London Olympic gold medalist Jordan Burroughs, 26, the greatest American wrestler of his generation, is quick to admit he's the product of Mark and Dave Schultz, two brothers whose careers ended long before he stepped in a ring. "As a kid, I'd be wearing their shoes and hearing how great their technique was," the three-time world champ explains. "They were trailblazers and champions before I was even born. In training you'd try to replicate them."

RELATED: The 10 Greatest Olympic Upsets^[1]

The brothers each won gold in freestyle wrestling at the 1984 Games, and became legends in the tight-knit community until Dave's life was tragically cut short in 1996. This fall, Foxcatcher, a new film starring Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, and Mark Ruffalo, shines a light on the two great wrestlers and focuses on the relationship with benefactor John du Pont. We spoke with Jordan about growing up in a sport defined by the two greats, how wrestling has changed in recent years, and the legacy the brothers left behind.

Do the Schultz brothers still have a legacy in American wrestling?
They were studs, man. In our eyes, Mark and Dave Schultz are legends. 

RELATED: The 50 Greatest Adventure Books^[2]

Foxcatcher covers a dark moment in wrestling, how does the community feel?
We're excited. The story's been whispered about for years, but this is the first time it's being portrayed, recognizing the struggles they went through for their success. What the Schultzs achieved as brothers is unmatched. 

The Schultz brothers were Olympic gold medalists but worked hard to support themselves, what are conditions like today?
For a long time I heard that wrestlers aren't financially stable and that I'd need to have other endeavors to survive, but that's changed. I have sponsorships, my own shoe with Asics and headphones with Flips.

What's the state of American wrestling?
It's awesome. Since it was initially dropped from the Olympics [and reinstated] we've seen a huge boost in participation and non-traditional fans. We have a lot of heroes winning and breaking records.

What was the response when the IOC threatened to cut wrestling?
It was extremely sad. A lot of us were in denial that our Olympics dream could be cut. It's the Super Bowl and World Series for us. But it also thrust us into the spotlight and people saw the characters and champions we have.

Amidst its potential exclusion from the Olympics, wrestling made a number of rule changes. What do we need to know?
I think they're great. They make wrestling more appealing to fans by simplifying scoring and rewarding aggressiveness. Before it was more of a chess match, now you're going to see fireworks.

Besides yourself, what American wrestlers should we be excited about?
We have a really tough team, but a couple young guys to watch are Tony Ramos and Brent Metcalf. They were really successful in college and are progressing at a fast rate. They'll be bringing home medals.

References

1. ^{^} RELATED: The 10 Greatest Olympic Upsets (www.mensjournal.com)
2. ^{^} RELATED: The 50 Greatest Adventure Books (www.mensjournal.com)

Credit: Radek Petrasek / AP

Distance running and endurance sports have long struggled to establish a foothold with television coverage. Between the monotony of hours-long exercise and vanilla backstories of cloistered elite athletes, the events rarely make riveting stories. But when NBC began broadcasting the Spartan Race, a grueling eight-plus mile competition through strength- and will-testing barriers, the network knew it had broke the mold. The first year of coverage reaches its peak with the Spartan Race World Championship November 16 at 3 pm eastern on NBC.

RELATED: Best 2015 Obstacle Races^[1]

Five thoroughly produced shows leading up to the Championships have been aired since June on NBC Sports, and were met with enthusiasm. The question is, why produce a show about Spartan and not another of the dozens of obstacle races^[2] out there? According to Senior Vice President of NBC Sports, Rob Simmelkiaer, the answer boils down to competition.

RELATED: How to Injury-Proof Your Body^[3]

Obstacles in the Spartan race — wire crawls, rope climbs, mud pits, stone carries, — have been replicated elsewhere, but the air of competitiveness that Spartan Race attracts is singular. While Tough Mudder and Warrior Dash participants focus on camaraderie and finishing as a team, Spartans focus on victory. And this is why the event makes great television. “Elite athletes are showing up to this race, not just to have a good time, but to win,” says, Simmelkiaer, who himself has completed a Spartan Race. 

