Ear plugs would suffice, concedes John Brandt, but ear muffs are his medium and hearing loss is his message.
Brandt, a KU professor of you guessed it speech and hearing, may be the only track and field starter in America who uses a pair of muffs instead of much cheaper plugs when he pulls the trigger to begin a race.
“I teach the effect of noise on hearing. I’ve been doing it for 25 years,” Brandt told me. “I wear the muffs as a visible sign that I’m protecting my hearing.”
Unfortunately, Brandt won’t be able to deliver a message during this weekend’s Big Eight Indoor championships in Anschutz Pavilion because the conference office disdains starters affiliated with league schools.
Nevertheless, Brandt will be head timer at the Big Eight Indoor, a task he also handles at the Kansas Relays. His last job as a starter was during the AAU National Youth Indoor here a couple of weeks ago.
In that national meet, Brandt probably set a world record for races started with Accutrak failure. Accutrak is the electronic device that times races. It is supposed to make stop watches obsolete. Accutrak has a flaw, though. The electronic system doesn’t work if the blank shell in the starter’s pistol doesn’t flash.
“I had 51 misfires and one false start,” Brandt said, shaking his head. “It was an embarrassment, but the shells were bad. They’re supposed to emit a bright light with almost no smoke. They come from Tallahassee where a man, a retired professor at Florida State, has a patent and makes ’em by hand. . .Quality control is getting worse.”
Brandt should know. He’s been active in track and field officiating for 26 years, or ever since his career as a middle distance runner at Iowa University came to an end because of an injury.
In all that time, Brandt has never made as much money as he’s put into it. He also owns, in addition to those expensive ear devices, two blank pistols that cost over $100 apiece.
“Occasionally you get paid,” he told me, “but typically I have not accepted checks from the KU track program. I give it back if they do pay me because it’s something I enjoy doing. It’s my mental health.”
His physical health is important, too. That includes his hearing, of course, and he knows a pistol shot registers an ear-shattering 138 decibels.
“There’s nothing else in the real world that gets to that level for a short period,” Brandt said. “A jackhammer can be in that range and it’d be the same if you stood behind a jet warming up. That much noise can be dangerous over a long period. You’d probably have permament hearing loss after two or three years.”
Curious if the noise of a starter’s pistol could cause hearing damage, Brandt conducted experiments and found that “most starters did indeed have high frequency hearing loss.”
He conducted one test after a starter had worked all day at the Kansas Relays without ear protection, and discovered the man had a temporary 10-decibel hearing loss.
Still, fleeting hearing loss isn’t unusual. It happens to everyone after a Kansas basketball game, for instance.
“It gets to a level in Allen Fieldhouse where everyone walks out with a temporary hearing loss,” Brandt said. “It’s over 100 decibels in there. We’ve had students measure it. I know it gets up to 110.”
If Brandt attended Kansas basketball games, he’d be the guy wearing the ear muffs. Don’t look for him, though.
“I don’t go to Allen Fieldhouse,” he said. “It’s too loud.”
