linemen and see the passing lanes.
I always wondered how they see past that line.
Yeah, they're 6'5".
It's like the wall of China. How do you even know what's going on?
In fact, the front line has to make passing lanes. The way they block, they make it so that the quarterback can actually see.
They should have periscopes.
That's a new helmet equipment addition there.
Let's go to my next clip real quick, and it talks about spinning moves. Spinning moves and whether anything you might learn in a ballet class would help your football.
The easiest way to spin out of someone is as if they have all their force on one shoulder. It's easy to spin the other way. It's very hard to spin if someone's coming to top you and their head up on you. And if they hit you square in the middle, it's very hard to spin. Say for instance, I'm running at you and you're coming at my upfield shoulder. You're gonna hit my right shoulder. It's very easy to spin to my left because all of your force is going that way.
So you don't know in advance, until contact is made, what's the best way to undo that? Or you can anticipate it, I guess, a little bit.
I like to shuffle my feet and see where they go, and whichever they go, it's easy.
So you do like a Muhammad Ali thing with your feet?
To try to shake them?
Flying like a butterfly and spinning like a bee.
Although, the reason on defense that we like it when offensive players spin is because as an offensive man, you're the only man with the ball. And in defense, you have 11 guys out there going for that ball. So when someone spins on the first defensive player, there's usually one or two guys coming to hit him. So as soon as he spins,
That's coming from the inside out.
The ball's out, and that's the risk of spinning in the end.
Oh, because if you're spinning, the ball's away from the spin point, and now you're exposed.
Okay, my colleague posed this question. Many defense pass rushers will spin their bodies when they rush the quarterback. Dwight Freeney of the Indianapolis Colts may have the best such spin move in the NFL today. They're basically doing a ballet spin in the air to avoid blockers. And then they rush straight to the target. Is that spin move generally better than a straight bull rush? Or is it just that Freeney does it so well that it's sort of uniquely effective for him?
It's the mix up of it.
They complement each other.
Yeah, if you're bull rush one time and the offensive tackle was deep setting for you and trying to come at you, trying to get his leverage, expecting you to just bull rush him, that's when you want to hit the, hit the spin move.
Keep him guessing.
Yeah, because if you, if they get up, especially if they're deep setting because of your speed, they deep set to your outfield shoulder. So as soon as they do that, you kind of lean into them to get them to guess that way.
And then you take them out.
And you roll back underneath, spin move underneath.
So this is a mind game at that point?
It's like a chess match. Chess match. In the old days, there were these videos of football coaches teaching their players ballet. Are these sort of tiptoe moves still taught for your agility and?
Heard some guys do ballet.
If someone's gonna do it, they'll do that on their own.
And not tell anybody about it.
Yeah, right?
And leave the two two back at home.
A whole football field of two twos. We're going to a commercial break, but when we return, a whole conversation about football injuries. Stay tuned on StarTalk Radio.
You're listening to a special edition of StarTalk Radio during this Super Bowl. I have the privilege of interviewing three NFL football players, and it's Travis Beck and Chase Blackburn and Jonathan Koff. Two of them were science and math majors in college, which is pretty cool. You want to follow us, StarTalk Radio, we're on the web, star talk radio dot net, and find us on Facebook, StarTalk Radio. And guess what our Twitter handle is? StarTalk Radio. And my special guest today is my colleague, Charles Liu, astrophysicist and all around calculator of geeky things. So. Thanks a lot, Dean. We're gonna come back to you after this next clip where we talk, I talked to these New York Giants about what they do when they strip the ball from anyone's possession
and the pile on that results. Let's see what they tell us. It didn't seem to me that back in the 70s or 80s that tackle people aimed for the ball. It seems like it's happening all the time today.
It's something that's taught now. Every coach teaches it. Special teams, everything. Offense especially now teaches it. I mean, you sit in on those meetings and they talk about if the defense gets an interception or a fumble recovery, that's what they're taught to do now is strip the ball because defensive guys aren't used to running with the ball.
