For years, I’ve been patting myself on the
back for coming up with great ideas and provocative questions when I’m drunk. I
came to realize that I would always seem to forget these ideas, rendering them
useless. So, when I came to college I decided to start keeping track of them as
much as possible. Every time I come up with something that I think is at least
semi-appealing, I’ll save it in the Notes app on my iPhone under the title
“Drunk Thoughts.” Once in a while I’ll go through this list while sober and
delete anything that either makes no sense at all or makes so much sense that I
only thought it was tantalizing because I had been drinking. Every time I
scroll through the list, the first thing I see at the top is “I could take Kobe
in beer pong.” While I’ve usually just brushed it off and left it on the list
because I thought it was funny, after nearly two years I have actually started
to question whether a college student would stand a chance to beat Kobe Bryant
in beer pong.
The
easy answer is no, they couldn’t beat Kobe in anything involving shooting
something into something else. NBA players have practiced for countless hours
to the point where shooting a basketball into a hoop comes so naturally to them
that they can do it in their sleep. Therefore, playing a game where you throw a
ping-pong ball across a table into a cup of water (somewhat similar to
basketball but in a much smaller scale) would be theoretically easier for
someone like Kobe. But there are some other factors at play that may suggest
otherwise.
First, let us look at the physics. Thankfully for my sake, Maureen Saint
Georges Chaumont of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California did all of
the technical work in
2007. Maureen calculated a bunch of complicated formulas to find out that the
higher the arc on the shot, the less of a chance it has to fall into the cup.
The average height of an NBA player is 6’7”, so they will typically use much
less arc than someone like me (as represented by the highly scientific graphic
shown below). Physically, Kobe would have the advantage but that is expected.
Most
people start playing beer pong in high school but don’t play on a regular basis
until college. Most of the best players in the NBA either never went to college
or left early for the pros. That has to be at least a small advantage for us
students. Kobe Bryant, for instance, made the transition from high school
straight to the pros. Setting aside the fact that Kobe is so
cool-blooded-confident about his free throw shot that he bets $5,000
on them, college students would
typically have more experience than NBA players at beer pong itself.
You
may have been at a frat party and heard some guy say, “The drunker I am, the
better I am at pong.” That’s usually a good indicator that that guy is a tool,
but he actually may be on to something. Muscle memory is one of the most
important factors in beer pong and it isn’t affected by consuming alcohol. For
example, many hunters and marksmen will tell you to let your body aim the shot,
not your mind. Not only that, but alcohol will also calm your nerves. Consider
the fact that the average weight of an NBA player is 221 pounds while the
average 20 year old American male only weighs about 160 pounds. Because of the
weight differences, it would take much less alcohol for an average student to
become intoxicated and therefore give another slight advantage to students.
This
may be a stretch to some degree, but the difference between shooting a
basketball into a 10-foot hoop and shooting a ping-pong ball into a cup on a
three-foot table could be significant. NBA players may feel a bit out of their
element. This theory seems to ring true for at least one other sport—There was
once an episode of Sports Science where gold medal softball pitcher Jennie Finch
pitched softballs to Bryan Byrne, a minor league professional baseball player.
Byrne, who hits 90+ miles per hour fastballs on a regular basis, flat
out could not hit Finch’s softball.
This makes me think that if a professional athlete practiced something his
entire life, and that something changed slightly, he may struggle with it.
I decided to do a Google search to find some concrete examples.
The only two accounts of an NBA player playing beer pong that I could find were
Minnesota Timberwolves star Kevin Love (a very good shooter)
and Chicago Bulls big man Joakim Noah (not a very good shooter). Apparently Noah “was at the table
for two hours” but Love “couldn’t find the range” and lost the game for his
team.
Taking
into account all of the slight advantages they have, it seems as though a case
could be made for students to have a good chance at beating someone like Kobe
in beer pong. But then again, it’s probably just another drunk thought.
Can we get these damn spambots out of here?
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