Steven Newton
12 February 2025
Superbowl number … I’m going to say, XYXX? No. NXIVM? No, that’s something different. Does anyone still know Roman numerals? Let’s just call it Superb Owl 2025. In any event, it’s a big deal, with about 120 million people watching. Depending on your Roman numeral mathematical skills, that may or may not compare to the 1.5 billion people who watched the World Cup Final in 2022.
Carl Sagan posited that sports could be a great way to connect scientific ideas to everyone. Critical sports analysis could also help foster skeptical thinking by demolishing myths, such as the idea that a baseball player who hasn’t scored a hit in a long time is “due” a run.
So when Superb Owl 2025 commences with the delivery of the first stone on the ice (sorry, wrong sport), what kind of Sagan-inspired scientific lessons could be imparted? Imagine a world where sports commentators noted that footballs—indeed, any thrown object—describes a parabolic arc that is roughly symmetrical. That’s why a wide receiver can take one glance and know where the arc will arrive.
When a defensive rusher sacks a quarterback, why does the quarterback get pushed sideways, and not the other way around? This could be an opportunity to talk about mass and velocity and momentum. A 130 kg mass moving at 3 m/s impacts a 100 kg stationary mass, resulting in the football fumbling from the quarterback in the direction of the impact. Basic physics, but something most Americans lack.
These lost teaching lessons are never part of sports broadcasting, but Sagan imagined sports as a way to inspire people to study science. What a better world it could be if, guided by these candles in the dark, more people knew more about the world around them.