Say it like a loaf of bread, that's how they carry it.
So it's there for the pickings.
And also if you look at the statistics for teams that win the turnover battle, the teams that create the most turnovers or that have the best ratio, those are the teams that are gonna win the most games.
He's calling them coaches.
I was gonna say, how do you not know the exact percentage throughout the league?
Let me go get my power points. I saved all the power points.
I think it's like 80 some percent.
I mean, in the old days, they might have seen someone try to knock it out of your hands, but if you hit it with a helmet, it's almost impossible to keep holding that.
Think of somebody running full speed at you with a helmet, right at that football.
Aiming for the football.
It's very hard to hold that football. That's why a lot of times you see guys holding the football with two hands. There's times where I've been running with the ball and they try to put their hat on the ball and they have and it hit my forearm and that's not very good. Just think about that pressure on the football. It's very hard.
Right, and the form is not protected.
No, it's not at all.
And I guess to draw an analogy, it's a lot like hitting a nail with a hammer and your helmet sometimes ends up being the head of the hammer.
Right. And the ball's bouncing around and it's live. For you guys, it seems to be quite dangerous because that's when the piling on happens. Somebody goes in, grabs the ball, and who determines who has possession of the ball?
Whoever comes up with it.
No, no, no, no. There are 14 guys in a pile and they just peel them off one at a time.
Whoever comes up with the ball.
Whoever ends with it.
So if you and I have equal grip on the ball.
It's not gonna happen.
We're gonna fight it out.
We're gonna, we're gonna.
One of one of us is gonna get it.
And there's.
I'm betting on John.
There's some bad stuff in there that happens.
Bad stuff in there, yeah. I mean, is there any biting or?
I mean, there's.
There's, everything's happening.
But I mean, you have.
You can't really bite.
People getting punched in the, down there and, and people getting stepped on and people getting eyes poked and.
Oh yeah.
It gets dirty down there.
That's like throwing a fresh piece of meat in the linesman.
So Charles, it must be a lot of force if you're in the bottom of that pile.
Oh yeah, you're suffering.
Let's say if there's, let's say it's probably not 14 guys, but let's say eight guys are on top of you and they're 250 pounds each, you're talking 2,000 pounds.
That's a Volkswagen Beetle right on top of your chest.
Right, just driving on top of your chest.
And the thing is, of course, the ball is a prolate spheroid, right? Just, alright, that's geek for football shape, okay?
What that means is that... It's a football.
Football, yes.
It bounces like crazy. You don't know where it's gonna go depending on whatever force. So the next guy piles on, suddenly it squirts that way, next guy comes on, squirts the other way. But attacking a ball is also all about physics. The reason it's being coached now is because coaches figured out that it takes much less force to actually knock a ball out of a kid's hands than it is to actually take the guy down. It actually requires less force.
Okay, so they're invoking the laws of physics to...
Improve their ability to win the game.
Okay.
Gotcha. So it's easier to strip a ball than it is to tackle a guy? Absolutely, in all cases.
In retrospect, this sounds kinda obvious. I don't know why they didn't figure that out 50 years ago. Maybe they didn't have Physics 101.
I think that might have something to do with it.
Well, you know, a big problem these days are helmet-to-helmet hits. And I had to, I had to bring that up and find out where that was, where that leads, where that was and where it's gonna go. Let's find out the latest on that.
Nowadays, you have these guys in the NFL that just lay people out. They just knock people out whether...
And they do it with their helmet going into your helmet.
Head to head.
And that's the worst part. I mean, if you wanna strive yourself on being a hard hitter and knocking people out, hit someone in the chest, hit someone...
That still looks good on the highlight reel.
In the stomach, hit somebody in the shoulders. When you hit somebody in their head or mess up their cognitive skills and all that stuff, like you shouldn't take pride in that. That's like, you're knocking someone out based on something that they have no control.
