Name: How Watching Sports Affects Testosterone and The Sport with the Fittest Athletes
Uploaded: 2023-07-26T17:30:58.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Watching Sports Affects Testosterone and The Sport with the Fittest Athletes' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-07-26. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Watching Sports Affects Testosterone and The Sport with the Fittest Athletes' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-07-26. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- December 18th, 2022, World Cup Final.
You talk about the power,
the emotional power of sports, right?
My family and I were sitting
and watching the World Cup Final.
And we had, the extent to which we were emotionally vested
in Messi winning the World Cup can only be,
can only demonstrate the beauty of sports, right?
Because here's a guy that, we've never met him.
We're not Argentinian, right?
He doesn't know that we're alive.
And yet it's life and death for us that he should,
I mean, it was so harrowing,
I don't know if you watched the game,
that at one point my son, who's 11 years old, said,
I can't watch this anymore, I'm going to have a heart attack.
That's the power of sports, that it can pull us in
and it can make us truly tribal.
And in my case, before you interject,
it was kind of driven, my desire for him to win,
was driven by really a purity strand.
It was that it seemed cosmically unjust
for the greatest soccer player of all time
to not have won the World Cup.
So when he won it, to me it seemed like the world is right.
Beauty has won.
- Ah, I get it.
Look at this.
- That's awesome.
- And I should add, what a guy, right?
A humble, sweet family man.
- What's fascinating to me is as happy as they are,
the people on the other team that were rooting for the other team,
they're devastated right now.
- That's the weird thing about sports.
You can get so attached to what's happening
that a loss is like really a loss.
- Yeah.
- Can't believe we fucking lost to Kansas City.
- Well, in my first book ever, 2007, Evolutionary Basic Consumption,
I talk about studies, not my studies, I was citing other works,
that looked at what happens to the testosterone levels of fans
as a function of whether their team wins or loses.
- How do you test that?
- Well, it's been tested.
You just take salivary assays of fans as their team is winning or losing.
- Oh, you can get the testosterone levels from that?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- That's interesting.
- Yeah, and so, now what, it's not surprising as you would know as a fighter,
that if you and I fight and you defeat me, your testosterone level goes up,
my testosterone level goes down.
- Like a video game.
- Like a video game.
- Okay, except what's happening here is that there is a vicarious endocrinological
response.
The fans are having the same increases in their testosterone levels or
decreases
as a function of their team winning or not.
That's quite extraordinary.
And that shows you why we become so bonded to our favorite players and so on.
We are really going through this battle with them.
- Yeah, it's really the case with fighters.
When people have a fighter that they're really a giant fan of,
that person gets beaten in a devastating manner, it's heartbreaking.
- There's even studies, by the way, that have looked at what happens to sexual
behavior
of fans after their team wins or loses.
So if, let's say you, if your wife is upset that you're not, you haven't been
producing in the bedroom,
she should pray that the husband's favorite team wins because if he wins,
he has an increase in testosterone level, increases their libidinal drive.
And so we're animals.
- It's just attaching so much of your own emotions to something completely out
of control and just rooting on it.
- Exactly. But do you have a fan in any sport where you've ever been that
vested in?
- Well, there was one time I remember when I was a kid, I was a giant fan of
Donald Curry.
Donald Curry was the welterweight boxing champion at the time.
And he had a rivalry with this other guy, Milton McCrory and Donald Curry
knocked him out.
He became like my favorite boxer.
And then Donald Curry, he got beat by this guy, Lloyd Hunnigan.
It was a devastating loss.
Like people couldn't believe Lloyd Hunnigan beat Donald Curry.
And it was like, Donald Curry might be on the downslide, but I'm still like a
giant fan of his.
And then Donald Curry fought Mike McCallum.
And Mike McCallum hit him with a left hook to the body and a left hook to the
chin and put him out.
Like out cold. And I couldn't believe it.
And I ran, here it is right here.
I ran out of the house.
Watch this. Boom.
Out cold.
The one with the black shorts is your guy, right?
The guy down is my guy.
Yeah, okay.
So I misremembered it.
It wasn't a left hook to the body.
It was like he goes with a right hand and then a left hook behind it.
But he just, he KO'd, KO'd Donald Curry.
And I couldn't believe it.
And so I put on my running shoes.
I couldn't stay home.
I just couldn't deal with it.
I couldn't deal with it.
And I went running in the snow.
And I ran.
I ain't no windows in the snow.
I'm thinking of another story.
It was another time when someone lost and I went running in the snow.
I don't think it was in the snow.
I think it was warm.
I don't remember.
But I remember I went running.
And as I'm running and I'm running down the road, I'm thinking to myself,
I am never going to be this invested in someone else winning or losing ever
again.
All right.
I was so devastated that he lost.
I couldn't believe it.
What was the bond?
What, what, why, why?
His technique.
His technique was perfect.
He was crisp.
Like he was coiled.
They called him, his, his, what was his nickname?
Something Cobra.
Here comes Jamie.
I forget what his nickname was.
But his, his technique was so crisp.
Lone Star Cobra.
Lone Star Cobra.
