L. Jon Wertheim - This Is Your Brain on Sports

N ame a memorable sports commercial or ad campaign from the last quarter century, and odds are good that its the handiwork of Wieden+Kennedy. Based in Portland, Oregon, the firm made its bones as the creative agency for Nike. It was Dan Wieden, one of the two founders, who coined Just Do It. The agency conceived of everything from the campaign featuring Michael Jordan and his hyperactive fanboy, Mars Blackmonplayed, of course, by Spike Leeto Tiger Woodss Hello, World to Charles Barkleys I Am Not a Role Model to Bo Jacksons Bo Knows to Lance Armstrongs Livestrong bracelets to the ode to Title IX, If You Let Me Play.

Wieden+Kennedy also counts ESPN among its clients. A few years ago, the agency came up with a gem of a campaign for the network: Its Not Crazy, Its Sports. Featured among these spots: a fan who lost a sports bet and had to eat a bagel topped with a healthy sprinkling of his friends chest hair; a schlub proposing marriage to his girlfriend not on a Caribbean beach, as she had hoped, but on the Jumbotron of Detroits Comerica Park; an army of Alabama football fans intoning Roll Tide while doing everything from making wedding toasts to issuing speeding tickets.

And it wasnt just fans who were spoofed. Maybe the funniest of the commercials featured clips of college basketball coaches such as Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Boeheimotherwise dignified men dressed in tailored suits and silk tiescontorting on the sidelines during games while disco music played. Another spot depicted the evolution of the touchdown dance. By 2015 the commercials had morphed into a cinematic effort, too, as ESPN rolled out a series of documentary shorts directed by Oscar winner Errol Morris. A renowned chronicler of the human condition, Morris explained his interest in the project as follows: Sports, as we all know, touches on everything.

The Its Not Crazy, Its Sports campaign connected with both of us immediately. One of us (Jon) works in sports media and has a passion for behavioral science. The other (Sam) is a behavioral scientist with a passion for sports. We instantly recognized what these ads and film shorts were trying to convey.

In a dry press release that was wildly at odds with its typically edgy work, Wieden+Kennedy claimed, The Its Not Crazy, Its Sports campaign celebrates what makes sports inspiring, entertaining and dramatic. Translation: It highlights all the batshit craziness that courses through the sports ecosystem.

We see examples of this lunacy all the time, right? Athletes lose all poise in the heat of competition and even during postgame interviews. They choke, betraying years of training, allowing their minds and bodies to desert them when the stakes are highest. They find the damnedest ways to rationalize cheating. They insist on feeling disrespected even when theres little or no indication that anyone is slighting them.

Coaches routinely make decisions that dont maximize their chances of winning. Owners who have accumulated vast fortunes with their business acumen buy a team and immediately make basic financial and personnel mistakes.

Some fans wear threadbare but lucky T-shirts when the Indiana Hoosiers play important games, convinced that failure to do so will inevitably trigger defeat (that would be Jon). They jeer athletes they find reprehensibleunless those athletes play for their team. They reflexively side with the underdogthe team that, by definition, has the lower probability of winning.

Other fans think the perfect present for a friends 40th birthday is paying for Ickey Woods to record a personalized video greeting (that one was Sam). They hurl themselves over railings to catch a free T-shirt propelled by an air cannona T-shirt they wouldnt spend a dime to buy. They riot after their team wins. They root for the New York Jets.

This behavior that, on its face, makes no sense? These acts that, viewed objectively, are absurd? We embrace them. They reinforce the organizing principles of sports: It is diversion, escapism, almost an altered state. In the Universe of Sports, the usual rules of behavior and social convention dont apply.

Or do they? Because so often the appearance of lunacy in sports isnt lunacy at all. As outlandish as sports conduct might seem, it is rooted in basic human psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive tendency. All that crazy we associate with sports? Were going to explain why its not so crazy after all. And then well explore what lessons and principles sports offer for better navigating our daily lives as managers, business owners, consumers, parents, and more. As Errol Morris said, sports touches on everything.

In the chapters that follow, well show you what running on a treadmill teaches us about running a company. How rooting for lovable losers relates to IKEAs successful business model. What you have in common with Floyd Mayweather Jr., Brett Favre, and Serena Williamsand what you dont with Tom Brady (besides his paycheck, Super Bowl rings, famous hair, and equally famous spouse).

Writing this book has been educational as well as entertaining. Chapter after chapter, we found that the quirkiness of sports taught us something deeper about who we are, what we care about, and the forces that shape our behavior. We hope reading it offers you a similar experience. Were confident that by the end, youll come to see sportsand human naturea little differently.

How confident? Well bet you a chest-hair sandwich.