From sea to sea, athletes find ways to mitigate weariness of travel
New England Patriots players depart from their custom airplane as the team arrives at TF Green Airport in Warwick, RI, following their victory over the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII on Feb. 4, 2019. (Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
One of the greatest challenges faced by elite athletes is dealing with the physical demands that a season of traveling and performing on the road has on the human body.
Travel can reduce an athlete's ability to perform at a high level, but there are tips and tricks teams and players use to minimize the impact.
How do athletes at the highest level mitigate the negative effects travel has on the human body? Whether it is by properly hydrating, focusing on maintaining consistent sleep schedules or stretching before and after flights, there are numerous ways athletes can help improve their ability to perform well on the road.
These methods allow athletes to give themselves an edge in preparing for road matchups. In addition, they can be applied to the lives of non-athletes to help reduce the toll traveling takes on an individual.
There are numerous steps athletes take to reduce their bodies weariness when traveling. One of the most simple, and yet most important, is proper hydration. When flying long distances, such as from Los Angeles to New York, being in a climate-controlled environment such as an airplane leads to quicker dehydration.
According to Dr. Mathew Goldman of the Cleveland Clinic, half of the air circulating through the cabin comes from the outside. Due to the higher altitude, the air is nearly devoid of moisture, which causes dehydration more quickly.
Dr. Goldman also cites the decreased amount of oxygen in the cabin as a potentially detrimental factor. Generally airplanes will pressurize the cabin with oxygen but at a lower level than usual sea-level oxygen levels, which causes less oxygen to be absorbed by the body.
This, combined with the low-humidity environments, allows the body to become dehydrated much easier. When traveling commercially, as many athletes in college or minor league professional sports leagues do, the importance of traveling with a reusable water bottle becomes important as you can fill that up prior to the flight rather than relying on the smaller cup of water most airlines will provide.
Simply taking note of how much water and electrolyte beverages you are drinking throughout air travel is a significant step in reducing the amount of jet lag felt after flights.
Another way to accomplish this is ensuring you get the proper amount of sleep prior to and after long flights. When traveling across different time zones it is very challenging for your body to keep its biological clock on track. In fact, your body goes through daily circadian rhythms. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences describes circadian rhythms as “physical, mental and behavioral changes that follow a daily cycle.” These behavioral patterns are influenced by indicators such as sunlight. For example, when the sun goes down it gives your body the psychological cue that leads to the body developing more melatonin, thus allowing you to fall asleep easier. However, when you are traveling through different time zones, it becomes easy to lose track of how much sleep you are getting. In order to combat this, teams in the largest professional leagues in the United States, such as the NFL, have placed significant investments into making their players’ travel accommodations as comfortable as possible.
When looking at the NFL specifically, the true difficulty of playing on the road and being successful is perfectly illustrated. Since 2010, only 3 of the 32 teams in the league have won more than 52% of their road games. The New England Patriots lead that category with a road win percentage of 67.6%, followed by the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys, at 58.4% and 54% respectively.
For this reason, a number of NFL organizations have put spent large sums of money to help alleviate these issues for their players. Look no further than the New England Patriots, winners of three out of the last five Super Bowls, to see the extent owners have gone to in order to provide a comfortable travel experience. The Patriots’ team plane contains the largest and widest seats a plane can handle, as well as five extra inches of legroom when compared to usual first class seats. One of the most beneficial aspects of this investment is the ability to treat players during travel, allowing stretching, massages and other injury-preventative practices to occur. These measures allow players to do everything in their power to have their bodies feeling completely ready to go when they land in an opponent’s city.
In the end, winning games in road environments will always be a challenge in every sport. Leaving the comfort and consistency of your home stadium and your usual preparation routine makes these practices even more vital to achieving on field success. Essentially, the steps of proper hydration, getting the necessary amount of sleep prior to and after flights and stretching sore muscles can greatly influence an athlete’s health. These steps are significant because they can give the body the fuel and readiness that it needs to perform at a high level.
Joey Calistri is a professional soccer player on the pitch for Phoenix Rising FC and content off the pitch for Global Sport Matters. He has also contributed to various news outlets in Chicago, St. Louis and Phoenix.
Esports players need to balance nutrition, exercise like all athletes
John Le, Marko Sosniki, Andrew Smith, Cody Altman, and Tony Chau of Maryville University are seen in the League of Legends College Championship Game between University of Toronto and Maryville University in 2017. (Photo by Josh Lefkowitz/Getty Images)
Video games are not just an entertaining hobby to pass the time anymore. In recent years, “gaming” has become an actual sport with more than 250 million players worldwide. It is a growing business worth about a billion dollars a year, where players compete on a professional level in leagues and teams.
Esports athletes can suffer similar physical strains as other athletes and need to care for their bodies in the same manner with nutrition and exercise.
They commit to several training and working hours per week that could lead them to develop unhealthy situations if they are not continuously under the supervision of experts, including physicians, nutritionists and coaches who can evaluate their condition, optimize players’ performance and track their health condition.
Esports players were first recognized in the United States as professional athletes in 2013 after the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services granted Danny Le a visa to compete in the “League of Legends” tournament, along with his Riverside team.
Since then, esports athletes have been allowed to enter the United States on aP-1A Visa Program that is aimed to “enrich the nation’s cultural landscape by welcoming diverse talent to perform in the United States.” In the past, this type of visa was reserved for Major League Baseball players.
The growth of esports requires teams and leagues to pay attention to the hours of demanding training and competition that expose athletes to physical strains similar to other professional athletes. A study conducted by German Sports University professor Ingo Froböse showed that esports athletes achieve up to 400 movements on the keyboard and the mouse per minute — four times as much as the average person using a keyboard and mouse.
The scientists at the German Sports University ran tests to determine the levels of cortisol stress hormone and found that the amount of cortisol produced by esports athletes playing games such as “Counter Strike” and “League of Legends” was the same as that of a racecar driver with a high pulse of 160 to 180 per minute.
Professional esports players sit in front of a computer or console training for 10 to 15 hours straight, which easily adds up to 40 to 80 hours — the same amount of hours that traditional athletes put into their training.
Most coaches recommend that esports pro players balance their job with general physical and fitness activities such as weightlifting and cardio, and maintain a healthy nutrition plan as well. This would help prevent gaming-associated risks that can result in neck, back and hand injuries, among other conditions.
Joanne DiFrancesco-Donoghue, an exercise physiologist in the Department of Osteopathic Medicine at the New York Institute of Technology’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, was one of the first to draw attention to the risks associated with esports. In a recent study, she determined that the typical assessment of esports pro athletes should include a sports physical evaluation performed by a sports medicine physician, as well as a social and addictive behaviors evaluation, inquiries about nutrition and musculoskeletal complaints, and a vision evaluation, among other tests.
Such recommendations are similar to regulations already in place for sports such as soccer and basketball, where players are subject to medical examinations before and during their contracts.
From a legal perspective — saving the differences between soccer and esports — soccer clubs should perform all necessary medical examinations before entering into a contract with a player. In contrast with FIFA regulations, which prohibits any condition precedent to the validity of a contract requiring a successful medical examination, the Basketball Arbitration Tribunal recognizes that the parties are free to subject the validity of a contract to a successful medical examination.
In other words, a basketball club can seek to subject the validity of a contract to a successful medical examination, but it must prove objective and comprehensible reasons for invalidating contracts. Clubs must also immediately notify the player of his failed medical examination and provide the player documentation of the results.
