TV Ratings A Better Predictor Of NFL Consumer Demand Than Attendance

For NFL teams, especially small-market franchises seeking to increase their fan base, winning may be everything, but so does team longevity in the market as well as the number of games played in prime time, according to research by a University of Illinois sports economist.

Scott Tainsky, a professor of recreation, sport and tourism at Illinois, says that many of the same factors that influence whether fans attend a game in-person also influence a team's television ratings.

"Sports economists have traditionally relied on attendance figures as a proxy for demand in order to figure out what's motivating fans to go to games," Tainsky said. "Even though the NFL is priced just a little bit below where it could maximize revenue at the gate, it still requires a large income or at least a large outlay of money for the average fan to see a game in-person."

According to Tainsky, whose research was published in the Journal of Sports Economics, since the vast majority of fans watch the games on TV instead of in-person, and with the NFL betting on over half of its revenue being generated through TV contracts, TV ratings might actually function as a better proxy for consumer demand in both the home and road teams' markets.

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Exercise Grows Kids' Brains, Literally

Researchers have found an association between physical fitness and the brain in 9- and 10-year-old children: Those who are more fit tend to have a bigger hippocampus and perform better on a test of memory than their less-fit peers.  The new study, which used magnetic resonance imaging to measure the relative size of specific structures in the brains of 49 child subjects, appears in the journal Brain Research.

"This is the first study I know of that has used MRI measures to look at differences in brain between kids who are fit and kids who aren't fit," said University of Illinois psychology professor and Beckman Institute director Art Kramer, who led the study with doctoral student Laura Chaddock and kinesiology and community health professor Charles Hillman. "Beyond that, it relates those measures of brain structure to cognition."

The study focused on the hippocampus, a structure tucked deep in the brain, because it is known to be important in learning and memory. Previous studies in older adults and in animals have shown that exercise can increase the size of the hippocampus. A bigger hippocampus is associated with better performance on spatial reasoning and other cognitive tasks.

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Sports Energy Drinks Actually Help Kids

Consuming energy drinks during team sports could help young people perform better, a study suggests.  Sports scientists found that 12-14 year olds can play for longer in team games when they drink an isotonic sports drink before and during games.  Researchers at the University of Edinburgh measured the performance of 15 adolescents during exercise designed to simulate the physical demands of team games such as football, rugby and hockey.

They showed for the first time that sports drinks helped the young people continue high intensity, stop-start activity for up to 24 per cent longer -- compared with players who drank a non-carbohydrate placebo solution.

The study was conducted because there is increasing evidence of young people consuming commercially available energy drinks during team games and researchers wanted to assess their impact. The findings are published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology.

The findings showed that drinking a 6 per cent carbohydrate-electrolyte solution improved endurance capacity but did not make young people run faster during intermittent exercise in team sports.  The solution -- containing carbohydrate, sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium -- enhances hydration, helps prevent dehydration and provides a supply of energy to the body, thereby contributing to improved endurance capacity.

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Kicking Style Of Women Soccer Players May Cause Injury

Significant differences in knee alignment and muscle activation exist between men and women while kicking a soccer ball, according to a study published this month in the Journal of Bone and Joint.

Data reveal that males activate certain hip and leg muscles more than females during the motion of the instep and side-foot kicks -- the most common soccer kicks -- which may help explain why female players are more than twice as likely as males to sustain an Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injury.

Soccer is one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States with approximately 20 million registered players and an annual participation increase of more than 20 percent , according to statistics from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) . Women also are playing this sport on more competitive levels. Prior research shows that females are more prone to non-contact ACL injuries than males and though many theories exist, a direct cause for the disparity is unknown.

"By analyzing the detailed motion of a soccer kick in progress, our goal was to home in on some of the differences between the sexes and how they may relate to injury risk," said orthopaedic surgeon Robert H. Brophy, MD, study author and assistant professor of orthopedics, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "This study offers more information to help us better understand the differences between male and female athletes, particularly soccer players."

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