The football field's in-joke

'Karen Puzzles' Kavett, Rebecca 'Dr Becky' Smethurst and Stuart 'Ashens' Ashen face question about a funky football line.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcas...
GUESTS:
Karen Kavett: ‪@KarenPuzzles‬, / karenpuzzles
Becky Smethurst: ‪@DrBecky‬, / drbecky_
Stuart Ashen: ‪@ashens‬, / ashens
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett at The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
© Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2023.

[@TheInternetHelpdeskPlays]

Given that Ashens and Tom Scott have been on youtube for the entirety of its existence, I'm surprised they have done only 3 crossovers.

[@munjee2]

Tom is a bit busy having a crossover with everyone else

[@CunningStunt92]

What are the others? I know of this and the game garage Tom Hosted

[@Leafsdude_]

@@CunningStunt92 Tom and Ashens also drank an old bottle of Desani water together ages ago.

[@Michael_Brock]

Plate boundary, say San Andreas fault runs through stadium?

[@gamernick1533]

Late 90's/early 00's I was playing an online game (UO) with an American friend and he told me to wait a minute. He logged off, came back 20-30 mins later and carried on. I asked if he was OK and causally replied 'earthquake', I was busy with questions, he was nonchalant about it as though someone had just rung the doorbell, he had just walked off to shut the utilities off and even took the time to tell me he'd be back in a minute lol.

[@myladycasagrande863]

I was in a basement when a minor earthquake occurred, the weirdest bit was that I heard it coming for at least ten seconds before the shaking started.

[@gamernick1533]

@@myladycasagrande863 you will do, the p waves hit first, they're like vibrations, then the s waves hit, they're the actual up/down and left/right motion. The p waves travel a lot faster, so if you're a long way from the epicentre there can be quite a delay. It's how some animals/people are able to react ahead of an earthquake. Sometimes they're really obvious with strongly felt p waves, sometimes people feel it more like an 'intuition' but they're actually picking up on minor ps.

[@JoeBleasdaleReal]

And meanwhile in Britain we freak out when the wind blows the garden fence over 😂😂😂

[@John_Krone]

Glad to see my favorite Astronomer Dr. Becky here

[@Daisysdomain]

Going off of Tom's story about the professor, here is a British version that I know of. There was a near hurricane in the 1980's in Britain ( Michael Fish's most famous broadcast) and as the weather got more vicious the man in charge of the railways throughout the South East of England decided to halt all trains in an attempt to minimise accidents. At roughly 1 in the morning, as he and his family were about to go down to the basement, the phone rang, it was his boss calling from York( where the weather wasn't anywhere near as bad) demanding to know why no trains were running. His boss only believed how bad the weather was, and went along with the recommendation to halt all traffic when he heard a almighty crash on the phone. Whilst they were talking, the wind blew the roof off of his house. Can't remember where I read that but it always stuck in my mind.

[@aikumaDK]

My initial thought on why NFL scouts an older demographic than soccer is because being built like a brick shithouse is a really nifty perk to have in NFL

[@rockybond42]

kinda miffed that UCSD got called the "university of san diego" like NO that's another university!

[@davidioanhedges]

What do Tom Scott, Stuart Ashen, Dr Becky, and Karen Puzzles have in common .... Apparently the answer is KZbin, Lateral, and I follow them on KZbin .. and NOTHING ELSE!

[@veggiet2009]

I looked up images of it, and honestly I'm not impressed, the line is really not that visible at all.

[@lateralcast]

It's not there at all now - they got rid of it during a refurbishment this year.

[@veggiet2009]

@@lateralcast that's sad, that would be a cool feature... but I could understand why they wouldn't want to advertise that fact 🤣

[@derschwartzadder]

Sorry Ashens, there is literally nowhere else to put it. Everything is built up in the bay.

[@firstcynic92]

Ok, this is nuts. 3 times my reply has been deleted. No link from Outkick at all this time. The stadium in question recently redid the field and the line is no longer there.

[@hairyairey]

Some pages automatically delete anything with a link in it. It's the KZbin way!

[@JakeMay]

Another thumbnail spoiler ...

[@guyvaderproductions8882]

Her name plate should at least have the Dr. if not just Dr. Becky.

[@Zelmel]

College football is especially weird because NONE OF THE PLAYERS ARE PAID

[@munjee2]

Do they still have to payed the tuition fees ?

[@Zelmel]

@@munjee2 in some (many?) cases they have partial or full scholarships.

[@siobhanrikan6428]

Not paid monetarily, but oh the perks!

[@timothyodonnell8591]

The stadium in question just replaced the artificial turf without the extra line.

[@LiveFreeOrDieDH]

@@georgeprout42 The line was painted very faintly. I doubt it would show up on Google Earth. You couldn't see it in most television broadcasts unless they showed a close-up of the line.

