ESPN to Kick Off "Big Game" Weekend With Sport Science (@sport_science) Special

When I first saw the headline "Sport Science Special on ESPN to Kick Off Big Game Weekend" (emphasis added), I stopped for a minute. Cannot even ESPN use the term "Super Bowl" in a headline related to promoting one of their shows? Well sure enough they use it in the text of the release. Nonetheless, the EMMY award winning Sport Science has moved from Fox Sports Net (FSN) to ESPN. It is really a cool show that might actually get your kids excited about science (except for the darn narrator that all of these style shows seem to use).


John Brenkus, the host of the show, is lonely on Twitter though, with only 25 followers. So if you tweet, you might want to go show him some love.

Here is the full press release from ESPN.

Sport Science Special on ESPN to Kick Off Big Game Weekend

Super Bowl weekend gets started on ESPN with a 30-minute Sport Science special featuring NFL players and four football-based experiments. The show, set for Friday, Feb 5, at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN, stars Santonio Holmes of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Marshawn Lynch of the Buffalo Bills and Matt Willig, who recently retired from the NFL.

The three-time Emmy Award-winning unscripted Sport Science hosted by John Brenkus brings the world’s top professional athletes together with cutting-edge technology in state-of-the-art scientific facilities to test the limits of human athletic abilities and challenge popular assumptions about athletes.

Performed in the Sport Science Laboratory, led by Dr. Cindy Bir of Wayne State University and Brenkus, the special is comprised of these experiments:

• Two great catches in Super Bowl history – made by Holmes in last year’s game -- are analyzed and compared to uncover the differences in “circus” vs. “textbook” – the catch that can’t be practiced, and the one a player practices for every day of his career.
• Can a running back generate as much power as a diesel engine? Lynch participates in a one-of-a-kind test of man vs. machine to find out.
• Viewers will get an eye-opening statistical analysis of the differences between champion quarterbacks and the guys who never quite made it to the top. The goal is to identify the determining factor in who wins it all and who doesn’t. A study of quarterbacks is shown in a way never before imagined, culminating with a prediction of the winner of the big game Sunday, Feb. 7.
• Football referees have a dangerous job. Positioned right behind the linebackers, the umpire works in the middle of the world’s scariest mosh pit. To demonstrate what happens when an unpadded referee accidentally gets hit, 14-year NFL veteran Willig joins the Sport Science lab to test impact forces on a state-of-the-art crash-test dummy, and on a live dummy: host John Brenkus.   

About Sport Science


In addition to 30-minute Sport Science specials, ESPN runs Sport Science-branded segments in its highest-profile productions, including signature series such as SportsCenter, College GameDay, the Winter X Games and other programs tied to top sporting events. Host John Brenkus will also make special appearances on ESPN programming to discuss timely Sport Science segments.

Sport Science is produced by BASE Productions. John Brenkus and Mickey Stern are executive producers for BASE. Joan Lynch, Ron Wechsler and Lee Fitting are executives in charge of production for ESPN.