The appeal does not simply lie in watching others push their bodies to the limit, but also in the accessibility of the sport. “If I sit down and watch the NBA, even if I’m twenty-years old, I’m never going to be like Lebron James,” says Simmelkiaer. “But with Spartan Race, I can be a top athlete if I put my mind to it and work at it.”

A reality TV production slant deepens this sense of familiarity. Featured competitors are telegenic men and women from all walks of life, and the audience is given their stories through genuinely moving interviews. We watch the athletes drag stones, swim, and sweat, as they narrate their own journeys to the Spartan Race. It’s the quality of coverage that we’d expect from a broadcast company that Joe De Sena, founder of the Spartan Race, calls, “the ultimate TV brand.”

“When you think NBC," he says, "you think Olympics. NBC is synonymous with sport.”

For De Sena, the Spartan Race coverage is a major step in solidifying his own brand. “It’s a big deal for us. This is a 14-year-old startup, developed by a team of true Spartans. The goal was to make the Spartan Race credible. To do that we needed a bigger platform.” De Sena hopes this show moves his event series in the direction of his ultimate goal: establishing the race in the Olympics.

But for now, the Spartan Race’s broadcasts reveal a quiet shift in the way society relates to sports. As awe-inspiring as it is to watch genetic freaks perform feats of grace and athleticism we couldn’t dream of accomplishing, there is a separate and undeniable giddiness that comes from watching someone we can relate to conquer an event through sheer force of will and training. We look at the Spartan Race athletes and see our own potential. According to De Sena, it’s downright necessary. “This show is a call to action, he says. "We want to get people off the couch.”

References

1. ^{^} RELATED: Best 2015 Obstacle Races (www.mensjournal.com)
2. ^{^} obstacle races (www.mensjournal.com)
3. ^{^} RELATED: How to Injury-Proof Your Body (www.mensjournal.com)

This summer, the nation's best high school players showcased their talents ...playing two-hand touch. With scouts and recruiters looking on, and hip-hop blaring from massive speakers, teams of seven skill players in shorts and T-shirts ran one quick-passing play after another — basically a no-contact version of today's pro offense.

Once dismissed as a school-yard perversion or, worse, a breeding ground for shady recruiting akin to basketball's AAU, 7-on-7 has become essential off-season training. Top recruits now receive dozens of invitations to tournaments all across the country. "It has done an incredible amount for the game," says Washington State coach Mike Leach, whose "Air Raid" offense resembles the spread-out style of 7-on-7. "It's helped players develop their skills, especially quarterbacks."

RELATED: Matt Forte Is the Modern NFL Running Back^[1]

A long list of current QBs, including Matthew Stafford, Robert Griffin III, and Andrew Luck, played 7-on-7 in high school. Former Pro Bowl receiver Keyshawn Johnson, who sponsors a team in Orange County, says he's seen the skills developed in touch football ripple all the way to the NFL. "Quarterbacks are more ready to throw because they've been going through 7-on-7 for so long," Johnson says. "Receivers are more polished, and defensive backs are more equipped."

RELATED: The Battle to be the Top Cornerback^[2] 

College coaches can't officially host competitions on campus, but private-league organizers can. Some of the toughest tournaments are held on the practice fields of the nation's top college programs, including USC, Michigan, and Alabama. A weekend of 7-on-7 can be especially valuable for players from small programs who rarely play against top competition or in front of scouts.

"I knew from my recruiting process that the valuation of athletes wasn't efficient," says Baron Flenory Jr., a former All-American cornerback at the University of New Hampshire, who started the Pylon Elite Camps 7-on-7 tournaments. "Recruiters only seemed to want measurements: height, weight, reps, and 40 times. This is a better way to evaluate talent."

References

1. ^{^} RELATED: Matt Forte Is the Modern NFL Running Back (www.mensjournal.com)
2. ^{^} RELATED: The Battle to be the Top Cornerback (www.mensjournal.com)

Josh Johnson of the San Francisco 49ers passes during the game against the Houston Texans at Reliant Stadium.