[@matthewryan4844]

Google maps must have an old image then unless they just replaced the playing area. You can see a jagged line coming out of both short ends of the field. You can also see its sponsored by FTX which collapsed in 2022 so might well be an old satellite image.

[@SuspenduAuGaffa]

5:09 And in Tom's latest video, he visits the very testing lab that Becky mentions here! Or he may have already made that video at this point, and didn't mention it for fear of spoiling his upcoming video.

[@JHaven-lg7lj]

The style of captioning used for this program is so impressive - thank you, and please keep it up!

[@ava_lavender]

I mean it's kind of hard to build on the California coast without hitting a fault line, so it's not really their fault.

[@myladycasagrande863]

They chose to build on the California coast, so it is their fault (line).

[@ava_lavender]

@@myladycasagrande863 I guess it's the californians' collective fault.

[@MarylandFarmer.]

Maybe it's fault's fault, but the real question is how many faults could a fault line fault if a fault line could cause faults?

[@hairyneil]

​@@MarylandFarmer. 2 or 3 should be ok, any more than 6 and there could be trouble

[@ids1024]

Well, if it were build just a half stadium-width away, it could have been entirely on one side of the Hayward fault. But it would still need handle a very nearby earthquake. And their engineers probably took this as a challenge.

[@gdp3rd]

There used to be a place on the UC-Berkeley campus where you could (in the basement) actually see the Hayward Fault's face; I'm not sure it is publicly accessible any longer.

[@punklejunk]

Plot twist: That professor makes that prediction with *every* phone call he's in. One-percent accuracy, hahaha.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

6:00 - There _are_ documented cases of people Tweeting about earthquakes, and people "close enough to feel it, far enough to not have felt it yet" getting the warning because they happened to be refreshing Twitter just then.

[@thisdudemanbro]

One of the first ones I knew right away. A really ingenious nod to a not so ingenious plan over a 100 years ago.

[@MiddayDolomite]

It really is a game of two halves.

[@MrMartinSchou]

The phone call story - the guy should have said "pull my finger!"

[@CheyenneRose]

I love the 1000% Californianness of this question. Even though I am in San Diego, it's funny that I learned this answer from a Richard Hammond special. 😂

[@FELiPES101]

the US doesnt have a tier system like the British soccer system so college is the primary source of players going pro in American football

[@CAMacKenzie]

It's hard to find anywhere in California that isn't on or at least close to a fault. The entire San Farnando Valley, home to over 1,000,000 people, is underlain by a blind thrust fault, which moved to generate the Northridge Earthquake (moment magnetude 6.7) in January 1994. The Hayward isn't just a fault, it's a major strike-slip fault. However, the division of the California Memorial Stadium, Home of the Golden Bears, built in 1923, into halves, is not so much to accomodate earthquakes, but to accomodate aseismic creep. The Fault, where it passes through Berkeley, creeps about half of a centimeter per year. All along the fault, streets, curbs, sidewalks, and some buildings, show lateral offsets. From 2010 to 2012 the stadium was extensively rebuilt to improve earthquake safety.

[@DaveLeCompte]

The comment about one endzone being dangerously close to the coastline reminded me of Stadium High School in Tacoma, Washington, where one of the endzones washed away in a 1981 storm: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_Bowl

[@fltchr4449]

I listened to the podcast finally. I was surprised when I heard Tom Scott's voice come through my truck's speakers. I've only ever heard it on my computer.

[@McChes]

Surely the main reason why college sport is so popular in America is that there are so few professional sports teams? The USA is effectively 50 countries put together, yet most of those individual States only have one team in the NBA, the NHL, the NFL and the MLB - even the States with the most teams only have three or four teams; some states have no teams at all. Unless you live in the particular city that your State’s team is based in, you maybe have to travel for hours by road to go and watch even a “home” game. Compare that to, say, England, where every town of any size has a football team, and the major cities all have multiple football teams. The same is true across all of Europe. And that’s before you factor in rugby, or cricket, or handball in continental Europe, etc. People in America are big into college sport because that’s the system in America that provides “local” teams for people to support. I don’t think there’s much more magic to it than that.

[@shaneg9081]

It's more that we went hard on building universities, and they established sports teams before any professional leagues (other than baseball) could pop up. So, college sports are very ingrained in the US and they actually do have bigger stadiums in some places than even the professionals.

[@panda4247]

Rebecca looks so chill and has a very sweet voice. And apparently, she's an astrophysicist 😍 Please more of her

[@mtranchi]

dr. becky watches the nfl??

