Stars and Jocks

For U.S. football fans, today is the holy of holies; the biggest day of the year; the day when all the football hopes and dreams come together in a giant explosion of talent, energy, ritualized violence, and cheerleaders. And food. And drink. And television. It’s Super Bowl Sunday.I like football. As a long-suffering Denver Broncos fan, I’ve watched my share of Super Bowls, and shared the agony of defeat followed AT LONG LAST by a victory or two or three. And, I’ll be on the sofa tonight, watching the Patriots and the Giants knock each other around the field.

I’m sure that there must be at least a few other sports fans among astronomers, just as I’m willing to wager that there must be at least one football player somewhere who took an astronomy class. (I know there has to be one, because I’ve heard tell of “E-Z” astronomy classes for folks who didn’t want to major in science, but wanted to learn a little about astronomy (“Stars for Poets”) or geology (“Rocks for Jocks”), etc.)

But, one time I did hang out with some football players in a most unexpected place, and we managed to connect over the stars—teaching a much-younger me that jocks can love the stars and teaching jocks that a bunch of astronomers can help them realize starry dreams.

So, how did this happen?

Okay, there we were, a group of astronomy folk: two researchers, a teacher and a writer, hanging out at the hot tub at the San Diego Marriott in Mission Valley. We were there for an Astronomical Society of the Pacific meeting being held at San Diego State University. We’d spent the day attending talks, giving talks, meeting astronauts, watching astronomy education demonstrations, and, of course, buying stuff in the exhibit room. After a jam-packed day, it was time for dinner at a local seafood joint, and then… off to the hotel pool and some after-hours chat in the hot tub.

As luck would have it, the skies were pretty clear that night, so we got to do a little stargazing from the tub. About halfway through our first tour of the sky, four huge (but well-muscled) guys came lumbering up to the tub and eased themselves in. The water level rose appreciably as we all greeted each other politely. We’d seen them around, usually working out near the pool area, along with some other athletes.

We continued our stargazing, pointing things we could see in the sky. The big guys listened for a while and finally one of them asked, “So, are you guys into astronomy?” Well, that started up a whole conversation about stargazing, which rambled into astrophysics and astronomy education. One of the guys told us he never had been able to find the Big Dipper. So, we showed it to him, and then took him on a little tour of some of the other constellations. The discussion then got into planet-gazing and the history of space exploration. Before we knew it, we’d spent an hour or so talking “shop” with these guys before finally climbing out and heading off to sleep. We all said our goodbyes and they thanked us for showing them the constellations.

I never did find out their names, but when I was checking out the next morning on my way to catch my flight home, I asked at the front desk about the athletes who seemed to be hanging around a lot, the woman laughed a little and pointed over at the stadium (Jack Murphy). “They’re the San Diego Chargers.” The hotel was hosting their training table and giving them a place to lift weights, etc.

Later that night, when Mark picked me up at the airport, he asked me if anything exciting had happened at the meeting. “Well, yeah. I got to hot-tub with the front four of the San Diego Chargers,” I said. And, not for the first time (I’m sure) did he wonder how it was that I could go off to an astronomy meeting and end up doing something as fascinating as that. The stars will do that to you, jock or not.

Sad to say, the San Diego Chargers didn’t go on to win the Super Bowl, but I’d like to think that at least four of them back in 1993 learned a little about the stars on their way to the training table.