Joey Chestnut's hot-dog eating record could be smashed by person of epic proportions

One day, so it has been written, there will come to pass a giant of a man, 7-foot-4 with massive ribcage, large teeth and jaw of untold width who will walk among us, doing what no man before him ever thought possible — eating 90 hot dogs in 10 minutes.

This is not just me talking. These are the words of hot dog analytics guru (yes, such a profession exists, giving hope to 8-year-old boys everywhere who want to grow up to be Professor of Spitwads) James M. Smoliga, who predicts that one day someone will come along who will shatter Joey Chestnut’s world record of 76.

But, Smoliga warns, it will take a person of epic proportions.

The Washington Post wrote that “(w)ith a mathematical model used to understand improvement patterns in other sports records, Smoliga predicted today’s eaters might max out in the low 80s. That is, unless a competitor with a more ideal body enters the field.”

And what would that look like?

“If you had a 7-foot-4 male who started training for competitive eating in their 20s and went after it for 10 years, my guess is they would probably blow Joey Chestnut out of the water,” Smoliga said.

And to think that Victor Wembanyama is going to waste his life on basketball.

Independence Day, of course, is the date of Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island, perhaps the only competitive match that not even COVID could stop. And the way democracy is going, in another 10 years it might be the only thing we have to celebrate on July 4.

As with all sports though, the dog-eating contest has now been swallowed up by analytics, so as now we no longer talk about the actual game because we are too busy discussing odds, angles, numbers and equations, salted with obligatory piano-accompanied human interest story about how the athlete was able to overcome a frightful case of Osgood-Schlatter disease to return to the championship tour.

Except with hot dog glomming, the sideshows might be preferable to the actual eye-averting event. Unless you enjoy watching a toddler eating Spaghetti-Os with his fingers, you may want to consider alternative television programming.

But I was interested to learn that — did you know this? — in 1980, the Nathan’s winner consumed only 10 dogs in 12 minutes. This was widely known as the “dead ball era” of hot dog consumption, when competitive hot dog eating was still an attainable sport. I know for a fact I can eat four hot dogs, and from there it’s only six more to 10. It was possible, and at the least I could take the dais with the reigning champion and not embarrass myself (any more, come to think of it, than competitive eating as a genre already does). Indeed, hot dogs were the pickle ball of championship sport.

More: Joey Chestnut 'worried' a year after tangling with protester at hot dog eating contest

Through the early ’80s, 10 dogs in 12 minutes was the standard. The winning number increased gradually through the years, until 2001 when Takeru Kobayashi downed 50, more than doubling the old record. And Kobayashi was a little shrimp (world shrimp record held by J. Chestnut, 18 pounds and 9.6 ounces, d. 1 Dec. 2018) which is an interesting footnote to the sport, that being fat people don’t do well in these competitions because, as the Post writes (and keep in mind, these words are appearing in a prominent national newspaper in the greatest country on earth): “heavier competitors have a restrictive layer of fatty tissue that limits stomach expansion.”

By 2008, the “mound was lowered” as the time limit was reduced from 12 minutes to 10. Didn’t matter. The record went up almost every year until Chestnut's 76 in 2021.

If this were 20 years ago, I might have been tempted to mention there are still starving children in this world — but today? In this age of world record stupidity, why bother?

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest awaits 7-foot-4 contender