When I would, I'd take, I'd take pride in taking a cheap shot at an opposing player. But it's, it's football, you know? It's by any means necessary, you know? Get your job done.
But there's a law now against... What is the law?
You're not allowed to use helmet-to-helmet.
On a defenseless receiver is the key term.
There's no helmet-to-helmet contact on a defenseless receiver. And then there's no helmet-to-helmet, period, on quarterbacks.
Yeah. So, I'm a pass receiver. I don't have the ball yet. Now I have the ball. You can't hit your helmet to my helmet?
Have you had an opportunity to make a football move?
And it's how you tackle, like if you're lunging at someone, like if you're attempting to go helmet to helmet, then yes. If the receiver is running and he ducks and you're going for a tackle,
It's still...
It's kinda, but it's kinda...
It's a judgment call.
Different stuff is where you can get fined, you can get penalized in the game and fined the week after, but you can actually send it in for an argument.
For review.
And then they could actually take your fine away and usually it's seventy-five hundred dollars.
Uh huh.
Some of the hits are arguable, but during the game, they call a flag, it's a flag.
But the hardest part is the fact that, you know, a lot of times these balls are thrown and the receiver may bobble it. Or as they're catching, they're ducking. Yeah, but as a defensive player, you're aiming at their chest. But as they bobble the ball, it's going to the ground, they're going down to duck to get it.
As they're doing that, your target area that you've already aimed for was their chest, now that in that same area is now their head because they just dropped.
Yeah, they're basically giving us a strike zone.
Yeah, at the heat of the moment, it's so hard to change your strike zone as another player's moving.
Yeah, I mean, this injury stuff is something else and I then spoke to them once we talked about helmet to helmet butt heading behavior.
You butt head.
I asked them about concussions because it's one thing to just say we hit heads, but now what happens to your brain? Let's find out. Have you guys all had concussions?
I haven't.
So why did you, you said, oh yeah, and Travis says, I haven't.
I mean, I've blacked out.
Oh, so it's a matter of the definition?
It's a matter of what you say. That's the thing about it now is concussions have been graded so much differently now. Every head injury is now looked at. That's why there's so many more concussions. Where in the past, the same head injury wasn't even looked...
Yeah, they just slap you, you know, put you back in the next line.
A lot of times people get concussions and don't remember what happened. I remember in high school, we were playing a green team, I got knocked out and opened my eyes and all I could see was green.
But that's not a concussion.
They only lasted a couple of plays, not but I but but the thing is I remembered everything. Nowadays, you got guys that they can't even like open their eyes and look at light or a week later can't even remember anything.
Okay, so part of the problem is the helmets are rigid. If you made a soft helmet, then the brain is not going to get the jolt because there'll be a cushion.
Which is what the padding is underneath that hard shell of the helmet.
Well, this is already supposed to do that.
Yeah. And they're working on that again, that's one of the things they're working on is compression of the helmets and everything like that.
Okay. Travis, I read your bio. You you broke your leg in college.
Well, it was actually my senior year and it was actually a very tough year for me because I started the season with a hamstring injury. So I missed the first three games, came back, played four more games, and then I broke my leg. I was actually blocking. Our running back got tackled onto my leg, broke my fibula.
Fibula's in in your shin.
Your outs.
So so it it got broken with you getting tackled?
No, no, I was blocking and then our running back got tackled and tackled on my leg.
Oh, gotcha. So in a way, there was a secondary incident that broke the leg.
Yeah, injuries is is a part of the game and and that's one thing you're gonna have to face.
So in a way, a nice clean bone break, that's the best kind of injury. It's not your knee, it's not your brain.
Exactly.
It's a hundred percent injury rate in this in this game, in this league. Anything from a broken finger to something that's gonna end your career like blowing out your knee.
What percentage of players leave the game because of injuries?
I would say most do, even if they're not career ending per se, but as a player.