Although esports contracts mandate players to maintain a healthy condition, esports teams should also be required to carry out all medical examinations before and during competitions to guarantee that players health is being supervised.
Victor Ocando is an international sports lawyer, who has worked as an external Legal Counsel for soccer clubs and sports agents in South America and Europe. He writes for several media outlets and is also a Sports Law online courses instructor. Follow him on Twitter @ocandovictor
Girls Play Sports Less Than Boys, Miss Out On Crucial Benefits
Young people reap numerous benefits from participating in sports, including improved health and self-esteem, and when girls don’t play, they miss out. Research shows that girls are less likely to participate in sports than boys, and, if they do play, they are more likely to drop out.
But girls may need these benefits most. Girls often lack confidence — especially in their teen years. Two-thirds of Australian teenage girls said playing sports makes them feel more confident. However, half quit sports by the age of 17, according to Suncorp’s 2019 Australian Youth and Confidence Research.
So why are girls turning away from sports?
Research suggests the reasons include a lack of fun, cost barriers and cultural messages that tell girls in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that sports are for boys.
In the U.S., about 4.5 million boys and 3.4 million girls participated in high school sports in 2018-19, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations’ High School Athletics Participation Survey. Overall sports participation declined for the first time in 30 years.
For kids ages 6-12, the Aspen Institute’s State of Play report found 39% of boys played a sport on a regular basis in 2018, while 31% of girls did. The report is part of the institute’s Project Play initiative.
Studies in other countries have found similar results. In Australia, 69% of boys between the ages of 11 and 17 play sports, while 55% of girls do, according to the 2019 Australian Youth and Confidence Research. It found that while only 30% of boys ages 15-17 decreased their participation in the past year, 46% of girls did.
In Canada, girls’ and women’s participation in sport has continued to decline for 20 years, and if a girl has not played sports by the time she turns 10, there is only a 10% chance that she will be physically active as an adult, according to the 2016 report Women in Sport: Fuelling a Lifetime of Participation.
Sport England’s 2018 Active Lives Children and Young People Survey looked at children ages 5-16 and found boys are more likely than girls to be active every day: 20% for boys compared to 14 % for girls.
Also, WSF and Project Play each concluded girls of color play sports less than white girls.
“Unfortunately, too many teens, primarily teen girls of color, still don’t have equal access to sports,” WSF’s 2018 Teen Sport in America: Why Participation Matters report concluded. “And with an increase in teens between eighth and 12th grades dropping out of sports, this means that teen girls – a group that is already 15 percent less likely to participate in sports than their male counterparts — are disproportionately missing out on experiencing the full academic, educational and health benefits of sports.”
So why do girls play sports less?
Cultural messages
Girls may think sports are for boys. Yes, this is still a problem, said Marjorie Snyder, WSF’s senior director of research and programs.
“It’s not just an individual action or behavior that affects the girl,” Snyder said. “She gets an entire set of messages, and then she puts the story together herself. She may not see women playing sports on TV, or coaching, very often.
Maybe a girl “walks into the gym and she sees all the posters on the wall – and they’re all of boys and men playing sports, and none of girls and women playing sports. So she’s getting this set of messages that devalue her experience in sport.”
Countering those messages takes work, Snyder said. Coaches may convey these messages unintentionally, so WSF is “trying to make sure that coaches understand that although boys and girls are not different species, girls do come to sport with a different set of cultural experiences than boys do,” she said.
Vera Lopez, an Arizona State University professor of justice and social inquiry, and a Global Sport Institute seed-grant recipient, published astudyin 2018 on the experiences in sports of 78 Latina girls ages 12 to 15. The girls surveyed often felt self-conscious and insecure, and they were afraid to make mistakes, because they would get teased.
“In (physical education) settings, they feel self-conscious about their bodies, but also self-conscious about their ability to know the sports,” especially if they didn’t play them when they were younger, Lopez said. “That contributes to them not feeling confident in those spaces.”
Lopez added Latina girls are “more likely to attend segregated, low-income schools, so they’re already in this context where there’s limited funding and limited opportunities. But even within that context, they are receiving messages that sports is not a place that they belong.”
Qhouirunnisa' Endang Wahyudi, a Malaysian hijab-wearing teenager who performs freestyle football tricks, poses for a photo during an interview at the extreme park in Shah Alam, Malaysia on July 14, 2019. 19 years old Wahyudi, who studies Arabic Language at Al-Madinah International University, started performing tricks after the age of 16. (Photo by Adli Ghazali/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Lopez said these messages come from institutional, instructional and interpersonal relationships, including their schools, coaches, teachers and peers. For example, she said “a lot of them may feel like they are taught differently — the coaches may handle them with kid gloves. That was something that came up a lot — that girls aren’t as physically tough as boys, and they’re too emotional or too sensitive.”
The Women’s Sports Foundation’s April 2019 report Coaching Through a Gender Lens: Maximizing Girls’ Play and Potentialstated: “Both boys and girls perceive boys as having superior sports skills and associate being an athlete with being a boy. Communities, schools, and parents devote more resources and invest more in supporting boys’ participation.”
Family expectations may be another barrier for girls. Snyder said some girls reach a certain age and then must shoulder greater family responsibilities.
“They’re the ones who have to stay home and take care of their younger siblings or to cook, so they’re being asked to leave sport for family responsibilities,” she said.
Safety and security issues figure in as well.
“The tip of the iceberg is the safety issues we’ve seen around sexual abuse, sexual harassment and sexual violence, particularly with the gymnasts,” said Snyder, who added that safety issues also include having safe transportation to and from practice and games.
“Parents may not feel comfortable letting their daughters travel independently to their sports experiences,” she said.
Not fun anymore
Project Play’s National Youth Sport Survey found the average child quits sports by the time he or she turns 11, most often because it isn’t fun anymore.
Why isn’t it fun? Part of the reason may be that kids and adults have different priorities.
Girls play football during a training session at their school in Shanghai on April 6, 2019. (Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images)
“What we have found is that the No. 1 reason they want to play is to be with their friends and have fun. Winning ranks much lower. For adults, winning ranks very high,” said Jon Solomon, editorial director at Project Play. “What happens then is you end up treating kids as mini-adults and pushing them to do things they’re just not capable physically, emotionally or mentally yet to do.
“No one really asks the kids for their own input and what they want their experience to be. It sounds simple, but a lot of adults don’t really do that.”
Project Play has launched a campaign called “Don’t Retire, Kid” to keep kids from dropping out of sports, and it contains guidance on how to ask kids what they want.
Accessibility
Between the 1999-2000 and 2015-16 school years, the number of public high schools reporting they did not offer interscholastic sports increased from 11% to 24%, according to the State of High School Sports report. Snyder noted that charter schools often don’t offer any sports.
Whether in public or private schools or in club sports programs, the pay-to-play model sometimes excludes kids. The State of Play report found U.S. families spend an average of $693 per child per year to play one sport. The most expensive sport was ice hockey ($2,583), and the least expensive was track and field ($191). Kids from lower-income households are less likely to participate. Only 22% of kids from households with an income below $25,000 per year played sports on a regular basis, while 43% of kids from families with incomes of $100,000 or more did.
Regardless of income level, all these studies show kids benefit in many ways when they participate in sports.
“The evidence we’ve seen supports the idea that for kids who play sports in high school, it’s incredibly valuable — it’s integral to their high school experience,” Snyder said. “They come to school more often, they get better grades, they participate in other extracurricular activities — there’s just a lot of positive that comes from participating in high school sports.”