There you go.
He was out of Fort Worth and his technique was so sharp.
I just really, I always admired guys who were able to find like the shortest
path
to connecting with a shot where it's just like the technique is so dialed in.
Yeah.
There's guys that like Gervonta Davis is like that.
Their technique is so dialed in that when you watch them uncork, it's like, oh
my God,
the efficiency of it.
And so I was just a giant fan of the guy.
I just loved as a person who like really enjoyed technique, I like watching
someone who's exceptional
at it.
I recently put, I don't know, maybe a few months ago, I put out a sort of a
hypothetical what
if scenario where I, I think this was on Twitter, where I asked people who
follow me, would I
be able to step on an NFL field and under any circumstance simply get a single
yard as a running
back?
Right.
So in other words, right.
Right.
So now, for example, if I go into a boxing ring with someone, the only way I'm
going to survive
is if I keep running around long enough because the singular time that they hit
me, I'm unlikely
to be able to withstand that.
Right.
So that's, I'm gone.
Right.
Right.
If I play basketball, I think I have enough skills that I can receive the ball
and pass it
off to someone.
Right.
Right.
And so then I started thinking, what about other sports?
Could the average person who doesn't play that sport survive long enough to do
something?
I'm obviously not going to get a hundred yards, but a single yard.
So I thought, maybe I was being presumptuous, maybe now I'm an old guy, but I
thought that
it could be possible for the front line to make enough of a hole for me to run
through
for one yard.
And I would just draw.
I just need to get a single yard.
Yeah, it's possible.
But a lot of people thought there's no chance that that would happen because
they would
catch you in the backfield, they would tackle you, and then you would die.
Well, they probably could do that too.
That could happen as well.
But if the defense is so strong that they can just create a small enough
opening for you
to go one yard, I think that's reasonable.
Yeah.
It would suck for you though, dude.
They're going to pile on top of you.
You're never going to be the same again.
Especially since I've lost so much weight, at least before I looked like a linebacker,
a fat linebacker.
Yeah, you don't want that happening to you.
What was that?
What just happened there?
Watch again.
Watch this guy.
This is the running back trying to get the ball to get one yard.
Watch this.
Bam!
Boom!
His helmet's off and he's hurt.
Oh my goodness.
Oh my god, he got tack, old.
And that's one of five guys that are going to try to stop you from doing that.
Tack, old.
These guys are so powerful.
So Jamie is in the camp of I'm not getting a single yard.
There's a lot of other variables.
But it is possible that the defense could have prevented
that if the defense is extraordinary and the guys are on point.
And there's, you know, games, things happen, right?
People are trying to control things and people are charging forward.
It's possible that there's an opening just big enough for anyone to get three
yards.
Right.
Or one yard rather, three feet.
Do you think you could step on a soccer field and look anything short of a
complete moron?
No, no, impossible.
I actually saw you recently and I was really delighted to hear that where you
were
singing the praises of how fit soccer players are.
Oh my god, we went to see the games here in Austin.
And when you watch professionals, first of all, here's one reason why soccer is
problematic for television.
They don't get breaks.
Yeah.
So there's no breaks like, you know, we'll be right back with another word from
Nabisco.
There's none of that.
So if you have commercials, like you have to interrupt the play of the game.
Yeah.
And then people have to catch up and then it's not, is it not live now?
Or are you going to like have half of a commercial and half of the game?
Like, what are you going to do?
How are you going to do that?
Because they don't stop.
They just keep going.
And you have to be insanely fit.
Those guys look like thoroughbreds.
Like their legs were just fucking shredded.
So there was a study a few years ago.
I can't cite what it was, but that looked at who were the fittest athletes.
Number one was soccer.
It has to be.
Do you know what number two was?
No.
Squash players.
Why?
I'm guessing because there are a lot of those very, very quick accelerations
that you have
to engage in to be able to get.
The ball is very dead, right?
And so you really have to have this incredible quickness to be able.
What a weird thing for an elite athlete to choose.
Jamie, can we check the rankings?
I don't even really think I could describe squash.
You know, I tried to play it.
I got very claustrophobic.
Really?
I'm being serious.
Because let me see what it looks like.
Well, I was, ah, okay.
Show me a squash game.
It's like a, it's like a racquetball, right?
No, but with a ball that's more dead.
Racquetball, the ball has a lot more give.
It bounces more.
I was just trying to look.
I found other sports that sound like they would be more, but I didn't find it
on a scientific
study.
My wife has been trying to get me into pickleball.
What are our thoughts about that?
I hear people like it.
Have I just lost a few testosterone points?
No.
Come on, man.
People like pickleball.
Well, apparently there's a whole craze of pickleball now because it's not quite
as difficult as
tennis.
You don't have to cover as much ground.
It's still a racquet game.
It looks like a lot of damage to the knees, son.
That's what I'm looking at right there.
In terms of squash we're talking?
You're running around.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot of fucking explosive movements for old guys like us.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Best stick to yoga.
Pickleball, you can play with a beer in your hand, so you should be all right.
Yeah, pickleball, pickleball's the way to go, son.