And you're speaking to me with your arm in a sling right now.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I just had surgery on Friday, so.
And well, your surgery was on what?
I had my labrum repaired and my ended up being my bicep tendon reattached.
It just sounds painful. Reattach your bicep tendon.
Yeah, it was week one. I had this actually happen, so I played the entire season with this.
If it's not necessarily messing you up while you play, what is it, five years later, this really catches up.
Yeah, and and it cannot be a career ending injury like, hey, this is it that day, but my my shoulders could catch up to me in a few years or, you know, the knees may not be that instant when they happen. But a few years later, they're gonna eventually slow you down, so it can become a career ending injury.
What part of your body hurts the most after a game? Shoulders and shoulders, yeah. You shoulder, but that's where you got all the plastic stuff. Yeah. Still, that's why, even with all the plastic. Even with, yeah. Because I see all the layers and each layer kind of diffuses the force to spread it out as evenly as possible. Still, it's your shoulders. That's how much force there is in a game of football. That's why football players have big shoulders and big necks. Cause if they didn't, they'd be dead.
There that is. So Charles, what's your reaction to all this injury talk?
Well, first of all, helmet to helmet has been going on for a long time. You guys may remember a guy named Fred the Hammer Williamson.
Oh, yeah.
Kansas City Chiefs. That was all he did. But beyond that, when you have hard helmets, I know.
He later had a big career in blaxploitation films in the seventies.
That's right. That's right. Yeah. The problem is that when you've got hard helmets hitting each other, the time for the impact goes down and therefore the impulse.
So it's an elastic collision.
Exactly. So you're actually transferring much more force in a very short time, even though you do have padding on the inside.
So they really should be the leather heads.
Yeah, soft helmets. That's right.
Like in the old days, you will keep the whatevers inside, but they should soften it. And that way the headbutt is, is it takes longer for it to execute the contact.
Right. It's like whether you have a bumper that crushes with your car or whether a really hard piece, it transfers a lot more energy. What they should do is just grow giant afros.
When we come back, more of our special Super Bowl break StarTalk program.
Welcome back to StarTalk Radio, our special Super Bowl break edition. We've had the pleasure and the privilege of having three New York Giants football players on StarTalk. They've visited me in my office at the Hayden Planetarium. Two of them have backgrounds in science. Chase Blackburn was a math major and at the University of Akron in Ohio and Jonathan Goff majored in mechanical engineering. And where did he go to school? He was at Vanderbilt.
Vanderbilt.
That's right. And we have Travis Beckham, a tight end. He was the youngest of the three of them, even a little spunkier than the rest. And it was funny hearing him talk about the fact that he runs faster than the other two. He made them sound like old timers. It was funny. They're all born in like the mid eighties. This is what was crazy about it. And so, Charles, you do weird calculations about things. That's why I brought you on the show. What can you tell me about the football enterprise? And what the uninitiated listener might want to know?
Well, I gotta tell you, football is the perfect example of how physics is actually fun. Everything we love about football is applied physics. Everything from blocking and tackling to the hail mary. Right? When you have a football that's flying out 50 yards toward the end zone with three seconds left, that ball is actually traveling almost exactly the same way an artillery shell fires. Because when you shoot the artillery shell out, it has rifling in the barrel that makes the shell spin.
So they spin. That's because of stability.
Exactly. Gives increases the ability for it to hit its target in a nice trajectory. And that's part of the reason why quarterbacks will spin the ball when they throw it.
So they can legitimately call it the bomb?
There is no question about it.
Wow.
Yeah. That's just one tiny example of how the physics just translates and translates out. You can figure everything. We were talking earlier about how the reason people go for the ball these days instead of just trying to tackle the runner is because it takes less force to remove a ball from a runner than it is actually to stop the runner from running.
And less energy on top of that. So if you analyze it physically, you can just become a better team.
Absolutely.
So you can have a whole team, 11 guys who are skinny.
Who just know how to strip the ball. And they're the best defense in football.
