THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON SPORTS

The Science of Underdogs, the Value of Rivalry and What We Can Learn from the T-Shirt Cannon.

by L. Jon Wertheim and Sam Sommers
Crown Archetype, February 2016.

There seems to be a lot of batshit craziness that courses through the sports world, on the field and in the stands. Athletes choke when the game’s on the line, betraying years of training and allowing their minds and bodies to desert them when the stakes are highest. Coaches routinely make decisions that don’t maximize their chances of winning. Fans wear “lucky” t-shirts when their teams are playing, convinced their failure to do so will trigger defeat, and they hurl themselves over banners to catch a free t-shirt propelled by an air cannon that they wouldn’t pay a dime for on the street.

However, it turns out, so often the appearance of lunacy in sports isn’t lunacy at all but rather something routed in basic human psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive tendency. In THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON SPORTS: The Science of Underdogs, the Value of Rivalry and What We Can Learn from the T-Shirt Cannon (Crown Archetype, February 2016), Sports Illustrated executive editor and bestselling author L. Jon Wertheim teams up with Tufts psychologist Sam Sommers to take readers on a wild ride into the inner world of sports and what it can teach us about human nature. Through the prism of behavioral economics, neuroscience, and psychology, they reveal the hidden influences and surprising cues that inspire and derail us on the fields of play and by extension, in corporate board rooms, office settings, and our daily lives.

Wertheim and Sommers usher us from professional football to the NBA to Grand Slam tennis, from the psychology of athletes self-handicapping their performance in the boxing ring or the World Series, to an explanation of why even the glimpse of a finish line can lift us beyond ordinary physical limits. They also provide surprising answers to confounding sports questions like:

Why Tom Brady and other starting NFL quarterbacks all seem to look like fashion models
Why fans of teams like the Cubs, Mets (until this year!), and any franchise from Cleveland love rooting for a loser
Why the best players make the worst coaches
Why hockey goons (and fans) would rather fight at home than on the road
Why we can’t stop screaming for that arena t-shirt cannon to be fired in our direction.

Illuminating and entertaining, THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON SPORTS celebrates the quirkiness of sport while revealing something deeper about who we are, what we care about, and the forces that shape our behavior. We hope you will take a moment to dip into this fascinating book and we look forward to discussing coverage with you soon.

“It was only after delving into this unique tome that I learned that Mookie Wilson was available for bar mitzvah greetings via telephone or that I can go elk hunting with Ryan Klesko for a mere nine grand.
This information alone is worth many times the cost of this eye-opening and entertaining book.”
—Bob Costas

“Wertheim and Sommers wield serious research to diagnose the myriad symptoms of the human brain on sports, and what they find is, by turns, hilarious, slightly frightening, and always illuminating.”
—David Epstein, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance

“Wertheim and Sommers have achieved the Holy Grail: a book that’s as fun as it is informative. I can’t think of a better place to demonstrate the foibles of the human mind than in the world of sports, where rabid fandom and superstition meet epic rivalries and impossible comebacks. If you’ve ever wondered why so many people devote so much time to playing, analyzing, and watching sports, this book is for you.”
—Adam Alter, Associate Professor of Marketing and Psychology, Stern School of Business, and New York Times Bestselling Author of Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave

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