Credit: Michael Zagaris / San Francisco 49ers / Getty Images

In 2007, Neil Hornsby, a British business consultant, launched Pro Football Focus^[1]. Enamored of NFL football since discovering Dan Marino in Touchdown magazine in 1984, Hornsby longed for a better way to evaluate players than the opaque box scores the league churns out weekly. PFF was the culmination of his efforts to find better numbers, a vast database of statistics and grades tracking every player for every play, every game of his career. Since the Giants first discovered the strategic advantages of PFF's work in 2009, 11 teams have contracted with Hornsby for custom data and a new perspective on the game. Here, Hornsby talks about the failures of traditional football statistics and what the numbers reveal about who really should have won Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2013, why the Jets should be bullish on Geno Smith, and which player is the most under-celebrated in the NFL.

It's hard not to assume that PFF is just trying to invent a sabermetrics for football. Is that what you're doing?
There's been a lot of people who've wanted to be the Bill James of football — that's what everybody seems to aspire to do, to bring Moneyball-type ideas to football. I just don't think that's possible, because the statistical sample sizes are too small. What we do is performance-based scouting. In the NFL they will send out these guys who have been steeped in football for many, many years, almost since birth, to go and look at college players and tell them whether they're going to make it in the league or if they're NFL players, whether they'll make it on their teams. What they won't do, necessarily, is look at every single player on every single play. They will not tend to do that. In fact, they don't do that.

What they do is say things like, "This guy's a knee-bender. He's sideline-to-sideline." But they don't try and catch that in terms that are necessarily quantifiable. What we try and do is give that information in quantifiable terms. So we try and say that, over the course of a season, having watched all 1,000 players and offensive linemen and all 450 blocking players, that this guy typically makes a lot fewer mistakes than that guy. So what we do is we look at every single player and we try to grade that player on what we believe it to be.

RELATED: The Best (And Least Known) NFL Ranking System
^[2]

What are you able to see that professional NFL scouts can't?
Sometimes people get caught up the art of the possible. They say, "I've seen this player make a circus catch once, therefore I believe I can get him to do it 10 times out of 10." But my view would be, "Okay, so you've seen that guy do it once. We want to know how possible it actually is." And typically, that player will do it on three percent of plays over the previous three years. What is it that's suddenly, magically, going to make him do it on 25 percent of plays the next year?

What's wrong with traditional statistics?
A sack seems pretty unequivocal: A defensive player tackled the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage, or he didn't. Well a sack isn't a sack. Not all sacks are created equal. Say a defensive end gets 15 sacks in a season. The next thing I'll say is, "Okay, well, what about hits and hurries?" What's better: An unblocked sack, or a play where you beat two guys, hit the quarterback and the ball flies up in the air and it's intercepted? Football's all about context. You've got to look at the context of each individual player to make sense of it.

Don't your grades flatten that context, though? Should people be suspicious of the claim that a player's entire career can be summed up by one number?
Of course they should. And they'd be right to do so. But you have to look into the grades. You need to look at how those grades are broken down by week. Here's an example: If I were a Jets fan, I'd actually feel fairly positive about [New York Jets quarterback] Geno Smith. If I were a Buffalo Bills fan, I wouldn't feel very comfortable having E.J. Manuel as my quarterback on the basis of last year. What you see with Geno is a significant improvement as the season wore on. With E.J. Manuel what you saw was a fairly static poor performance throughout the season. Even though his worst games were less bad than Geno's worst games, there was no improvement.

You mentioned earlier that NFL teams are seduced by the "art of the possible." Don't you, with all the relentless analysis, suck the magic out of football?
I don't see how it does. I think football is the most magical sport. It is an unbelievably complex, difficult, thought-provoking sport. And I actually think we add to the whole thing by revealing the contributions made by every player. We bring the game back to all the players on the field. For example, I struggle with the concept that the best players in the NFL are always quarterbacks or running backs. Offensive Rookie of the Year last season was [Green Bay Packers running back] Eddie Lacy. And he did a sensational job. But I just don't know how you could look beyond [Detroit Lions offensive lineman] Larry Warford. The way he played as a third-round rookie was absolutely outstanding. I don't think anyone mentioned him. Because he's an offensive lineman, and why? Because there aren't any stats.

I think the NFL is getting better about these things. I think most people realize that there are issues with ways we evaluate players, because real injustice can be done. The classic example from last year was: How is [Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker] Lavonte David not a Pro Bowler? Not just his stats, but the way he played — that is just incredible. Most things in football are just shades of gray. But Lavonte David not being a Pro-Bowler — that's just not one of them. That's just utter, unmitigated stupidity.