Well, you know.
Quit with calculators, you know. I got you on that one.
Football's an incredibly cerebral game. You look in a playbook, and there are 200 plays in there that these guys have to learn.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So basically, it would actually benefit you to have a bunch of smart dudes on your team.
Well, smart dudes who can run fast away from those who might try to get at them.
Or like you said, Neil, smart guys with calculators, just like, okay, Ignatius, I'm gonna lead you down at the 20-yard line. Just waiting.
As long as they're really, really strong.
So on my next clip, I, I had to ask these guys, cause these are big guys. They, they're six, four, two forty pounds or whatever. And they're, you know, they look like football players. I had to ask him, what, what goes on in the locker room with, who's, are, are you guys like, is there a pissing contest there or what? Let's see what they say.
What is the measure these days of who's the strongest in the locker room? Is it the bench press?
Okay. Which makes no sense. I know, I know, I know. It's, it's, it's, it's old school. I understand. It's old school, but something's gotta happen in the old school way. So what can you bench? Travis?
Now, I, I mean, my shoulder is so messed up. Most of that bench was, was four sixty.
That's where the messed up shoulder.
No, no, no. Well, that's when my shoulder was good.
Okay, Jonathan?
Same as Travis. Well, four sixty-five.
Tommy Topper. Four seventy, I mean.
Four seventy, seriously?
No, no, no. Honestly, you know, obviously I can't bench at all right now with my shoulder under the sling, but uh, I think, I think four forty's about as much as I went up to.
So does that still have bragging rights in the locker room?
Oh, definitely.
There's guys, what are they, six hundred?
Chris Neese. Bench six hundred.
Chris Neese.
One of our rookies actually.
I don't know you could fit that much mass on the bar. That's when the bar starts bending.
Yes, it pretty much does.
Okay, now how about in the thigh lift? The leg press, squat, yeah.
It all depends because a lot of guys, if you have injuries, you have to do, you can do a front squat on a slide machine or, or you can do leg press or.
Oh, yeah. So leg press is the.
Yeah, like it all depends and it's all relative to what exercise you're doing. I mean, a lot of guys can leg press a thousand pounds or so, you know?
Right, right.
I mean, that's not on leg press, but now if you're squatting a thousand pounds, something to be said.
Yeah, cause leg press, your whole body is supported. You're just pushing, pushing weight off of you. Yeah. If you look at people in the Olympics with very strong legs, they're not necessarily huge. They're just very well defined. And so where's the trade-off between getting super mondo thighs and having thighs that can actually serve your needs on the field?
I think that's the way you use them. I think if that's the case, you would think that ice skaters would have huge legs.
Means, uh, speed skaters?
Yeah. Figure skaters or whatever. I, I think that to base off of, of any sport, I'd say football players probably have the most defined bodies. And it's just the way we use them. I think football is a sport where you need to use every single muscle in your body.
Every muscle in the body.
Chuck, how many muscles you have in your body?
Uh, I think I have four. I'm pretty sure I have about four, maybe six tops.
On a good day.
On a good day, that four becomes six.
But there's a whole other philosophy here, obviously. In the old days, the guy would, you flex your bicep, and if you had the biggest bicep, you say, oh, that's cool. But what good is that other than flexing when you need all your muscles to take somebody down who's running with the ball?
A punter is not going to need biceps. Right?
A punter is going to use one. By the way, there are about 650 muscles in the human body, just so you know. But anyway.
Maybe your body.
For my body, they're really small. But you've got a situation where a punter is going to kick a ball 50 yards or something in the air. He's not going to need biceps. He's going to need massive quadriceps. Oh, by the way, depending on which direction the field is facing.
The spin of the earth will actually cause a punted football to slide to the left or the right.
You're not talking about the Coriolis force, are you?
I am indeed talking about the Coriolis force.
You're totally geeking me out now.
Hey, hey, it's awesome.
