NCBI ROFL: Superbowl special: 5 funny football-related studies!

Discover how sports fans who tailgate tend to drink more and the physiological effects of winning on their excitement.

Written byncbi rofl
| 2 min read
Google NewsGoogle News Preferred Source

Newsletter

Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news

Sign Up

1. Sports fans who tailgate are more likely to get drunk. "Our findings suggest that a significant number of attendees at professional sporting events may have elevated BAC levels, particularly young adults and those who participated in tailgating activities. " 2. Sport fan identification in obituaries. "To assess whether sport involvement, particularly as a fan, is central enough to one’s self-concept to be mentioned in obituary content, it was hypothesized that a greater proportion of men’s obituaries than women’s would mention the deceased individual’s sport fan identification." 3. Choose wisely, rooting for the winning team DOES make you more manly. "In both studies, mean testosterone level increased in the fans of winning teams and decreased in the fans of losing teams. These findings suggest that watching one’s heroes win or lose has physiological consequences that extend beyond changes in mood and self-esteem.” 4. The “Fan Can”: innocent football fan fun, or menace to sober society? "Participants were exposed to images of beer in either a standard can or a can featuring the colors of their university (i.e., ‘fan cans’). We hypothesized that exposure to fan cans would change perceptions of the risks of beer drinking." 5. Catching of balls unexpectedly thrown or fired by cannon. "Responses of unwitting participants to balls unexpectedly thrown by an experimenter (n=10) or propelled by a hidden ball cannon (n=22) were recorded by motion capture."

Photo: ICanHasCheezburger?

Related content: Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Top 10 most popular posts of the year! Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Top 5 insensitive titles! Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Top 10 absurd papers of 2009. NCBI ROFL. Real Articles. Funny Subjects. Read our FAQ!

Meet the Author

Stay Curious

JoinOur List

Sign up for our weekly science updates

View our Privacy Policy

SubscribeTo The Magazine

Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine.

Subscribe