Variety
Project Play supports “sport sampling,” rather than specializing in a single sport.
“There’s research out there that shows that specializing at too young an age in one sport can increase the risk of overuse injuries and also burnout,” Solomon said.
The Teen Sport report showed boys are much more likely to play multiple sports than girls, according to Snyder.
“The benefits that accrue to you are greater when you play two or more sports,” she said. “So girls are being shortchanged, not just in participation opportunities, but also in terms of the benefits that they can get from that sports opportunity.”
Snyder said girls are participating in a wider variety of sports, including some nontraditional sports for girls, pointing to the growing popularity of girls flag football in Florida as an example. Also, the High School Athletics Participation Survey found girls’ participation in wrestling increased 27% last year, to 21,735 participants nationally.
Girls who opt for nontraditional sports such as skateboarding and rock climbing may account for some of the measured decline in participation because most research doesn’t include these sports, Snyder said.
“But we know from our own research that boys participate in these other activities at higher rates than girls do,” she added.
Snyder said there’s a gender gap in both school sports and private sports, such as club teams.
Potential solutions
Female coaches are considered key to girls’ participation and retention, but only 27% of youth sports head coaches are female, the State of Play report says.
“We know how important it is for girls to see women as coaches, role models and mentors, because they haveexperiences similar to theirs, having gone through sports like they have,” Solomon said.
Girls can more easily identify with female coaches, who can fight negative cultural messages and show girls that they belong in sports, the Women's Sports Foundation’s Gender Lens report concluded. But recruiting female coaches is difficult.
“People have to intentionally recruit females to be coaches,” Solomon said. “In some walks of life in our society, there’s still this idea that the dad is the coach and the mom is the team mom, who organizes the drinks and the snacks. No, moms can absolutely coach.”
College and even high school athletes can coach as well, Solomon said, “but you have to go out there and ask them. Sometimes people won’t volunteer unless they’re asked.”
Sarah Andrews of Team Next drives to the basket during the SLAM Summer Classic 2019 girls game at Dyckman Park on August 18, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
The girls surveyed in the Gender Lens report “cited supportive coaching practices that reward effort or trying a new skill over winning, encourage learning from mistakes while staying positive, and promote integrity and honesty.”
More broadly, the Teen Sport report advises: “Identify ways to adjust the culture, composition, and operations of sports to make them more accepting of girls,” including bringing in more diverse coaches and “removing rituals and behaviors that consciously or unconsciously exclude girls, such as hazing.”
Through programs such as Sports 4 Life, which is aimed at African-American and Hispanic girls, WSF is “trying to build environments for girls that will help them not only in sport but also in life,” Snyder said. She added that several other organizations are doing similar work, and these programs are growing.
“Historically, when we look at girls of color in sports, we tend to blame families and cultures,” Lopez said. But her current research looks at the role of schools “in reinforcing gender stereotypes about who should play sports – and who should play what type of sports.”
Solomon said Project Play wants to educate the public, particularly parents, about the benefits of sports and about ways to encourage kids to participate.
“Parents are the ones who ultimately are putting kids in sports, making decisions, and sometimes putting pressure on kids as well,” Solomon said. “So the idea is to help empower and educate parents, so they have resources.”
One such resource is the Healthy Sport Index, an online tool that helps assess the relative benefits and risks of the 10 most popular high school sports. It looks at the level of physical activity, safety and psychosocial benefits (emotional, social and mental well-being) each sport offers.
A moment of change?
Because the 2019 Women’s World Cup focused substantial attention on women playing sports, it may help change the narrative.
The State of Play report noted young boys are starting to wear USA women’s soccer jerseys — and those jerseys are now made in sizes for men and boys – signaling a shift in attitudes.
But was the World Cup enough to make girls feel like they belong in sports?
“This is a time of opportunity for a lot of folks who are invested in women’s sports,” Snyder said. “It’s an opportunity for the media to think more carefully about how it presents women’s sports — and the wide variety of stories of girls and women in sport.”
She added the World Cup may only be a moment in time, “but it does have the potential to jump-start good things in women’s sports.”
The stakes are high. If girls eschew sports, they lose the advantages their peers gain from sports.
“There are just tremendous health benefits,” Snyder said, from reducing levels of obesity and chronic diseases to eliminating risk behaviors such as smoking. “Kids who play sports, particularly girls, have higher self-esteem and greater self-confidence, and there are academic benefits. Kids who play sports stay in school, they have higher aspirations for college, and they get better grades in high school. There’s an overwhelming case to be made for why kids should play sports.”
Allison Torres Burtka is a freelance writer and editor based in metro Detroit. You can read more of her work here.
USWNT driving demand for female athlete apparel
A fan wears a Megan Rapinoe jersey while she waits for an autograph before the U.S. women's national team "Victory Tour" in Philadelphia in August 2019. (Photo by Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images)
Women have accounted for many of the most memorable moments in American sports over the past several years, and their accomplishments, coupled with the way the #MeToo era, have shifted attention toward a female perspective.
Success has driven sales of USWNT and WNBA apparel, showing a growth in availability and the financial impact of winning.
Women’s sports have benefited from the change with greater acceptance and more exposure that can be demonstrated through positive retail merchandise trends.
New research by EDITED retail analyst Krista Corrigan shows more women’s sports merchandise is available at retailers such as Fanatics and Dick’s Sporting Goods than in 2018, and those products have sold at a greater rate than a year ago.
As a former Dick’s employee as well as a researcher, Corrigan believes the data also shows a real change in the belief retailers have in women’s merchandise.
“What you’re going to put money behind are things you think are going to do well,” Corrigan said. “It’s not as simple as, ‘if you buy it, they will come,’ (but) if you’re talking about it, loyal customers of the brand are listening.”
While the brands of individual stars such as tennis great Serena Williams are driving the change, team sports have helped build momentum. In particular, Corrigan’s research shows, the U.S. Women's National Team that won the 2019 FIFA World Cup in soccer saw significant additional demand in 2019 as did the WNBA.
Across all the retailers EDITED analyzed – everything from department stores like Macy’s to online startups such as Fanatics – just 35 USWNT products were stocked in 2018. Based upon the World Cup victory and the rediscovered stardom of players like Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe, those same retailers stocked more than 500 items in 2019. Morgan’s jersey led the way, helping to drive a 38-percent sellout rate across all product lines for Nike, an official partner of U.S. Soccer.
At the same time, retailers were far more prepared for the start of the WNBA season than in 2018. By the early summer, EDITED research showed an immediate spike when the season tipped off in May. In all, WNBA apparel saw an atypical 261-percent leap in terms of total items stocked in 2019.
New WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, a veteran of professional services firm Deloitte, didn’t carve many specific priorities into stone in her first few months on the job (she took over June 17), but she does see merchandise sales as a clear growth opportunity for the league and a way to ride the empowerment wave from women’s sports.
The WNBA’s top jersey sales list shows a discrepancy between the degree of availability for some teams’ merchandise compared with others, with four Las Vegas Aces in the top 10 players in jersey sales despite the team’s third-place finish in the league in 2019.
“Meeting with the ecosystem around merchandise is something on my list I’ve already started,” Engelbert told The Athletic in August. “I have some ideas around women’s empowerment being integrated into the WNBA merchandise. You see these cool shirts all around the country, around women’s empowerment. We’re working on that. It’s a high priority.”
