Sportonomics
Avsnitt

They Weren’t Banned: The Real Story of the Nike MaxSight

Dela

Every year, photos of athletes in red contact lenses go viral, and every year the same rumor returns that they were banned for being too good.

Tyler and Jake sit down with Dr. Alan Reichow, the vision scientist who helped build the Nike MaxSight and now runs its successor, to find out what those tints really do, why a footwear giant got into eyewear, and what actually happened to the original. The answers involve a secret college baseball experiment, a two-hour pitch to Phil Knight, and a surprising reason it took more than a decade to bring the lenses back.


⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 Intro

00:42 Our First Doctor

02:17 Birth of MaxSight

03:57 Why Nike Cares About Eyes

05:27 Pitching Phil Knight

08:55 A Football Family

13:25 Nike’s First Eyewear

19:22 Contacts Through History

22:53 Baseball Guinea Pigs

28:11 Sunglasses Are Lying

32:05 Gray, Amber, Champagne

47:45 Banned? Not Even Close

49:55 Winning It Back

54:09 Who Wears Them Now

55:51 Game Day Legal

1:01:28 Why Nike Walked Away

1:07:21 Outro

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