References

1. ^{^} Pro Football Focus (www.profootballfocus.com)
2. ^{^} RELATED: The Best (And Least Known) NFL Ranking System (www.mensjournal.com)

Maybe you heard that the Tropical Storm Marie swells in Malibu topped 20 feet last week^[1]; that the waves were the biggest locals had seen in 35, 40 years; and that a certain big-wave surfer^[2] not only tamed them, but also dove in to save an injured surfer being pulled out to sea.

We just want to set the record straight here: This was actually the second guy Laird Hamilton saved that week. 

"On Tuesday, there was a guy who got hit in the head, and I saw him out in the water — I had a buddy out there, and the guy was laying on my friend's board — so I paddled out and I helped them get in," Hamilton told us over the phone one week later. "That guy had a concussion, so we got all his gear to shore, and took him home." 

The next day, Hamilton's heroics cranked up a notch.  

"I was down at Surfrider Beach, where the Pier is, and I came in to switch boards. I saw a guy out in the current waving his arm. Judging by the way he was waving, he looked strong, so I didn't go running out there. But after a few minutes of him not coming in, I thought, 'Better get my fins on,' — I always have fins in my truck — and I threw them on and swam out. Another surfer paddled out, got the guy on his board, and we pushed the guy in on a wave, and we bodysurfed in. Come to find out that the guy had a wipe out, crashed, and dislocated shoulder. He was a little scared, and he was out in a pretty good rip current with a dislocated shoulder and only one arm to swim — he wouldn't have made it back in."

The week wasn't all surfer-saving, of course. Hamilton also "shot the pier" — riding a massive wave to thread through the raised pylons of a pier. The surf giant had done it a couple times before, though not for the last decade, and this time, he says, "I shot it on my first wave."

"I was excited more than nervous. You don't know if you're going to be able to shoot it until you get to it, then you have to make a split second decision on which pylons you're going to go through — some are further apart than others, because Malibu's not a perfectly engineered pier. So you choose your line, and make sure you don't hit — that's a nice added incentive — and you either don't go through, or you go through and make it."

The feat makes for some sweet surf video, but Hamilton hesitates to rank it amongst the gnarliest waves he's done. "I rank it high in the amount of people who knew I did it, you know? That news seemed to travel like wildfire. It sounds funny to say it, but in my world, I do stuff all winter long that's crazier than that. It's a little like that saying, 'If a tree falls in the forest and no one sees it, did it fall?' This just happened to be one of the trees that everybody saw."

Which made us suggest that, maybe for prosperity — or at least YouTube — Hamilton should just rig his SUP board with a camera. "Oh, I got the new GoPro, plus found a company that makes video drones that follow you around — so we'll see how that goes."

HOW NOT TO BE SAVED BY LAIRD HAMILTON
Because you want your first meeting with the big-wave surfer on land, not sea. 

Don't go solo. "Surfing is a dangerous game, and stuff happens, especially on big days like what happened in Malibu. If you're going out in bigger surf, do the buddy system, which always works well. It's what allowed me to go into bigger surf last week, and to help a guy who needed it." 

Be realistic about your skills. "Imagine if you surf a spot every single day, then you come down and it's bigger than you've ever seen it. You think you can handle it because, hey, you're there all the time. But you don't realize that you're in over your head. That's when it comes down to knowing what you're proficient in, and what you're not."

If you get tired, call it. "The only way you learn is to go out in bigger conditions and get the experience, yes, but at the same time, you have to be responsible for yourself. If you're lagging, feeling fatigue, or questioning yourself, you can't be surprised if something happens. Go in."

Don't rely on the lifeguards. "The guards were busy pulling people out of the water in Malibu that day, and they couldn't be everywhere at once. People get too reliant on that safety net, thinking it's going to protect them. The guy who dislocated his shoulder? He was on the other side of the pier and going down the coast — and not coming back to the beach on his own accord — and they wouldn't have been able to get to him."

References

1. ^{^} topped 20 feet last week (www.usnews.com)
2. ^{^} a certain big-wave surfer (www.mensjournal.com)