A major force in the WNBA’s uptick in stocked apparel was Walmart, which increased its investment by 108 percent compared with 2018, according to EDITED. And even with more products available to fans, the average price of all WNBA products more than doubled to $91.88 this year.
“I have some ideas around women’s empowerment being integrated into the WNBA merchandise. You see these cool shirts all around the country, around women’s empowerment. We’re working on that. It’s a high priority.” – WNBA commissioner Cathy Englebert
Walmart can also be credited for its lucrative apparel partnership with Williams, whose line includes more than traditional athletic wear.
“Whether (customers) watch tennis or not, how can you not be a fan of Serena?” Corrigan said. “People who would not realize she has a clothing line, it makes it accessible for them to order.”
Still, the success of players and teams on the field of play is not the only factor in the uptick in popularity for these products. The availability of apparel and other merchandise online via e-retailers makes it easier for companies to directly reach what may be initially smaller groups than consumers of men’s sports merchandise. More expensive products are also easier to make available on a company’s website because it removes the need to pay to stock the item in-store.
Support and marketing investment from brands such as crystal maker Swarovski and consumer goods giant Proctor and Gamble helped drive demand as well, according to EDITED. And as with the Morgan USWNT jersey, decisions by Nike continue to be a major driver in the industry, both because of their partnerships with Williams, U.S. Soccer and the WNBA and their status as an industry front-runner more broadly.
“They are always a step ahead, they are the elite, in my mind, brand right now that is doing things different and that a lot of brands are benchmarking and looking up to,” Corrigan said. “They can bring a lot of viral attention to something.”
As big companies embrace female athletes and their stories and these female sports stars continue to find great success, it’s hard to imagine the trend won’t continue in a positive direction. People like Engelbert and Williams, despite their different roles in sports, see the opportunity to use merchandise to drive fandom and revenue at the same time while their sports grow.
Companies “have nothing but something to gain with that success,” Corrigan said, asking, “How high is high for women’s sports? That’s the question. Could it one day reach the level of men’s sports?”
Brendon Kleen is a freelance writer based in Phoenix
Aerobic fitness has greater impact on metabolic health than muscular strength
(Photo courtesy Getty Images)
New studies have shown aerobic fitness can help improve metabolism.
Researchers have discovered aerobic fitness is more helpful in improving one’s metabolism than muscular strength.
Building muscle helps because as people age they naturally lose muscle mass, which slows metabolism. Two ways you can challenge your muscles and improve your metabolism are through aerobic exercise and lifting weights.
Metabolitesare molecules involved in metabolic reactions. They also can be used as building blocksfor larger structures and degraded products used during excretion.
Scandinavian researchers conducted a study in 2013 comparing metabolites in active and inactive adults. The research concluded that metabolic health in physically active adults is better than inactive adults.
The adults who exercised regularly had higher levels of lipoprotein, also known as “good” cholesterol, than the adults who didn’t exercise regularly. It also helped elevate their heart health.
The research, however, only focused on how much people exercised. There weren’t any biological or dietary factors included in the study. Some of the same researchers followed up that study by focusing on endurance and strength.
The test included 580 Finnish men who had been called for military training. The men lifted weights and rode stationary bikes to determine their muscular strength and aerobic capacity. Researchers took blood samples, had the men take a general health test and fill out a survey regarding their lifestyles and exercise routines.
Two groups were created based on that information. One group was focused on aerobic fitness and ranked all the men from most aerobically fit to least. The other group focused on muscular strength and was ranked from strongest to weakest.
Researchers then checked their blood for metabolites, comparing the metabolomes in the most aerobically fit to the least, and the strongest men to the weakest. Some men appeared in both groups, but in those instances, the scientists only looked at their stamina or strength specifically.
The results of the study showed that the most aerobically fit men had similar molecular signatures to the adults in the earlier study. They had high levels of good cholesterol and a healthy ratio of proteins to fatty acids.
Two-thirds of the men who were aerobically less fit had molecules that varied in type, amount or ratio opposed to their more fit counterparts, whereas the differences between the stronger men and weaker men were less pronounced.
Dr. Urho Kujala, a professor of medicine and sports science at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, conducted both studies and found that even when other variables were controlled, such as body composition and exercise habits, the results were similar. Aerobic capacity affected the metabolism more than muscular strength.
Lamar Smith is a graduate student in the sports journalism program at Arizona State University
Editor’s note: For the 2019-2020 academic year, the Global Sport Institute’s research theme will be “Sport and the body.” The Institute will conduct and fund research and host events that will explore a myriad of topics related to the body.
For elite female athletes, optimizing sleep remains a work in progress
LeBron James and Roger Federer sleep up to 12 hours a day. However, their counterparts in women’s sports seldom get the luxury of that much rest and recovery since their travel arrangements and outside work commitments are usually far different. Women’s sports, such as basketball, soccer and hockey, are impacted when athletes face a lack of sleep.
Pro female athletes do not always get the sleep they need due to a range of factors and that impacts not only their health and performance but financial status. A lack of research on the subject means there are less best-practices recommendations.
That research gap makes it harder for doctors, physiotherapists or other specialists to provide evidence-based, best-practice sleep recommendations for women in sports.
Economics are another factor. For WNBA teams, having to take multiple commercial flights rather than traveling on private jets or chartered aircraft, like NBA or NFL teams, is one obvious sleep-killer.
With lower salaries than male stars, WNBA and National Women’s Soccer League players frequently opt to earn more money and stay sharp by playing overseas after their North American seasons end. Many women’s hockey stars teach youth clinics or work second jobs to support themselves. The lack of downtime cuts into their rest and can make them more susceptible to injuries.
Before the Canadian Women’s Hockey League folded this year, Shannon Moulson of the Toronto Furies practiced downtown with the team from 9:15 p.m. to 11 p.m. two or three nights a week. Moulson drove more than an hour to get home, and then she had to be at her elementary school teaching job at 8 a.m. the next day. No NHL player has to deal with that sort of a schedule.
A recent Nielsen survey indicated 84 percent of sports fans are interested in women’s sports. If professional female athletes, as a group, were able to get more sleep and consequently deliver stronger performances, it could only serve to increase the public’s interest.
To put things in perspective, even in longer-established and better-funded men’s pro sports, sleep was an afterthought as recently as 20 years ago.
For an NWSL club such as Sky Blue FC, which faced public criticism in 2018 for a lack of showers at its New Jersey home field, adding a sleep recovery room would be lower on the list of priorities.
Women’s national teams often get better sleep coaching than women’s pro teams. Littlehales was hired by the Dutch women’s bobsled team prior to the 2014 Winter Olympics. Dawn Scott, fitness coach of the U.S. women’s soccer program, monitors the sleep habits of players with an online database to which they contribute data – even when they are away from the USWNT.
Anecdotally, approaches toward sleep vary widely among female athletes.
On Sept. 7 at the U.S. Open, Bianca Andreescu made global headlines when the 19-year-old tennis star beat Serena Williams and became the first Canadian and first player born in the 2000s to win a Grand Slam singles title. The native of Mississauga, Ontario, bounced back to capture the $3.85-million prize after being sidelined for about three months earlier in 2019 with a shoulder injury.
“Sleep is the most important thing for recovery,” Andreescu said at the inaugural Aurora Games in Albany, New York, in August. “Then there’s the nutrition part and recovery with physio, obviously. But I think sleep is the most important thing. I try to get at least nine hours a day. And then during the time I was off, I also switched to a different diet. I think it’s all working really well for me, so I’m going to stick to whatever I’m doing.”
