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FIVE HUNDRED YARDS from Allen Fieldhouse—deep inside the dull-brown bowels of the University of Kansas’ Robinson Health and Physical Education Center—is a lab that holds the story of the Jayhawks’ 2013 trip to the Sweet 16. In a freezer set to a constant minus-80 degrees Celsius are saliva samples, taken weekly for 27 of 30 weeks, from 16 of coach Bill Self ’s players during a season cut short by a Michigan team marching its way to the championship game. Removed from the freezer, thawed and then placed in a centrifuge at 3,000 rpm, the samples are removed of impurities, and stories are spun for each player. Every finals exam, every fight with a girlfriend, every head-coach chew-out is laid bare; every week the thing that contributed to failure or success on the court is an open book.

The samples are part of a study conducted by Kansas that takes the concept of game prep outside the gym and into the world of science fiction. Using the Jayhawks’ 2012-13 men’s and women’s basketball teams, researchers mea-sured the cortisol levels of their saliva, looking to determine what role the hormone might play in making certain players excel in the heat of battle while others fade. Why focus on cortisol? It’s released by the brain to help the body deal with physical and mental stress. But excess cortisol has a catabolic effect on tissue (it breaks it down), and prolonged elevated levels have been proved to curtail the production of necessary hormones that promote muscle growth and repair. In other words, players could be more susceptible to injury or may take longer to heal. So for any athlete or coach, managing healthy cortisol levels is key to peak performance, and it’s something Kansas

WHICH PLAYERS ARE DESIGNED TO DELIVER UNDER PRESSURE? KANSAS RESEARCHERS ARE LOOKING FOR TRUTH—IN SALIVA.

TOUGHNESSANALYTICS

BIG PLAYS, NO SWEAT

The University of Nebraska studied its football program for correlations between cortisol reactivity and performance. In freshmen tested in 2009 and ’10 (47 total), those who were deemed contributors exhibited lower cortisol levels than their noncontributing counterparts.

AVERAGE PERCENT INCREASE IN CORTISOL AFTER A WORKOUT 66% 24%BY IGOR GURYASHKIN I ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDDIE GUY

BUILT TO LAST

CONTRIBUTORSNONCONTRIBUTORS

70 ESPN The Magazine 03/03/2014

hopes to be able to address with tailored exercise and stress reduction. “We looked at playing minutes, we looked at practice minutes, we looked at volume of free weight exercises in the weight room, we looked at the academic schedule, we looked at the travel schedule, we looked at if they won or lost,” says Andrew Fry, a professor in KU’s Department of Health, Sport and Exercise Sciences, who is helming the study.

It turns out, some athletes are indeed “tougher,” at least from a cortisol standpoint. In a previous study carried out at the University of Nebraska, using its football program, there

i l lustrat ion by DAVID DESPAU PHOTO REFERENCE: CLIVE ROSE/GETTY IMAGES

CRAZY CRAP ANALYTICS CAN PROVE

ON-TARGET SHOT PERCENTAGE

TEAMMATE CHANCES/GAME

47.4% 2.9

THE BEST VS. THE REST

LUIS SUAREZ IS THE WORLD’S BEST SOCCER PLAYER—AND IT ISN’T CLOSE

was a significant difference in cortisol levels between the guys who played well and the ones who were nonfactors (see chart on page 69)—namely that the players who contributed over the season had lower natural cortisol levels when measured during summer practices.

But Fry and his department at Kansas broadened their scope to look beyond just performance data. They also focused on the relationship between cortisol and fatigue management, drilling down into the idea that cortisol levels tend to spike when players are overextended both on and off the court. “In the past, they used other terms—burnout, over-fatigued, overtraining—it’s more than that,” says Fry. “It’s how do I make sure my people are fatigued when I’m planning for it but that

Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo may have been crowned the 2013 Ballon d’Or winner, but no player in the world is impacting the game offensively like Liverpool striker Luis Suarez.

After being criticized for his poor shot selection in ’12-13, Suarez is blasting 47.4% of his 5.5 shots per game on goal this year, a more accurate rate than that of Ronaldo (39.7%), Lionel Messi (44.2%) and Franck Ribery (45.8%). The reason? His 9.3 touches per game in the opposing team’s penalty area not only outpaces Ribery (8.4), Ronaldo (7.6) and Messi (7.2), it’s the highest mark in all of Euro soccer.

Still not convinced? Suarez creates 2.9 chances for his teammates per game—third best in the EPL—and his 60 total chances tops Ronaldo (34 in 21 games), Messi (34 in 16 games) and Ribery (40 in 14 games). And all three have better supporting casts.

So never mind that award. When you watch Liverpool, know you’re watching the best player in the world. —ADRIAN MELVILLE, ESPN INSIDER

LUIS SUAREZ

FRANCK RIBERY

LIONEL MESSI

CRISTIANO RONALDO

1.639.7%

2.945.8%

HOW TOUGH IS YOUR TEAM? JAY BILAS RANKS THE 68 BEST IN COLLEGE HOOPS. GO TO ESPN.COM AND SEARCH: “BILAS”

2.144.2%

Through Feb. 12

they’re recovered when they need to perform.”“We’ll see stiffness in a big game, and the

guys who have huge increases in stiffness don’t play well,” adds Andrea Hudy, KU’s highly lauded strength and conditioning coach, who has been working with Fry and his team. But now, with weekly cortisol-level breakdowns for the players, Hudy hopes to finally have hard evidence for what she has had suspicions about but could never measure: psychological and mental fatigue. “I think stress is a lot more psy-chological than physical,” she says.

The task for Hudy and the coaching staff would then be to manage the external stress factors, either through herself, the sports psychologist they have on staff or even Self, who Hudy stresses “is hard on players but the first to slap them on their ass after practice.” She explains: “We looked at biological stiffness and environmental stiffness. Biological stiffness would be from strength training and what you have genetically. That’s affected by what we can prescribe and increase or decrease for you. But then we looked at their environmental stiffness—psychological fatigue, stress, things we could control. It was the big thing I got out of the cortisol study: What psychological work can we do in that time frame so the players don’t get stressed?”

So is cortisol the chemical metric game changer in sports? When a hormone is intrinsically linked with fatigue and underper-formance—a product of physical and mental stresses—it surely holds some promise. Kansas and Nebraska certainly think so. And if pro franchise owners begin to see it as a way to keep their teams from losing a few points, or losing millions of dollars a year to injured-player salaries, it has to matter. “At the moment, every team in sports is looking for that silver bullet,” says William J. Kraemer, professor of kinesiology, physiology and neurobiology at the University of Connecticut, whose studies have included looking at the cortisol levels of the Huskies football team. “Most, though, are not prepared to finance that research because there’s no guaranteed answer.”

Looks like Kansas is willing to put its money where its mouth—and spit—is.

WHO NEEDS THE COMBINE?According to Nebraska’s research, factoring in

cortisol levels gives coaches a 39% better chance of finding a player who’ll contribute

significantly during a season.

Stats courtesy ESPN Stats & Info.