The Most High-Tech Cleats Ever Created 👟

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🗞 The Big Story

The Most High-Tech Cleats Ever Created

These are the most high-tech cleats ever created, and they could help prevent one of the most common injuries in all of sports… let me explain.

Brady's Secret: This past weekend, you probably saw highlights of Tom Brady running around a football field for the first time in years. While most people were focused on how he threw the ball, you probably missed the most interesting part of his entire performance… his cleats.

Even though Brady seems like he never ages, he admitted before the game that he had two things in mind: high performance and safety. Which is why, instead of wearing the same Under Armour cleats he wore throughout his entire career, he decided to lace up a brand that very few people have likely ever heard of.

The Tech: Traditional cleats have studs that stick into the ground and put unnecessary pressure on a player's knee during cuts and turns. Caddix's patented "SmartStuds" flex in any direction during those same movements — without losing any speed — directly reducing the force on a player's knee and lowering the risk of non-contact knee injuries, which now make up the largest proportion of injuries in football.

And even though you might not have heard about them until now, Kyle Juszczyk, Joe Flacco, and Budda Baker have all been wearing them in the NFL for years. And honestly, they kind of seem like a no-brainer.

📉 Biggest Loser

What the Hell is Going on With David Protein Bars?

Because less than a year ago, it was being valued at $725 million and credited with "upending" an entire industry, but now the company is being sued for tens of millions of dollars for allegedly lying about how healthy their product is. However, the truth behind what's really going on is actually a lot more complicated than you might think.

How Labels Work: Food brands calculate nutritional facts using the Atwater method — a formula that assigns a standard calorie count to each gram of protein, carbs, and fat. It's imperfect by design, which is why the FDA gives brands a 20% buffer between what's on the label and what's actually inside.

The Lawsuit: A third-party lab used bomb calorimetry — literally burning the bars in a sealed, oxygen-filled chamber — and found that each bar contains up to 275 calories, not 150, and that the fat content is underreported by up to 400%.

David's Defense: Burning a bar measures everything in it — including ingredients your body never absorbs, like fiber, certain sweeteners, and a fat substitute called EPG, which contains just 0.7 calories per gram versus 9 for regular fat. David's co-founder called the claims "meritless" and a "fundamental misunderstanding of basic scientific principles."

David has threatened to counter-sue and is openly mocking the lawsuit on TikTok. The bigger issue might actually be that nobody — including the FDA — agrees on how calories should be calculated in the first place.

🏆 Winner's Circle

How Every March Madness Court Gets Made

The best story in March Madness this year actually has nothing to do with basketball, but it reveals one of the coolest traditions in all of sports… let me explain.

A New Standard: When the first men's college basketball tournament was held in 1939, games were played on whatever court the host school already had. It wasn't until 2016 that the NCAA finally mandated a standardized court for every game — from the First Four to the National Championship. That means 14 fully custom courts get built from scratch every year for a tournament that lasts about three weeks.

Still, that's not even close to the craziest part.

Where It Starts: The process begins up to six months before tip-off in Crystal Falls, Michigan — a mill town of fewer than 1,600 people in the state's Upper Peninsula. That's home to Connor Sports, which has built every men's Final Four court for the last 20 years. Selected sugar maples are cut in the fall, milled into 4 ft. x 7 ft. panels, sanded, painted, sealed, and shipped to each regional location — where crews install the entire floor panel by panel in just four hours.

Since new courts are required every year, Connor Sports regularly runs two 10-hour shifts six days a week just to keep up.

The Best Part: Once the confetti falls in April, the NCAA gives the champion two weeks to decide if they want to purchase the Final Four court. Schools have turned them into practice floors, lobby installations, and display pieces — but Connor Sports says the winning team almost always just takes it home.

Talk about an underrated tradition.

⏱ In Other News

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

This tweet has me thinking...

Is spring sneakily the best time in the sports calendar all year?

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