Of all the five senses, smell is easily my favorite. My reactions to different smells vary a great deal. For instance, when certain girls walk by me with some kind of incredible perfume or whatever scent it is girls wear these days, I will immediately become interested in meeting them. Sometimes a certain smell such as my chocolate chip cookies in the oven (yes, I bake cookies), makes me hungry. This is because we often associate scent with something we enjoy. Our sense of smell is called “olfaction.”
Certain people’s olfaction is stronger than others. It was under my suspicion that through my olfaction I could better understand fall sports and the various smells that these athletes gleefully give off. I set out and researched the Washington University fall sports teams. I smelled various articles of clothing, pieces of equipment, and the occasional sweaty person. I decided that it was better to simply rate each sport’s overall stinkage. My results were very interesting.
Football is the fall frontrunner for overall raunchy scent. According to defensive back freshman Tommy Bawden, “Our shoulder pads are what smell the worst, and that’s pretty much because we wear them everyday and they are never washed. Eventually as a football player, though, you get used to it.”
I indeed took a brisk whiff of a random football player’s pads and nearly passed out. I was either high or could not breathe; I could not decide. I thought about Bawden’s comments about getting used to the smell. I thought about the people that haul manure everyday-do they get used to that smell as well? I therefore had to give football an overall 8.7 (10 being the worst smell) due to the fact that every time I went into the varsity locker room during my research, I was reminded of my one devastating whiff by 50 or so shoulder pads resting at the top of the lockers.
Soccer for both men and women described their smells to me. Junior MeghanMarie Fowler-Finn claims that when the girls wear practice pennies (those stylish red jerseys you would throw over your t-shirt in high school gym class) a day after wearing them in the rain, the pennies emit a horrid aroma.
“It smells as if something small like a little gray squirrel got into the pennies and died the night before,” commented Fowler-Finn.
Matt Fenn, a junior goalie, claims that his goalie gloves have a very strong odor.
“My goalie gloves are part of the worst smell I have ever smelled in my life. I wash my hands twice after every game, and they still smell,” said Fenn. “Their smell is comparable to a wet sweaty shirt that was left in a dark place for a month.”
Although Fenn and Fowler- Finn gave me a good case to rate them higher than football, I decided to give them a 7.37 for a couple reasons. I did smell Fenn’s gloves, and alone they get a 13.2 (on scale from 1 to 10), but since there is only one goalie during a game, his gloves are part of a less frequent smell associated with soccer. The penny jerseys are not part of the soccer team’s game uniform, so therefore the dead animal stench did not pull them to the top.
Volleyball was a sleeper on the stank scale. I theorized that volleyball would be the most decent smell and would probably average out at about 4.1. This prediction came with the few things I know about women’s volleyball. The uniform consists of a tight shirt and tight semi-shorts. With this in mind I imagined that any bad smell would slide off the surface of the uniform and disappear into the stratosphere of the well-kept athletic center.
Sophomore Kathy Leeper informed me, however, of another part of every volleyball player’s game attire- kneepads.
“We wear them to every practice and game, and after wearing them so often the smell just does not leave, no matter how many washes the knee pads go through,” explained Leeper.
Leeper also went on to say that some girls on the team have worse-smelling kneepads than others. I did get a chance to smell some kneepads during my research and they were indeed quite pungent. Pungent indeed. I therefore gave volleyball a 7.01.
Cross country comes in last on the stank scale for a few reasons. When I asked sophomore runner Michael Nasuta what part of the sport smells, he responded by saying, “The groin region after running usually omits a strong stench.” He described the smell as “the smell of pure man.” Whether or not I had to smell this pure man stench is not important.
Cross country, unlike any other sport, runs in big open areas with fresh air. I realized that every sport probably has the same groin smell, which I believe can also be referred to as body odor. Since cross country has nothing unique about their uniforms that make them smell more or less, I had to give them a 4.0. The 4.0 rating is basically the generic rating I give to people after they work out.
During the past few weeks of research I learned a lot about my olfaction. The smell of cut grass, crops being harvested, the fragrance of leaves on a wet fall day can all bring back memories. The smell of the men and women’s varsity locker room makes me pinch my nose in disgust. In the end I realized not to get mad at fellow students when they say that Washington University fall sports stink, because they may mean it literally. At least I do.