How to Eat 70 Hot Dogs in 10 Minutes 🌭

I just spent a full game day working as a clubhouse and bat boy for a professional baseball team up in Fargo, ND, and it was simultaneously one of the most chaotic and humbling jobs I’ve ever done.

For starters, following around Caleb (the clubbie I worked alongside all day) felt like chasing a rabbit for 12 hours. I never knew where he was going next; everything we did leading up to the game felt scattered and unrelated, yet he was in full control of nearly every aspect of the locker room and dugout.

Then was the humbling part. Long story short, it was me and an 11-year-old kid working as bat boys during the game, which made it all the more embarrassing when I inevitably messed up.

But I suppose I’ll let you be the judge of that.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: How to Eat 70 Hot Dogs in 10 Minutes

📉 Biggest Loser: Can Soccer Fans Keep Balls in the Stands?

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Do Players Get Paid for the World Cup?

How is Joey Chestnut actually able to eat over 70 hot dogs in just 10 minutes?

Well, the short answer is by training, but the real answer actually reveals one of the strangest routines in sports that no one seems to know anything about.

Inner Mechanics: For most people, our stomachs are roughly the size of a Nerf football and can expand by about 15% to hold 1 liter of food and liquid before our nausea reflex kicks in. However, for competitive eaters like Joey, his stomach is trained to expand by up to 400%, allowing it to hold up to 4 liters without a problem.

But it’s not like he was simply born with this ability.

Instead, through years of training, he’s been able to get his body to a point where his organs are literally moving out of the way so he can eat more, but how do you even train for something like that?

Warm Up: It all starts with the jaw, because in order to get the hot dogs out of his mouth and into his stomach as quickly as possible, Joey regularly trains his masseter muscle by chewing five or more pieces of gum at once, which allows him to generate 280 pounds of bite force, greater than that of a German Shepard.

Then, he’ll spend two months leading up to the contest training his esophagus, first by working on what’s called the Valsalva Maneuver, which is similar to when you pinch your nose and exhale to pop your ears, but in Joey’s case, he’s doing it to increase the pressure in his chest to more rapidly force food down his throat.

You might also see him bouncing up and down on stage, which is a simpler technique to leverage gravity to get the food down faster. Then, only once it’s finally in his stomach, does the real training start to pay off.

That’s because in order to avoid the nausea reflex that most humans have when our stomachs get too full, professional eaters like Joey will train by eating high-volume, low-calorie foods like cabbage and watermelon or drinking one to two gallons of water at a time to slowly stretch out their stomachs. And, just like any other professional athlete, over time, this is what allows the top Major League Eaters to continue pushing for new records.

But if all these guys do is eat, then why aren’t they fat?

Diet Do’s and Don’ts: The truth is, outside of these competitions, professional eaters like Joey actually try to stay in a calorie deficit, since carrying around extra body fat limits the amount your stomach can expand. In fact, Joey says that he won’t actually eat for two days leading up to the Hot Dog Eating Contest, aside from black coffee and water.

Still, all that being said, the human body can’t actually absorb 20,000+ calories in just 10 minutes, meaning even though these guys are eating 4-months’ worth of food in one sitting, most of it just goes right through them.

Why can’t soccer fans keep balls that go into the stands?

Well, while most people probably assume it’s because of the chip inside every ball, the real answer is actually a lot more complicated than you might think.

The Long Game: It is true that this year’s World Cup ball has a tiny sensor embedded in the bladder that collects data at 500 times per second to help referees make more accurate calls and give fans access to advanced shot-tracking data.

However, that data isn’t actually stored inside the ball. Instead, as soon as it’s collected, it’s wirelessly transmitted via sensors around each stadium, which means keeping a ball doesn’t mean you’re running away with any secret information…

Instead, the real reason FIFA sends security to collect balls that aren’t thrown back is because of a process that happens months earlier and thousands of miles away.

Intentional Inventory: For every World Cup, over 3,000 balls are made at FIFA-certified factories, largely based in Pakistan. This allows the governing body to set aside 20 balls for each match and to give each team 20 training balls to use throughout the tournament.

However, to produce FIFA-certified soccer balls for the World Cup, factories must undergo a rigorous and expensive quality-testing regimen that begins with shooting each ball into a steel wall at roughly 31 MPH (50 KPH) up to 2,000 times in a row.

This ensures that they maintain their perfect roundness and tight seams after repeated use; however, if even one ball fails, then the entire batch is thrown out. Samples of game balls must also be tested at independent FIFA-approved testing labs around the world, a process that costs thousands of dollars per test and checks for irregularities in aerodynamics, stiffness, and bounce.

Extra Precautions: This year, for the first time ever, each ball was also tested across a wide range of climates and altitudes to match those of the 16 host cities, ensuring consistent performance at each venue.

When you combine the time and resources it takes to even get a ball on the field, it makes sense why they’re selling for $170 a piece (and that doesn’t even include the sensor).

So it’s no wonder FIFA doesn’t want to throw away all that work just for some random fan to get a free souvenir that you know they’re just going to try to sell themselves after the tournament.

Do players get paid for playing in the World Cup?

The short answer is yes, but figuring out the amount each athlete gets paid is actually a lot more complicated than you might think.

Money Matters: Now, it’s worth mentioning right away that FIFA doesn’t actually pay the athletes directly; instead, it sets aside a prize pool, which this year is a record $871 million, that it distributes to each country’s national federation.

Before a single game is played, about 25% of that money is already paid to the 48 teams that will participate:

Meaning, even if a country doesn’t win a single game at the World Cup, its soccer federation could still walk away with $12.5 million.

But how do the players get paid?

Talent Differentiators: Each country does things a little differently. For example, in 2018, it was reported that Kylian Mbappé earned over $22,000 per match, plus performance bonuses totaling over $500,000 after France won the tournament. Meanwhile, in England, players reportedly only receive around $2,600 per match, which they’ve historically donated to charity.

However, when it comes to the U.S. team, the payout structure is much different.

Unlike any other country, in 2022 U.S. Soccer announced that after the national federation took its 20%, the remaining 80% of World Cup prize money would be pooled and split equally between the men’s and women’s teams. This means that just by making it to the knockout stage, all 52 players, 26 men and 26 women, will receive over $330,000 each.

But that’s not even the best part.

Championship Bonus: Because FIFA pays each team based on how far they advance, meaning for every round the U.S. advances, each player on the men’s and women’s team stands to make an additional $100,000-$200,000 — topping out at nearly a million per person if the U.S. manages to win the whole thing.

And that doesn’t even include each player’s $10,000 per match base fee and 10-15% split of sponsorship revenue.

Not bad for less than 2 months of work.

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

I hope you are currently (or about to) enjoy the 4th of July with family and friends if you’re based here in the States. If you’re not, then back to work!