Andreescu laughed when asked if she had a sleep coach, and said she does not stick religiously to her nine-hour sleep regimen.
“Of course there’s cheat days.” she said. “I need to live my life, too, sometimes.”
Hannah Brandt, who won a gold medal with the U.S. women’s national ice hockey team at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, said she aims for eight hours of sleep every night. The 25-year-old forward has a simple strategy for combatting jet lag on international trips.
“I do my best to try to adjust to the time while I’m on the plane there,” Brandt said. “If it’s one of those long flights, that’s my best bet. I try to sleep when I should be sleeping. Once I get there, I just do what I can do to get on the right schedule right away. Otherwise, you can be stuck in an American time zone for the whole trip and that’s never fun.”
She rigorously avoids checking her phone or going on social media if she wakes up in the middle of the night. And while Brandt also uses melatonin and Tylenol PM to help her sleep, her teammate Haley Skarupa, a fellow 2018 Olympic champion, takes a different approach.
“I’ve actually never taken sleeping medication,” Skarupa said. “Not even like Tylenol PM. I pride myself on that. Sometimes I don’t even sleep on the plane ride there or back. I'm usually someone that gets pretty much no sleep, but I don’t get jet-lagged. I just get to my destination, get one full night of sleep, and then I wake up ready to go. That’s my thing. I try to tell people, but they’re always passed out on the plane!”
Skarupa, 25, said she can function on five hours of sleep, but prefers six to eight hours.
Naturally, not all sleep optimization methods require a large budget or sophisticated technology. A fundamental tenet of Littlehales’ R90 Sleep Recovery Program is to focus on the number of complete 90-minute sleep cycles you can fit into one night rather than a flat number of hours. Sleeping in compression gear may assist with localized muscle recovery after workouts. Typical wearable sleep trackers cost between $150 and $250.
Until that occurs, fans will not see the absolute best out of budding stars such as A’ja Wilson, of the Las Vegas Aces, who was the 2018 WNBA rookie of the year, or Ellie Carpenter of the Portland Thorns, the youngest player ever to score an NWSL goal at age 18.
Lucas Aykroyd writes for the New York Times, espnW, and the Women’s Sports Foundation. Based in Vancouver, he has covered women’s hockey at five Winter Olympics and four IIHF Women’s World Championships.
Editor’s note: For the coming 2019-2020 academic year, the Global Sport Institute’s research theme will be “Sport and the body.” The Institute will conduct and fund research and host events that will explore a myriad of topics related to the body.
Mobile tackling dummies make Dartmouth head-smart team
A Dartmouth player practices tackling using the MVP Dummy. (Photo courtesy MVP Dummy)
Editor’s Note: This story is being highlighted in Global Sport Matters’ Best of 2019.
Picture this: A college football coach is on a recruiting visit. Sitting in the living room of a defensive lineman he covets, he tells the player and his family the athlete will spend his entire career without tackling a teammate or being tackled by a teammate in practice. Yet, as a defensive player, he will work on tackling more than anything else.
That is pretty much how recruiting visits have played out at Dartmouth since 2011. Coach Buddy Teevens and his staff teach plenty of tackling, but through the use of mobile dummies, not other players.
Preventing concussions is the most important step to not developing CTE. At Dartmouth, using mobile tackling dummies has drastically reduced the incident of concussions for football players and other schools are starting to catch on.
Those who think the Big Green are big wimps should think again. The team finished the 2018 season ranked second in the 124-team Football Championship Subdivision in rushing defense (allowing an average of 80 yards per game) and fourth in total defense (280 yards). In 2015, the unit allowed the fewest yards per rush attempt and recovered the most fumbles, a byproduct of solid hitting, while sharing the Ivy League title with Harvard and Penn.
“People always say, ‘You guys never tackle,’ and ‘How can you get any good at it?’ ” said Teevens, whose team went 9-1 last year and has recorded seven winning seasons in the past eight. “Well, that’s not true. We don’t tackle each other. I bet my guys tackle more than anybody in the country and with the use of an inanimate object.”
When awareness concerning concussive head injuries increased about a decade ago, Teevens said he believed something could be done to reduce the amount of contact.
No one could change the fact injuries may take place during the Ivy League’s 10-game schedule. But what about injuries sustained during all of the spring, preseason and in-season practices? Did the potential wear and tear during those sessions outweigh anything incurred in games? Teevens, who is on the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports, asked the same questions and sought to address them.
“Our sport is a collision sport, but do you have to have those collisions in practice far more than what would happen (in a game) on Saturday?” he asked.
In 2011, Teevens announced to his team that tackling each other during practice was a thing of the past. He told them they would use blocking sleds, stationary tackling dummies and other available tools. In 2015, the university’s engineering department and a group of players put their heads together to develop mobile dummies that could be used by the football team during practice.
“If you’re hitting the whole time, there will be deleterious effects over the course of the year,” said Teevens, who noted 21 of his 22 starters played every game during the 2018 season. “But if you can engage in contact that is more friendly, if you will, because of a setup with absorbent dummies, you are not going to have head-to-head contact and subconcussive (blows). It’s a more controlled deal, and there is an application to what we do on Saturdays.”
The dummies Big Green use were developed by Dartmouth-based MVP Dummy, which was formed in 2015 as a result of the ongoing collaboration between Teevens and the college’s engineering school. The engineering school developed and built the first mobile dummies for the football program.
MVP stands for Mobile Virtual Player. The company’s president and CEO, Joe McLaughlin, and Teevens were teammates on the 1978 Dartmouth team that won the Ivy League championship.
“Using a robot on the football field is something that, even growing up in technology and working with it the past 30 years, I would have never anticipated,” said McLaughlin, who spent three decades working in the computer software business.
McLaughlin credits the intersection of technology and a coaching fraternity that has become more forward thinking than when Woody Hayes and Bear Bryant roamed the sidelines.
“It’s really two things that have changed and one is the technology and the other is the attitude,” he said. “When we were playing ball, (the mentality) was hit as much as you can and if you’re not practicing well you don’t get any water. If you’re not hitting, you are not tough and there were many drills that emphasised toughness. Now, it’s about how do we keep players healthy for game day and still train them appropriately and practice appropriately. That’s where these two things collide. Dartmouth hits more than any team in the country, but they don’t hit each other.”
Teevens and hisstaff use six dummies, four MVP Driveand two MVP Sprint models. The former weighs 190 pounds and can move at up to 18 mph. The latter, which went on the market in August, weighs 160 pounds and maxes out at 16-18 mph.
The upper portion of each dummy is comprised of foam padding so it does not hurt when a player applies a tackle. A heavily padded base contains the motor, control board and firmware that connects to a remote control device that is much like a joystick. With the remote device, members of the coaching staff can adjust a dummy’s speed and direction depending on the practice drills.
The dummies, which cost from $3,450 to $5,500, are not just for hitting. They can mimic a charging lineman or linebacker and help a quarterback evade a pass rush or mimic a defensive back sticking to a receiver.
The popularity of the dummies — a lighter weight MVP Junior model is available for players younger than 13 — is high. McLaughlin said 17 NFL teams, approximately 70 colleges and 100 high schools utilize MVP Dummy models.