This is the force that generates hurricanes on Earth.
Mm-hmm.
If any air mass moves north or south.
It's coming from a different part of the earth that has a different sideways rotational speed. And it either overshoots the center or pulls behind it.
And when that happens, you can spin a storm in the northern hemisphere. They all spin counterclockwise.
That's right, okay.
And so you kick a ball.
About 50 yards, the ball will move one quarter inch either to the left or the right, depending on whether you're kicking north, south, or east, west.
But that's because you're kicking.
Or if you're in the north or southern hemisphere.
And you're kicking, you're kicking during a hurricane. This is the problem.
No, the Coriolis force doesn't need a hurricane to operate.
Oh, oh, okay.
So, I, I bet there are a couple of kicks that, that hit, missed by a quarter of an inch.
It happens, yeah. It's a game of inches, or in this case, quarters of an inch.
The earth hates me. That's why I missed that field goal. The earth hates me.
Well, in Cowboy Stadium, which just opened a few years ago, you actually had a punter which hit the big screen above. And that completely changed the path of the ball, too.
Yeah, if you hit a blunt object, yeah, that would, yeah, thank you. That or the Coriolis force. One or the other. I also had to ask these guys about their diet, because where do you get your energy from? You get it from your food. From something you have slaughtered for the benefit of your own caloric intake. And so, get over it. Even vegetarians have to kill something to eat it, even if it's just a carrot. So, uh, let's find out what they, what my guys were telling me about. Diet and calories.
Do you guys count calories? What do you eat in a day?
I mean, I just try to eat balanced meals for the most part, especially in season.
Reese cups?
Reese cups followed by ice cream. That would balance that out. All the sugar food groups. So what you're saying is you just eat to stay healthy, but not in any...
You know your body. Everybody's body's different. I mean, you gotta know yourself.
Some guys are different. For instance, Kevin Boss, our titan, is very strict in what he eats. And he gets mad at me when I sit down and eat, because I got the cakes and all the like sweet stuff. And he's just like, "Oh, I want some of that, but I can't." Because a lot of guys have to deal with the being overweight and...
Right. What do you mean you get fined?
Exactly, see?
You get a window.
You gotta be a certain window.
Five hundred dollars a pound.
No!
Four fifty, my bad.
So there is some weight that the coach has decided you should be, or some weight interval. And you come in after a cheeseburger weekend, five pounds overweight.
You're paying. That's an expensive cheeseburger.
That is a very expensive cheeseburger.
Oh, my gosh!
Per pound, per day.
So what is your percent body fat?
Although it does depend on, now, see, if you are overweight, they check your body fat. If your body fat is still below a certain point, then you're good.
That you're out. Okay.
That you're out.
Alright, so you could have built some muscle over the weekend. So what's your body fat?
I'm eleven percent.
Is that your ideal?
Yeah, eleven percent, and then I have to be between two forty, two forty-four.
Okay, John?
So, I mean, it depends on the time of year. So when I'll start training?
Come here, you sound like a woodland creature. Yeah, in the spring when I'm a hibernate. What do you mean?
I'll be around...
Okay, full up schedule. What?
I'll be around thirteen in the spring, and then I'll...
Thirteen percent?
And I'll get down to about ten or eleven come August.
Okay, and your weight?
Two forty to two fifty.
And above that, you start paying out?
Okay, and...
I'm about the same as John. Get up to about a thirteen and thirteen and a half, and get down to about a twelve or just under, maybe an eleven.
So that's not an NFL rule, that's just a New York Giants?
Oh, no.
It depends on the club.
Okay, but everybody's got an incentive clause, yeah, for this. So Chuck, they charge you if you come in fat.
Look at that. And I thought models had it bad. These guys are just like, "Oh, dear, I could never."
Oh, I must be bulimic.
I'm gonna have a salad. I'm just gonna have a salad. I'm playing this weekend.
Yeah, I can't, I don't know. I don't even wanna have that image, Chuck.
