The Hot Dog Blog - Prepare Your Parlay Palette For The 2023 Nathan's 4th Of July Hot Dog Eating Contest
Big thanks to Major League Eating and Kevin Buerge, statistician, for providing the hard data to make the hot dog blog possible
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The 2023 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest is just a few days away and we're about to break this sport down like never before. You're about to be such a hot dog sharp you'll be able to pass through a Vienna like a metal skewer. I have everything you need to become a true condimoisseur before Barstool opens up the betting plays for the show. Once that drops, I'll be back with my card. But for now - you need to study dog in order to know dog. Get your bibs and bucket of dipping water ready. Let's get to it.
Basics. Each hot dog weighs 3.5 ounces according to Nathan's - bun included. Condiments are optional. This means Joey Chestnut has eaten 252 lbs. worth of dogs in just this event alone. That's a middle linebacker. Sonya Thomas represents the leader of the ladies with a little less than half of a middle linebacker's worth. Call it a place kicker (except Fat Randy Bullock).
Let's get a little deeper now and learn how the game has changed over time. Below is what hungry statisticians call a hot dog on a stick graph. It shows the range of hot dogs eaten from all contestants by year. The contest actually started in 1972, but with so few contestants back then I started at 1990. Here's how to interpret the graph:
- Bun represents the 25th through 75th percentile of dogs eaten for that year
- Hot dog hanging off the bun represents the 0-25th and 75-100th percentiles with the exception of the…
- Statistical outliers represented by the gray drips of fat
Notice how the cute little pigs-in-a-blanket of the 90s engorge into the jumbo dogs you get at the ball park or county fair today as more contestants began competing in the early 2000's. And while the quality of the average contestant has greatly improved over time, the major outliers are the real story here. To address the Bear in the room - I have no idea what happened with Chicago Bear's legend William "Refrigerator" Perry in 2003 (4 lousy dogs). This dude could practically beer bong an entire case back in the day. Maybe they didn't allow him to dip his dog in beer and he quit. I don't know but even Big Cat's 12-spot in 2016 was good enough to avoid a gray outlier fat drip.
But it's the outliers above the dog that are the real story. This is the Kobayashi/Chestnut effect. It shows that only one or two contestants stand a real shot at winning and the rest are basically just up there fiddling their dogs on stage. And to show just how good the best of the best have gotten over time, I plotted the number of dogs eaten from the top-three men's finishers of each year with a blue trend line to show how the modern game compares to the other hot dog eras. This is not your unemployed Uncle Bobby's game anymore.
Note: time limit dropped from 12-minutes to 10 in 2008 but this didn't stop the modern era from continuing to improve
Hirofumi Jakajima set the record at the time for most dogs eaten in 1997 with 24.5. That was just enough to hold off Kazutoyo Arai's 24 which would have set a record itself. But in today's game you'd be lucky if that didn't get you on the lower end of the bun on my patent pending hot dog and bun graph. Fair to say Jakajima would request we use era-adjusted figures when comparing his 24.5 to the whipper snappers today. But everything about competitive hot dog eating changed in 2001 when Takeru Kobayashi burst his stomach on the scene with a mustard dropping 50-dogger.
Poor Kazutoyo Arai. Another would-be record breaking non-record in 2001. Even for a professional hot dog eater, this must have been tough to swallow. Kobayashi dropped his 50 dogs on the table to become the game's first superstar, sparking massive interest and better future competition. So much interest that by 2020 you could wager bets on it.
That brings us to the meat of the hot dog blog.
Wienerlytics
OK, enough history. Let's talk turkey. Or pork. Or whatever they put in those things. You need to know the deeper analytics before the betting lines open so you can get in early on the sharp action. Everyone knows Chestnut is the huge favorite. He set the world record at 76 dogs in 2021 before the 38-year old cooled down to a still winning 63 dogs in 2022. This leads one to wonder if such a grueling feat of athleticism might have an age cliff. They say most quarterbacks find the cliff in their late 30s. But what about hot dog eating? Do major league eaters end up getting… washed down?
Let's explore how some top names have fared at various ages to see if the juices still flow like they used to.
I'm actually not seeing much here. Kobayashi ended his career with his personal best yet still wasn't good enough to beat Chestnut. Crazy Legs Conti had a rough go at age 45 but bounced back close to his range at age 50 after taking five years of hot dog load management in-between. Tim "Eater X" Janus certainly fell off but he was just 38 when he retired in 2015. the wienerlytics have spoken. There's no reason to fear Chestnut is too old to put repeatedly put sticks of meat in his mouth.
While there's no evidence of falling off a cliff at the end of ones career - there does appear to be a one contestants climb up at the beginning. I took the top-10 dog eater (men and women) results by year with the first three years plumped up to show the tendency of major improvement during that timeframe.
Quick aside - in perhaps the biggest duel in the history of sport, Kobayashi and Chestnut - the Secretariats of their overlapping times - tied with 59 dogs eaten in 2008 to enter over time. That means a 5-dog eat off ensued in which Chestnut finished first in just 50 seconds to take home the storied Yellow Mustard Belt.
Most eaters made the largest chunk of their improvements in the first three years. But there were exceptions. Kobayashi managed to up his game considerably after year three as well as Eric "Badlands" Booker and Matt Stonie. So it's certainly not impossible. But the data suggests not to count on it. Same goes for the ladies:
For the men's division, Esper figures to be the best bet outside of Chestnut. But given his plateauing the past four years - I just can't see an upset happening. You know who else can't see it happening? Geoffrey Esper. When recently asked if he could beat Chestnut, Esper replied: "Only if he doesn't show up."
So, is all of this advanced wienerlytics just to say bet on the obvious favorites??? OK. Sure, maybe. But for those who have the capital and fancy minus sign betting (looking at you PFT!) this is as close to a sure thing as you'll find. A Chestnut/Sudo parlay is definitely a winning Pork Parlay if they allow it.
I'll be back with some more patent pending "Pork Parlays" before the first bun dips in water on the 4th.
- Jeffro