As the development and production of the dummies grew, McLaughlin and his team realized they needed help on the manufacturing end. While MVP Dummy continues to engineer and develop the dummies, the Drive and Junior models are manufactured and sold exclusively by Michigan-based Rogers Athletic and the Sprint model is manufactured by Massachusetts-based Columbia Tech and sold by MVP.
“With the use of these dummies, you can train players to be smart about their tackling technique and progressions by doing it repeatedly,” said Teevens, who noted his team is the only one in college football to practice tackling entirely with the use of dummies. “Linebackers are at it 20 minutes per day because that’s something they have to do, but not once will they tackle a player.”
One of those linebackers is senior Jack Traynor. He admits it was a bit odd when he learned how practices at Dartmouth were conducted, but he had no problem adjusting to drills in which he could not lay into a ball carrier despite his position.
“My parents, and especially my mom, loved hearing it,” said the Illinois native of the initial reaction. “There was a little bit of an adjustment process, but now being a fifth-year senior, I appreciate not having to go to the ground every time you make contact.”
Not only did Traynor adjust, but he also is a two-time All-Ivy League First-Team performer thanks, in part, to maintaining his health throughout the duration of a season.
“I had a very mild concussion in high school,” he said. “I have played a lot of snaps in college, and I have had no head injuries whatsoever, so far. During the week you feel more fresh and maybe more motivated to hit someone on Saturday. (The use of tackling dummies) has definitely helped me in staying healthy during the course of a season.”
Of course, a player can still sustain a concussion during a game.
“Game day, yep, it’s a different situation,” Teevens said. “But if you are prepared with how you practice, it will reduce the (injury) possibility, in my opinion. We have had a minimum number of concussions, and they have occurred in games. We have had two in each of the past two seasons, but none in practice.”
Which is what Teevens set out to achieve with the use of mobile dummies nearly a decade ago.
Tom Layberger has spent more than 25 years as a writer, editor and web producer for various media outlets. Tom, who resides in Tampa, is a graduate of the University of South Florida. Follow him on Twitter @TomLay810
Editor’s note: For the coming 2019-2020 academic year, the Global Sport Institute’s research theme will be “Sport and the body.” The Institute will conduct and fund research and host events that will explore a myriad of topics related to the body.
Why doesn't America love women's pro soccer as much as they do the USWNT?
A young fan displays her support for the Portland Thorns during the team's 3-0 victory over the Chicago Red Stars at Providence Park on Aug. 25, 2019, in Portland, OR (Photo by Diego Diaz/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images).
The U.S. women’s national soccer team is one of the most recognizable teams in the country. Despite that, women have struggled to sustain a pro league.
The National Women’s Soccer League (NSWL) is the successor to two defunct leagues: Women's Professional Soccer (2009–2012) and the Women's United Soccer Association (2001–2003).
Women’s professional leagues struggle to get and maintain viewership even after successful international performances. Why?
The NWSL was founded in 2012, shortly after the WPS (Women’s Professional Soccer) ended, and began play in 2013. The league originally included eight teams: Boston Breakers, Chicago Red Stars, FC Kansas City, Portland Thorns FC, Seattle Reign FC, Sky Blue FC, Washington Spirit and Western New York Flash.
Three expansion teams have been added: Houston Dash (2014), Orlando Pride (2016) and Utah Royals FC (2018). Two franchises folded (Breakers and FC Kansas City) and another relocated: the Western New York Flash became the North Carolina Courage.
During the creation of the NWSL, an allocation process was used to try to create a competitive balance in the league. Twenty-three women’s national team members were dispersed through the eight founding teams of the league. All 23 members of the current women’s national team are on NWSL teams including: Megan Rapinoe (Reign FC), Alex Morgan (Orlando Pride), Julie Ertz (Chicago Red Stars) and Rose Lavelle (Washington Spirit).
The NWSL has already lasted longer than its predecessors but is still trying to gain stability. The league has recently had financial problems. In February of this year, the league ended its television partnership with A&E Networks, which had a 25 percent stake in the league.
The league secured a TV deal with ESPN to televise games during the second half of the season and a multiyear sponsorship with Budweiser. Both deals were announced near the end of the Women’s World Cup.
Leaders and members of the NWSL have tried to use the momentum from the Women’s World Cup win to generate more interest in and attention for the league. Mike Golub, the Portland Thorns’ president of business, told the Washington Posthe believes there will be “material upticks throughout the league in attendance” and the league will gain more sponsors as a result of the Women’s World Cup.
Golub was right. Since the WWC ended in July, the NWSL has seen a spike in television ratings and attendance. The Chicago Red Stars home game against the North Carolina Courage drew a crowd of 17,388, which is four times their average attendance. The game drew an average of 149,000 viewers on ESPN2, which is up 67 percent from the number of viewers the televised league game had during the same weekend one year earlier on Lifetime. The Red Stars-Courage game in late July was the most watched game since the 2016 NWSL final, which aired on FS1.
A recent spike in attendance has boosted the average attendance to 6,493, which would break last year’s record of 6,024 fans. The Portland Thorns are an outlier in the NWSL, averaging over 15,000 fans each of the last five seasons. Portland is averaging 16,959 fans this season as of August 18, which is more than 7,000 more than the Utah Royals (second in NWSL attendance).
Overall the numbers are comparable to the WNBA, which is averaging 7,700 fans this season. The WNBA has also had problems selling its product to the public. The league, on average, has lost $10 million a year according to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
The USA Basketball Women’s National team has won six straight Olympic gold medals and the last two FIBA World Cups. Its last loss was in the semifinals of the 2006 FIBA World Championships.
David Carter, an expert on U.S. sports business and University of Southern California associate professor, told the New York Times that activism, nationalism and captivating soccer are reasons international competitions are more popular than women’s professional leagues. This is part of the dichotomy between international play and the women’s professional leagues.
Carter believes the spike in popularity will be short-lived because creating strong sports leagues are about “growing deep roots to be successful on a long-term basis.”
Female athletes realize the great disparity between the support they get during international competition opposed to that during their pro seasons, too. It was referenced by Alex Morgan during this year’s ESPYS. Morgan thanked ESPN for the NWSL’s new television deal and also mentioned how after the World Cup ends “the professional league (NWSL) is what we (viewers) need to continuously lift up and grow.”
Lamar Smith is a graduate student in the sports journalism program at Arizona State University
Maya Moore puts career on hold to focus on social justice
Maya Moore, four-time WNBA Champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist has sat out the 2019 WNBA season. During, her time off she's been advocating for criminal justice reform. (Photo by Matteo Marchi/Getty Images)
For years, some athletes have made concerted efforts to speak out about social issues, using their fame as a platform to affect change. Maya Moore is part of that long list of athletes who have spoken out against social injustice.
For some athletes, fighting for social justice becomes personal, going beyond a hashtag or T-shirt. The case of Jonathan Irons inspired Moore to not only fight for his release from prison, but to create a social justice organization.
The Minnesota Lynx forward is not playing the 2019 WNBA seasonbecause of burnout and other reasons. She said her current sabbatical from basketball is a “call from God.” Instead of playing, Moore has been working to free Jonathan Irons from the Jefferson City Correctional Center in Missouri.
Irons has served 21 years of a 50-year sentence after he was found guilty of burglary and assault with a deadly weapon. Irons was 16 at the time of the alleged crime, but was tried as an adult two years later in 1998. During that time, the government encouraged harsh penalties for young offenders.
A prosecutor urged the judge not to go easy on Irons, stating he “is as dangerous as somebody five times that age,” the New York Times reported.