But it's true. You need calorie. Calorie equals energy.
You know, Charles, I once, again, my colleague, Charles Lu, thanks for being on the show.
Sure.
I once saw, it was an ad for Snickers that said, "High in energy, low in calories."
I don't think so.
Yeah, that's right.
A calorie is a measure of energy.
It is a measure of energy. That was an ad slogan guy who never had physics 101.
And so, when we come back, we will talk more about what the total weight of all their equipment is. Have you ever think it's like, you know, it weighs like 50 pounds or something?
Right, yeah.
It does not. And I ask them about it, they'll tell me about it.
Oh, and amongst that equipment are girdles.
Oh, come on.
Nah, you were talking tutus earlier. We're talking girdles.
Charles, I don't even want to know why you know that.
We've got to take a quick break, but more StarTalk when we return.
You are listening to a special edition of StarTalk Radio. What, in this, in this Super Bowl break?
For a special episode of StarTalk, what other calculations have you done for us?
Well, I figured I would figure out what would happen if we played football on the moon.
You did, you did, they did golf on the moon, so you might as well have football.
Might as well have football. Turns out that your typical NFL quarterback will throw a ball 350 yards in the air before it comes down.
That would have to be a really big stadium.
That's cool.
So that'd be a Hail Mary squared.
350 yards.
Amazing.
So you would, you would literally have to get in a car to go catch the ball.
Yes, I'm afraid so. But there is another way you can do it. If the quarterback happens to throw it really high upward in the air, using a trajectory, then you can actually have the astronaut quarterback kind of amble slowly across that 350 yards and you can actually catch it.
Wait, all thrown footballs have trajectories.
So what are you telling me here?
Take the angle and aim it really.
Very high trajectory.
As opposed to a low one.
A high parabola.
Right. The ideal trajectory to get maximum distance is always forty-five degree angle. But if you take it sixty or seventy degrees, you actually can give the runner enough time to make those three hundred and fifty yards before you actually get.
Yeah. So that would be a.
So when we have moon colonies, we'll, we'll call, you'll be on the sideline, give, recalculating all plays for, for moon gravity.
It would be my pleasure.
It'd be a one-sixth gravity situation. And, and, and what would be great in one-sixth gravity is the goal line stands where you have the running back where they want to jump over the line.
Oh, but that's it.
Oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah.
You, you get that launch, you get that, that ballet music.
Fifteen foot vertical.
Trying to play football in space, why don't you?
In fact, it can only jump over the line. It could jump over the, the, the, the goalpost.
Exactly. Right.
You wouldn't have to kick a field goal. You could just jump the field goal.
You score a touchdown and the extra point all in the same play. Which is pretty awesome.
Well, I got another clip here of my three New York Giants football players who came to my office at the Hayden Planetarium. Uh, let's find out what they said. I, I was curious about just what equipment everybody's wearing these days and it, it looks like it's heavy and that they, they, they would impede their ability to move, but apparently not. So let's find out. Jonathan, you, you majored in mechanical engineering. As an engineer, is there any change in the football gear that you could suggest? That would make the game better or faster or safer?
I haven't had an opportunity to do enough research to, uh, to give you.
Good answer. I've not done my research. It's better than just making stuff up.
How much does all of our stuff weigh?
Yeah. What, what is the weight of all that gear?
I mean, it depends if you wear thigh pads, knee pads and all that. You're counting your cleats, it's about eight to ten pounds.
Only?
It's light, yeah. Helmets have gotten so much lighter because I remember even when you're in high, even in high school, I, not, it was only ten years ago now and the helmets then were even, I mean, so much heavier.
You gotta look at it and say, yeah, it's ten pounds, but you have guys that when they run at the combine, run a four-three flat with nothing on and get down to this football field and, and can't run a four-six.
Yeah. Football speed, that's a difference in football speed.
That's how much it does, yeah.
It's still in the way.
