Why Are Athletes Wearing Wired Headphones Again? 🎧

Minnesota just became the first state to ban prediction markets. The law takes effect in August, but the Trump administration has already sued, claiming that these markets fall under the purview of the Federal government (Commodity Futures Trading Commission).

Interestingly, there is one carve-out in this law that I didn’t see coming. More on that at the end.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: Why Are Athletes Wearing Wired Headphones Again?

📉 Biggest Loser: The Dark Side of NBA Super Fan, Jimmy Goldstein

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Why is Every Soccer Field a Different Size?

Why is every athlete suddenly wearing wired headphones?

I mean, just think about it, these guys have all the money in the world to buy any one of the nicest Bluetooth headphones on the market; however, the reason more and more players are opting for the cheaper, wired option is actually a lot more complicated than you might think.

Nostalgic Novelty: The trend of wired headphones coming back into style is honestly nothing new. In fact, there’s been an entire Instagram account dedicated to this revival since 2021. However, it seems more focused on the “effortless” and “unbothered” style associated with wearing wires, when in reality, this trend goes much deeper than that.

Now, when you ask some athletes about why they prefer wires, you’ll likely hear surface-level answers about sound quality or practicality; however, when you dig a little deeper, you’ll find an entire underground of Bluetooth skeptics, and there’s no better example than Aaron Rodgers.

Cognitive Conspiracies: Some fans might remember a conversation with Zach Wilson on Hard Knocks in 2023, during which Rodgers told Wilson that the reason he wears wired headphones is to “save his brain from all the harmful EMF emissions.”

But what does any of that actually mean?

EMF, which stands for Electromagnetic Fields, basically describes the radiation that exists all around us. Now, when you hear the term “radiation,” you probably think of the harmful kind, called “ionizing radiation,” which has enough energy to alter our DNA and can increase the risk of cancer (this type of radiation is used in X-rays and CT scans).

However, there’s actually another kind of radiation, called “non-ionizing radiation,” that you’re experiencing right now. This is a far less powerful kind of radiation emitted by devices like WiFi routers, microwaves, your TV remote, and, of course, Bluetooth headphones.

The Truth: Guys like Rodgers are correct in saying that there are “EMF emissions” from wireless headphones; the only problem is that they’re not even close to powerful enough to cause any real harm.

In fact, large-scale human studies have been conducted to study the risk of cancer across all kinds of non-ionizing radiation, ranging from radar technicians and radio operators to the cellphone you’re watching this video on, and in every case, doctors have not found a clear increase in cancer risk.

So it’s probably safe to assume that any Bluetooth headphones that emit less than 10% of the non-ionizing radiation your phone does also don’t pose any serious risk.

But hey, I won’t judge you if you’d rather be safe than sorry.

Who is this NBA fan that’s going viral for sitting courtside at every single playoff game?

Well, it turns out behind all the flashy outfits and his insane travel schedule, there’s actually a dark side to this fan that no one seems to know anything about.

The Man: This is James Goldstein, born in Milwaukee, WI in 1940, the 86-year-old has been a fan of the NBA since he was hired to sit courtside and keep stats for the Milwaukee Hawks at just 15 years old.

In fact, since then, Goldstein has supposedly attended over 5,000 NBA games, including 100 games per year since 1984. He even claims to have missed only one NBA Finals game in the last 28 years, which was due to an airline issue.

The Myth: Now, Goldstein, who lives in Los Angeles, has courtside season tickets to both the Lakers and the Clippers, even though he describes himself as the “Lakers’ Biggest Hater” and it’s these tickets, along with the roughly 35 playoff games he attends every season, that cause him to spend over $500,000 per year on NBA tickets alone, and that doesn’t even include the cost of traveling between cities to watch every game of a series, which he is known to do.

However, all of this begs the question: how did this guy get so rich?

The “Legend”: Well, the truth is, even though Goldstein himself will tell you that he’s a “real-estate investor”, a 2022 deep-dive from the Washington Post revealed that the way he actually got rich was by purchasing senior-citizen mobile home parks and then attempting to double their rent.

Then, when cities would sue him for trying to exploit loopholes in rent control laws, he would claim he wasn’t making a large enough profit and would allegedly just settle with the local government for millions of dollars.

Now, this “investment” strategy has apparently earned Goldstein a self-reported net worth of $100 million and has helped him succeed at his goal “to spend as little time as possible working” so that he “would have the free time to do the things that he really enjoys,” like attending 100 NBA games every year.

Maybe the flashy clothes are more of a distraction than a flex.

Why is every soccer field a different size?

I mean, just think about it, American football fields are always exactly 120 yards long by 160 feet wide, but for some reason, not every soccer pitch has the exact same dimensions.

Pick-Up to Professional: When the “Laws of the Game” were first codified in 1863, association football had already been played in some form or fashion for centuries in wide open fields and parks with little more than a few wooden stakes set 8 feet apart to denote the goals and four flags arbitrarily planted in the corners.

However, as the sport began to popularize, teams started building stadiums where most of their fans lived (which, at the time, were densely populated cities).

However, this posed a new problem for newly formed clubs.

Stadium Situation: See, city blocks typically aren’t big enough for soccer stadiums, which is how we originally got Craven Cottage’s (home of Fulham FC) uniquely small 109-yard-by-71-yard pitch, since, in 1894, the stadium was designed to fit between the River Thames, two parks, and an existing neighborhood.

And since other clubs didn’t want to have to build their own stadiums to match the exact dimensions of Fulham (or any other club for that matter), the newly established rules of association football simply stated that a pitch couldn’t exceed 200 yards in length or 100 yards in width.

Now, this rule was eventually changed in 1897 to narrow the minimum acceptable dimensions to:

Even though newer stadiums have begun adopting the international standard of 115 by 74 yards (105 by 58 meters), a few historic clubs have grandfathered in their unique pitch sizes to maintain a competitive advantage at home.

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

I’ve been thinking a lot about prediction markets recently, especially with the recent ban passed in my home state.

First of all, I think wagering on sports is substantially different than wagering on “what Donald Trump is going to say in his speech today.” Say what you want about the increasingly incestuous relationship between sports and betting, but it’s pretty hard to “inside trade” on the NBA Finals.

In a similar vein, this law evidently creates a carve-out for weather futures trading, which farmers apparently use as a hedge against storms that could affect a harvest. But again, also hard to rig the weather.

The way I see it, if you’re trying to trade on any number of real-world events on one of these prediction markets (aside from sports and the weather), you’re a guaranteed loser. It’s already been highlighted that the only utility of these things is insider trading, so a little government oversight couldn’t hurt.

I guess Trump officials were just too busy making a $400,000 by front-running the news of military strikes to do anything about it. Shoutout, Minnesota.