While in high school, Moore learned about Irons through her cousins, who met him at a prison ministry, and was curious as to why they were interested in him. She met Irons shortly before she left to attend the University of Connecticut.
Their relationship grew during her time at UConn. They sometimes spoke before her big games, and she sent him some of her favorite spiritual books.
“I get pretty worked up when I see injustice.” Moore told The Players Tribune. “And so I couldn’t pretend like I didn’t see this happening. And, you know, Jonathan essentially becoming a part of our family over all these years, it just really motivated me to want to help.”
Irons has appealed his conviction several times, but each attempt was rejected despite the fact no notes were taken when Irons was interrogated after his arrest and there are no recordings of the interrogation. Irons was questionedbyonly Lieutenant Michael Hanlon without the presence of a lawyer or guardian. There was not another police officer present.
These flaws in the case have prompted Moore to try to get it reopened, relying largely on a fresh look at fingerprint evidence and new expert testimony. She has been contributing funds that go toward the cost of one of Missouri’s top-tier defense attorneys, who is now working the case.
The case is currently under appeal. Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green will determine at a hearing on Aug. 9 whether the case should be reopened.
Irons’ case also led Moore to create an organization, “Win with Justice,” that advocates for social action and for reform in the criminal justice reform.
Moore is just the latest athlete who has spoken out about social issues. Before the 2016 ESPYS started, NBA stars LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony went on stage to talk about violence and racism while encouraging athletes to speak on those topics, too.
Paul talked about the death of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile during his speech. All were African-American males. All, except Martin, who was shot by a neighborhood watch captain, died at the hands of police.
Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick protested the same issue by kneeling during the national anthem before the start of football games. No NFL team has been willing to sign Kaepernick to a contract for the past two seasons, but he has continued to speak out about social injustice and the mistreatment of minorities.
Moore’s effort to help Irons is part of a bigger push athletes have made in recent years to use their platform to affect societal change.
The report noted the league took an interest in “education and economic advancement, police and community relations, and criminal justice reform” by creating Inspire Change on Jan. 11, 2019. At the time of the GSI report, 417 social justice activities were undertaken between the 2017 season and January 2019.
Among some of the other findings of the report:
Kaepernick set a $1 million pledge to fund community programs in September 2016 and started his “Know Your Rights” campaign.
Kaepernick raised/co-raised $1.28 million by early 2018 for community programs across the country, and partnered with Nike and music artists, athletes and media personalities, including: Serena Williams, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Nas, DJ Khaled, Alicia Keys, Angela Rye, Nick Cannon, Zendaya, J. Cole and Quavo.
Kaepernick’s support impacted programs covering, but not limited to: Native American rights, immigrant rights, police reform, anti-violence against women, homelessness, victims of gun violence, youth justice and youth mentoring.
Partnerships for social impact are growing across sports such as the Chicago Sports Alliance, which announced in 2019 it will lend the collective reach and resources of the Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and White Sox in support of finding innovative solutions to decrease violence in the city.
NFL clubs do community relations work often and actively engage their players by taking them to schools or hospitals.
Lamar Smith is a graduate student in the sports journalism program at Arizona State University
A-Rod revisited: Do big money MLB contracts pay off?
When Alex Rodriquez signed a blockbuster $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers in 2000, it would be decades before another player approached those stratospheric contract numbers. (Photo by Gary Barber/ALLSPORT)
This offseason, three of the biggest deals in baseball history were signed. Manny Machado signed with the San Diego Padres. Bryce Harper signed with the Philadelphia Phillies. Mike Trout signed an extension with the Los Angeles Angels.
Trout’s deal is for 12 years and $430 million, topping Harper’s deal by $100 million and making him the game’s highest-paid player.
Twenty years after Alex Rodriguez signed a megadeal with the Texas Rangers, baseball player contracts still feel the impact of that deal.
Despite those numbers, the richest contract in major league history when measured in 2019 dollars remains Alex Rodriguez’s 2000 deal.
Rodriguez signed a 10-year, $252 million free agent deal with the Texas Rangers on Dec. 11, 2000 — the first $200 million contract in MLB history.
At that time, the average team payroll was $66 million, and the average player salary was a little more than $2.2 million. His average salary was greater than the payroll of the Minnesota Twins during the 2001 season. Rodriguez’s total contract value was greater than the individual payrolls of every team in baseball in 2001.
Adjusted for inflation, Rodriguez’s deal today would be worth $592 million. The deal for 10 years and $275 million he signed in 2008 would be worth $448 million in 2019 dollars, according to FanGraphs.
Twelve years passed after Rodriguez signed his first free agent contract before another player signed a $200 million deal. Part of the reason could be traced to Texas’ lack of success after signing the star. Rodriguez produced at an MVP level, but he didn't make Texas a playoff team. Also, committing so much to one player is a risk in baseball because one player cannot impact a team’s overall record as much he can in other sports such as basketball.
The Rangers won 73, 72 and 71 games in the three seasons after signing A-Rod and traded him before the start of the 2004 season to the New York Yankees. The team took a big step back after winning an average of 85 games the three seasons prior to the deal including two AL West titles in 1998 and 1999.
Texas agreed to absorb $67 million of the $179 million left on his contract in the deal — the largest amount of money absorbed during a trade in the game’s history. The deal also became an outlier to how the Rangers have done deals: Rodriguez’s was the only one the team has done that has been valued at more than $130 million.
The team’s owner at the time, Tom Hicks, had spent more money on A-Rod than he spent on Globe Life Park and the 270 acres surrounding the ballpark three years earlier.
Since the deal, the Rangers have won four division titles, though they only had two winning seasons before Hicks sold the team ahead of the 2010 season. The deal became one of his biggest regrets calling it “one of the dumb things” he did during his time as owner.
Team payroll has almost doubled since that deal was signed in 2000. The average MLB payroll is a little more than $133 million for the 2019 season. This season MLB players make, on average, $4.36 million, which is almost double the average of what players made in 2001. However, little growth has occurred the past couple of years.
Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim is the highest paid player in baseball. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)
Trout has better career numbers than Rodriguez before the latter signed his $200 million deal with the Rangers. He has consistently been a top AL MVP vote-getter, winning the award in 2014 and 2016.
Coming into the 2019 MLB season, he has a 64.3 career Wins Above Replacement (WAR). His WAR compared to other players is in a league of its own. For example, Ken Griffey Jr, a first-ballot Hall of Fame outfielder, highest single season WAR was 9.5 (according to ESPN).
While Trout’s career-high WAR is 10.7. Griffey Jr. also has a career 79.4 WAR which, at Trout’s current pace, he’d surpass by the end of the 2020 season.
Trout’s deal pales in comparison to Rodriguez’ adjusted contract numbers for his 2000 deal.
Thus far Trout is playing the best out of three players who signed $300 million deals this offseason. Through the All-Star break (July 8-10) he was batting .301 with a 1.098 on base plus slugging percentage (OPS) and 28 home runs, while Harper is hitting .253 with 105 strikeouts, and Machadohas a .266 batting average and 20 home runs.
Bryce Harper's $330 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies was the highest contract for a short while this year until surpassed by Mike Trout of the Angels. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
Rodriguez was playing better than all three players through the first 50 games of the 2001 season, batting .323 with a 1.080 OPS.
Trout is a transcendent talent. At the age of 26, he has 100 more home runs than Barry Bonds and almost 300 more hits than Pete Rose at that age.