Yeah, that and all the, from a mental standpoint, the game will slow you down a little bit. It'll slow some people down.
Mm-hmm. You know, when I look at a helmet, it doesn't look like you have full peripheral vision. But somehow quarterbacks always know when someone's coming up behind them. What kind of view do you have out the side of your helmets?
A decent view, you do and.
You have to do a lot of head turning just to see.
As a quarterback, when a defense lines up also, you kind of have an idea of which side they're going to blitz from. When they're making out calls, they're setting their protection to block a certain way. So they're expecting someone to come free, like if they're, if we bring a blitz on the defense that has too many defenders for them to pick up. One, we bring one more than they have to block. They know where that free defender's coming from.
So they kind of have an idea of where already to be peeking at.
The gloves that I see you guys sometimes wear, is it to keep your hand warm? Is it to give better friction with the ball? What's the point of the gloves?
It's to give you better grip of the ball.
So is the glove made of a special material that's basically glues itself to the ball like Velcro or not?
Yeah, not so much glue, but um.
I don't mean literally, but.
Yeah, your gloves will adhere to the ball a little more.
Is this why pass receivers, I can see, put up their hand and the ball just sticks to their hand?
And the size of their hand also has something playing, yeah, too.
The big mitts, they got, that definitely helps.
It makes my fingers feel stronger. And maybe a lot of stuff plays a mental tool.
But if it's doing that, I'm going to keep going for it. But I think my fingers just feel much more weak.
It's a placebo though, I mean, a lot of things in the NFL, there's a saying that look good, feel good, play good.
Yeah, exactly.
This is the equipment, yeah.
So Charles, you were telling me during the break that there were some changes in the equipment over the years?
Yeah, in the, oh, a few decades ago, the guys would just wear a simple athletic supporter.
You mean jock strap, you mean?
Oh, sure.
Okay, okay.
But now they wear full-fledged girdles.
Girdles?
Yeah, this is.
Wait, wait, Charles, why do you, how do you know this?
Uh, that's another show.
Fine, fine, okay.
The basic point is that.
It's a full-form fit girdle.
That's right, and it protects.
Were they worried about panty lines or something with their jock strap? What, what?
Well, I don't know, but they have the entire groin area protected. They've got pictures, uh, excuse me, pockets where you can take pads.
That's why you don't see lines of undergarments on their uni- within their uniforms.
So they're basically wearing Spanx. Yes, actually they are. Uh, there was actually at least one or two running backs in the 70s and 80s who wore women's girdles for a period of time until this actually evolved into modern regular equipment. So the helmets have also changed. Uh, you were mentioning peripheral vision in that, uh, segment there. Yeah, it's true that humans usually can see about 200 degrees.
Right, so 180 is left, complete, exactly left to right, and a little bit of extra on each side. Yeah.
That's right. So the helmets have been made so that there are more gaps along the side so people can actually take advantage of all those distances. And then, uh, I guess there's thing, you mentioned the gloves at the very end, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Before the gloves, there was something called stickum. Stickum.
Stickum. And what was that?
Well, just, uh, spray-on adhesive. It's actually legal in certain sports like pole vault. Okay, because you don't let go to the pole vault, pole while you're halfing. But what happened?
But you do, at some point, need to let go of the, so it sticks, but not too much.
Not too much, exactly. So, uh, Lester Hayes was a Oakland Raiders player who used a lot of stickum in his day. He would, he would take a brush and paint it on his arms. So that anything that came in contact with him would be stuck to him like flypaper. Yeah, so it's illegal now. It's illegal now. But the materials that the gloves are made of have a perfect combination of what they call squeeze, which is the ability to catch, catch the ball, and tack, which is the ability for it to rub. And people can still find a way to get it sticky by covering it with water or sugar water and then washing it off just before the game.
So you got a residue of the sugar left on it?
That's right.
Mm, mm, mm. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your host. We'll see you again next week. And as always, I bid you to keep warming up.
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