Jeff Beckham

Sports Illustrated

Football mouthguards of tomorrow will detect dehydration, head injuries

The humble mouthguard—that C-shaped piece of plastic that protects an athlete’s teeth—has remained relatively unchanged for the past 60 years. But today, the most unassuming part of a football player’s gear is poised for a technological makeover that would place it squarely in the middle of the most important phases of the game.

Mouthguards won’t look too different from the outside, but they may soon gain the ability to help assess head injuries, tell you when you’re becoming dehydrated, or e...

Wired

The Future of Stadiums Might Be No Stadium at All

Not long after the Dallas Cowboys debuted the NFL’s largest video board at their new stadium in 2009, the Houston Texans rolled out an even bigger screen. Then the Jacksonville Jaguars went even bigger at their new venue, throwing in an in-stadium swimming pool as a bonus. The building of NFL stadiums has become an arms race, but architect Dan Meis is calling for a de-escalation. Maybe, he says, the future of stadiums means less is more.

Meis knows first-hand what that arms race looks like. H...

Wired

Science Turns the NFL’s J. J. Watt Into a Tower of Power

In just four years in the NFL, Houston Texans defensive end J. J. Watt has become professional football’s most physically dominant force. He’s the first player ever to twice record 20 or more quarterback sacks in a single season. Today, Watt is a 6′5″, 289-pound tower of power, but trainer Brad Arnett remembers the skinny high school sophomore who first walked into his Waukesha, Wisconsin, gym 10 years ago. Arnett applied exercise science and old-school techniques to transform Watt into Andre...

Wired

How Baseball Is Building Better NFL Quarterbacks

The two clues that foretold Tom House's future as a quarterback specialist emerged way back in the late 1980s. The first came with the footballs that he used as pitching coach of the Texas Rangers, pointing out in his quiet voice that throwing with proper mechanics was the only way to produce a tight spiral.
Then came the cameras that could capture high-speed video of pitchers—and fly fishermen, golfers, and quarterbacks. House was curious about all of them. He sent footage to a lab to be dig...

Slate

HBO’s Ballers Is Just Entourage for Jocks

If you’re looking for a football metaphor to describe the first few episodes of Ballers, the new HBO series debuting Sunday and starring Dwayne “The Rock’ Johnson as a retired football star turned financial manager, you’d probably choose “fumble.” But “fumble” puts the blame on the players. The real problem here lies behind the scenes, where the producers and writers—the show’s coaches, to stretch the metaphor—seem to have called the wrong play to begin with. This sh...

Texas Monthly

Why You Should Root For Booker High School’s Football Team to Win the State Championship

The high school football playoffs began this week, and if you aren’t already cheering for a child’s school or an alma mater, might we suggest adopting the Booker High Kiowas as your home team away from home. The tiny town at the top of the Panhandle, population 1,516, only has 29 players on its team. But with a former prison guard as coach and a pair of cousins smashing state records, they’ll give you that warm feeling about football you’ve be...

Texas Monthly

Texas’s Losingest High School Football Team Determined to Win

It’s been more than 1,500 days since Houston’s Scarborough High School won a football game. That’s 44 losses in a row, stretching back to September 2009. The seniors on the team have never won a high school football game; they were in eighth grade the last time the Spartans notched a win.

The New York Times

With Lakes Drying Up, Businesses Are Parched

A late-summer day on the lake is as much a part of Austin’s culture as live music and breakfast tacos. But that part of this area’s identity suffered a blow on Labor Day when the lingering drought forced a longtime waterfront favorite to close its doors.
Carlos’n Charlie’s, a Mexican restaurant and bar on the shores of Lake Travis that was open for nearly 20 years, shut down Sept. 2. The owners blamed a third consecutive year of dry weather.
Central Texas lakes are at their lowest levels in m...

Wired

Analytics Reveal 13 New Basketball Positions

For as long as basketball has been played, it's been played with five positions. Today they are point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward and center. A California data geek sees 13 more hidden among them, with the power to help even the Charlotte Bobcats improve their lineup and win more games.
Muthu Alagappan is a Stanford University senior, a basketball fan and an intern at Ayasdi, a data visualization company. Ayasdi takes huge amounts of info like tumor samples and display...

Wired

The Decades That Invented the Future, Part 1: 1900-1910

Since 2007, Wired.com’s This Day In Tech blog has reflected on important and entertaining events in the history of science and innovation, pursuing them chronologically for each day of the year. Hundreds of these essays have now been collected into a trivia book, Mad Science: Einstein’s Fridge, Dewar’s Flask, Mach’s Speed and 362 Other Inventions and Discoveries that Made Our World. It goes on sale Nov. 13, and is available for pre-order today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online book...

Wired

The Shoe of Tomorrow Knows How Hard You Hustle

Innovation in athletic shoes historically has focused on improving materials and manufacturing to make lighter, stronger sneakers. Now the focus is on making shoes smarter.
The next generation of athletic shoes will feature radio frequency identification tags, motion sensors and accelerometers that will allow you to customize the look, fit and responsiveness of your kicks. The shoes of tomorrow also will transmit data to the cloud, allowing you to fine-tune your workout and brag about your ac...