[@toddbiesel4288]

Funny that Tom should mention LSU's Tiger Stadium, because... (spoiler alert), In 1988, at an Auburn vs. LSU game at Baton Rouge's Tiger Stadium, a nearby seismograph registered. Why? (Has this question been done on this channel?)

[@erictaylor5462]

I was on the phone when an Earthquake hit. The person I was talking to felt it, but there was only a few seconds from her feeling it to me feeling it.

[@toddverbeek5113]

Despite its far-west location, California was far from "the last state they got to". It was settled by Europeans and became a state rather early in US history, before most other states west of the Mississippi.

[@erictaylor5462]

Berkely and San Jose are about 4 to 6 hours apart! (driving time)

[@schilling3003]

As an American, I'm offended. We are more than a little weird. I agree, American college sports are just bizarre.

[@geoffroi-le-Hook]

The NFL was created for college football alumni to continue to improve their game

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

California was nowhere near the last state. It was added in the civil war era. It wasn't continuous at the time. There were lots of US territories that had not yet become states in between. California had a big rush from the gold rush in 1849 (hence the name of the San Francisco 49ers football team) and that boomed the population enough to make it a state. American football at that time still resembled rugby. Modern football was more like turn of the 20th century.

[@siobhanrikan6428]

Stuart, building it “up the road” wouldn’t work. There are fault lines all over this area. And better a stadium there than a dorm or a high rise.

[@RogbodgeVideo]

Also, there may not have been enough space to build it anywhere else in the area!

[@R_violi]

As a californian, do the british view us as living in a ever-sunny fantasy land?

[@mironty]

I wish the full series would be on youtube

[@IvoTrausch]

Will we ever get to see a techdif special?

[@infernoleopard3524]

The reason college football and basketball are as big as they are is mainly 2 or 3 reasons firstly a bit like Tom said in the us top athletes in American football baseball basketball hockey and pretty much every other professionally played sport except mens soccer usually aren’t in any kind of team junior team like you might have the arsenal u18s there is no Chicago bears u-18s meaning that if you are invested in the pro sport the big prospects are in college also a reason why baseball, where even top prospects take multiple pro years to make it out of the extensive minor league system into the mlb, has less watched college games. The whole higher skill level increases enjoyability of games. Secondly the lack of expansive pro rel leagues like in other countries leads people to treat the college they attended or another nearby larger college as their team even in cities with pro sports as unlike in Britain us sports teams have a tendency to relocate and only really care about profit. There’s also a lot of the stemming from people attending college going to their schools games as like an activity and then ontinuing to attend or watch games even after they leave the school and passing the fandom down to their kids

[@GyroCannon]

"They think he's a god now. He got tenure" was the best joke lmao

[@matheuscastello6554]

first time ive gotten it before the contestants, hahaha! tom said california and i immediately thought: FAULT LINES FAULT LINES!!

[@GamePlague]

I guessed it was a fault line the second he said it being California mattered.

[@neoanderson7]

Dr Becky is so damn smart! Hard to stump her on anything. Thanks for that tidbit trivia. 👍🏻

[@damientonkin]

I was thinking, it's not the football stadium where they built the first nuclear reactor because that was in Chicago and it's gone now.

[@walkingpizza1796]

i would like to know more about the logistics of this podcast production, Is it on a zoom call , how the recording works etc.. thank you.

[@jamespusey7186]

can't believe tom scott have been to Tiger Stadium!

[@webchimp]

I was going to add a bit of trivia about that stadium then Tom told it. Damn you Tom.

[@post1084]

no better American rep than Karen Kavett

[@obiwankenobi3579]

Hello!

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

Blind guess: either they measured it wrong or the terrain moved. Otherwise, the extra line serves as a trigger for a special event not related to the core rules.

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

Mid-guess 1:20 : yup, tectonic plates movement shifted the playing field's dimensions. It could be that the "other" lines are from the original field at its creation, and the newer/proper lines are up to regulations. History celebration.

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

In retrospect: right line of reasoning, but not getting the specifics.

[@guessundheit6494]

And I was expecting a reference to "the play", to keep bands off the field.

[@lastnamefirstname8655]

what a faulty state.

[@lightningwingdragon973]

One for the old guard! SPORT! KRRRRSHHHHHH!

[@PosterityIslesNews]

hi tom

[@tomwantshelp]

Clubs can and do scout soccer players much younger than “early teens”. Academy systems formally start at under-8s, but clubs are scouting six year olds.

[@camb342]

Maybe it's where the Band is supposed to stay until the game is well and truely over.

[@poja82]

Not football.

[@dinandput7398]

This should be made into a card game! All games Tom Scott makes are awesome and I want to try them all with my friends!

[@aceman0000099]

You could easily play it yourself, you'd just have to save all the questions and be the role of Tom

[@drink__more__water]

I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable calling a college football player "a child" to their face lmao