Researchers at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay were awarded the Nobel Prize in Sports Science on Tuesday for their discovery of the “Favre Uncertainty Principle,” a non-intuitive theoretical framework that provides insights into the seemingly chaotic decision-making process of one of the NFL’s most popular players.
In receiving the award, Drs. Steven Wykowski and Martin Penwald were recognized for their understanding that it is fundamentally impossible to predict with any degree of certainty whether Brett Favre will return to professional football the next season.
“The groundbreaking research of Professors Wykowski and Penwald proves that not even Brett Favre himself can ever truly know whether he will play quarterback in the NFL again until opening day next season,” said Tomas Grunfelt of the Royal Swedish Academy. “Their work demonstrates that all of the prognostications, commentary and conjecture about the ‘Iron Man of the NFL’ are a complete waste of time.”
One of the key insights of the Favre Uncertainty Principle is that to even speculate about Brett Favre’s next career move could itself affect the outcome of that decision.
“We saw a great example of this in 2008,” said Professor Wykowski during a press conference following the award announcement. “Clearly, Brett wanted to return to the Green Bay Packers but the fact that the Packers didn’t reach out to him aggressively enough to ask him to return in turn affected his decision whether to return, or to even play football again. His completely unexpected move to the New York Jets underscored the stochastic nature of his decision-making process.”
With their work, Wykowski and Penwald have identified fundamental limitations to predicting Favre’s next career move. In lieu of relying upon logic or experience, sports fans can only conduct elaborate “thought experiments” that may provide insight into Favre’s motivation but which cannot be tested empirically. The non-intuitive nature of these experiments highlights the completely random nature of the NFL superstar’s thinking.
“For example, you can imagine placing a cat into a small box which contains a mechanism that will either feed the animal or kill it, depending on whether Brett Favre finally decides that his ankle is strong enough to play another season,” said Jeffrey Turing, a statistics professor at Northwestern University. “Even after all of the tearful press conferences, text messages to fellow players and off-hand comments to ESPN reporters, the truth is that cat will live in a state of limbo, half-dead and half-alive, until the first whistle of the opening game is heard. It’s bizarre but true.”
In receiving the award, the two scientists will share in a cash prize of $1 million dollars, as well as a lifetime supply of Wrangler Jeans.
Mitchell Snyder is a fully-licensed and bonded International Man of Parody. He's also the alter-ego for a business professional who can't stop listening to the funny voices in his head. He became a card-carrying member of Chicago's comedy-industrial complex when he started performing stand-up early in 2009, and has since branched out into writing satire articles.
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