Both Rose and Bonds are Hall of Fame caliber players and are two of the greatest hitters of all-time. Trout is just starting to enter his, historically speaking, prime production years, and he has already produced at a HOF level. His level of play is an outlier in comparison to his contemporaries.
Trout’s contract set a record for the largest contract in baseball history, but his deal is not an outlier like Rodriguez’s deal.
Eleven deals worth more than $200 million have been signed since A-Rod’s first deal. Only Giancarlo Stanton’s 13-year $325 million deal exceeded $300 million before Trout, Machado and Harper were signed this winter.
Players try to secure long-term deals to assure large amounts of money. Long-term deals are those seven years or longer. Short-term deals are those three years or shorter.
Teams have signed several players to long-term deals who were in their 30s at the time of the contract being agreed to. And players have shown the ability to perform at a high-level into their 40s such as Ichiro Suzuki, Mariano Riveraand Nolan Ryan.
Before Trout’s deal, Zack Greinke was the highest paid player in baseball history in terms of average annual salary. Greinke’s deal made him one of three players to make at least $30 million per year — all of which were pitchers. Trout’s deal was unique in the sense he set the market for average money per year, too.
Machado, Harper and Stanton all signed deals that were more focused on the total amount of money.
Trout’s deal possibly could create a domino effect with players like Mookie Betts, another MVP-caliber player who can hit free agency in the near future before he turns 30.
Betts was the 2018 AL MVP and has won three consecutive gold gloves. He also is the only player in the last three seasons with a WAR comparable to Trout.
Lamar Smith is a graduate student in the sports journalism program at Arizona State University
Champion Raptors show NBA's diverse hiring pays off
Assistant coach Becky Hammon with Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs during a game against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center in February 2019. Hammon was the first female assistant coach in the NBA. (Photo by Matteo Marchi/Getty Images)
The NBA is the most diverse of the four major North American sports leagues.
By hiring a diverse group of people from the ownership level to coaching staffs, the NBA takes the lead among major sports leagues in the U.S. Having a diverse staff better represents the target audience.
TIDES grades sports leagues based on gender and racial hiring in multiple areas and assigns an overall grade. Several of the NBA’s hiring percentages improved despite the league’s overall grade dropping 0.1 percent (89.8).
The league improved the most in the hiring of head coaches and general managers of color, increasing 3.3 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively. Two of the new hires were first-time head coaches: James Borrego and Lloyd Pierce.
The increase in the amount of non-white head coaches was one of the biggest increases between the start of the 2018 and 2019 seasons. (Chart courtesy The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport)
Borrego made history as the first Hispanic full-time head coach, becoming the latest in a growing list of recent hires teams and the league have made that are enhancing the league’s diversity and inclusiveness. Such inclusiveness efforts have not yet paid gender dividends. The NBA had no female head coaches and only three female assistant coaches when the 2018-2019 season started: Becky Hammon, Jenny Boucek and Karen Stack-Umlauf.
The league added two female assistants during the 2019 offseason. The Cleveland Cavaliers hired former University of California, Berkeley women's basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb. She was the first female coach hired directly from the college ranks and the seventh female assistant coach in league history. Gottlieb joins a coaching staff led by former University of Michigan head coach John Beilein, who was hired last month by the Cavaliers. The Boston Celtics hired Kara Lawson, an ESPN analyst and former Olympian. The hire made Lawson the fifth female assistant for this upcoming season.
Becky Hammon was the only woman to lead an NBA Summer League team in Las Vegas, guiding the San Antonio Spurs summer squad.
The increase in the amount of non-white general managers in the NBA was the biggest improvement for the league. (Chart courtesy The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport)
One area the league needs to improve upon is gender hiring for team vice presidents, team presidents/chief executive officers and coaches. The 2019 NBA champion Toronto Raptors are one of a small number of teams with a female vice president: Teresa Resch has been vice president of basketball operations for the last four years and with the organization since 2013.
Women have been instrumental to the success of the Raptors: Resch is one of 10 women on staff. They serve roles ranging from player development to data analytics.
Gender hiring practices in baseball are the lowest between basketball, football and baseball. (Chart courtesy The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport)
The female team CEOs/presidents category is one of the lowest graded areas of the NBA’s Racial and Gender Report Card at 12.5 percent. The NBA has seven female executives, including team majority owners Gayle Benson (New Orleans Pelicans) and Jeanie Buss (Los Angeles Lakers).
The hiring of women has been a point of emphasis across the NBA. Despite the low number of female CEOs/presidents, the category totals increased this past year — as was the case in multiple other categories, including professional staff and the league office. Gender diversity in the league office is only second to Major League Soccer, which has 40.9 percent women.
NFL and Major League Baseball gender hiring remains far behind the NBA. Both organizations earned a C grade on their Racial Gender Report Card (RGRC). Overall, the NBA has been the leader in racial and gender diversity for years.
Lamar Smith is a graduate student in the sports journalism program at Arizona State University
NCAA launches panel to examine paying athletes for their likeness
UCLA's Ed O'Bannon cuts down the nets during the NCAA Tournament. O'Bannon sued the NCAA for licensing his name and likeness in video games while he received no compensation. (Photo courtesy Getty Images)
The NCAA is looking at ways to compensate athletes for their likeness, names and images after years of resistance that included fighting an antitrust lawsuit by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon.
After years of advocating for pay, college athletes may get the chance to be paid for their image and likeness, upending the NCAA's amateurism model.
In 2009, O’Bannon, the Most Outstanding Player on UCLA’s 1995 title team, sued the NCAA and EA Sports after they used the likenesses of athletes to sell college sports video games.
In an interview last year, NCAA President Mark Emmert assured people that collegiate athletes would not get paid. Emmert said he believed if collegiate athletes in sports such as football and basketball were paid it would alienate athletes in sports who did not make as much money.
Currently, collegiate athletes are not paid for their likeness, names and images. Athletes who attend Power Five schools can however, get cost of attendance checks.
A bill to allow collegiate athletes to profit from the use of his or her name passed a legislative hurdle in the California Assembly's Committee on Higher Education on a 9-0 vote on July 10. The Fair Pay to Play Act would prohibit California schools from taking away scholarships or eligibility from athletes who use their fame to make money. If passed, the proposal would also allow athletes to hire an agent to represent them in business deals without losing their eligibility.
The cost of attendancechecks policy was created to help athletes who still needed financial aid assistance outside of the money they received via scholarship from the university. The money Power Five athletes received as a part of cost attendance ranges from $2,000 to $5,000.
The NCAA is not looking at cost of attendance policy changes, but exploring the possibilities of additional compensation for athletes for the use of their likeness. Such a policy would also benefit athletes at other Division I schools who do not receive cost of attendance money as well as those attending Division II and III schools.
Emmert and the NCAA Board of Governors have created a Federal and State Legislation Working Group consisting of members from all three NCAA divisions, including a few student athletes. The group’s goal is to examine federal and state legislation regarding likeness, images and names.
The group is led by Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman and Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith.
“While the formation of this group is an important step to confirming what we believe as an association, the group’s work will not result in paying students as employees,” Smith said on NCAA.com. “That structure is contrary to the NCAA’s educational mission and will not be a part of this discussion.”
The group wants to keep the lines between professional and collegiate sports while also trying to improve the alignment of student-athletes with the general student body.
An update on the legislation will be provided in August while the final report is due in October.
Lamar Smith is a graduate student in the sports journalism program at Arizona State University
