LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Like he had done many times before, Travis Weber went to Pinnacle Bank Arena with his uncle last month to watch a Nebraska men's basketball game.
The game against Southern California was no ordinary outing for the 42-year-old from Lincoln. Far from it.
He went home the winner of a 2025 Porsche Macan valued at $75,000. All he had to do was putt a golf ball the length of the court through a tiny slot at the bottom of a board. Video of his slow-rolling putt, all 94 feet of it, and his Tiger Woods fist pump went viral.
Every night across the country, fans vie for prizes in contests staged during breaks in the action at sporting events big and small. In basketball, it might be halfcourt shots or length-of-the-court putts. In football, it might be throwing a ball at a target or kicking a field goal. In hockey, it might be taking a shot from center ice.
The vast majority of these real people efforts come and go with polite applause from the crowd, an amusing distraction while the real athletes are getting a rest. Some of them are a lot more fun than that, with explosions of joy and disbelief that something great just happened — and it's been that way for a long time.
Jim Kahler, director of the Sports & Entertainment Management Program at Cleveland State University, said in-game contests have been part of the fan experience since the mid-20th century. Bill Veeck was famous for the wacky ways he engaged fans as a minor and major league baseball owner — you may remember his 1979 Disco Demolition debacle at a Chicago White Sox game — and Kahler said the late NBA Commissioner David Stern encouraged franchises to emphasize entertainment as much as the game itself.
“Those breaks at halftime and quarter breaks and two-minute timeouts became valuable inventory,” said Kahler, who previously was chief marketing officer and senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
“You could tie it to the growth of sponsorship," Kahler said. "You’ve got more and more sponsors than ever before. Teams are smart enough to sell those spots. The sponsor and the team have to figure out something that’s interactive and engage with the fans in a way the fans appreciate. Then it kind of became the arms race of who can come up with the better idea.”
Of course, there is risk involved with offering prizes worth tens of thousands of dollars. About a half-dozen companies in the United States assume that risk for sponsors and make good on payoffs to contest winners.
Bob Hamman, who founded Dallas-based SCA Promotions in 1986, and his son and company vice president Chris Hamman base their fees on the odds they set for each contest. For example, Bob Hamman said, there's a 50% chance a person picked at random will make a free throw. That drops to 14% for a 3-pointer and 2% for a halfcourt shot.
For Weber's putt at Nebraska, Pennsylvania-based Interactive Promotions Group wrote the insurance policy to mitigate Porsche of Omaha's risk of having to give away the $75,000 Macan.
IPG CEO and co-founder Greg Esterhai said the chances of a random fan making a 94-foot putt into a 3-inch by 3-inch slot are 1 in 100. IPG set the premium at $16,200 to cover a total of eight putting attempts — one contestant per game for eight games.
Esterhai said the claim for Weber's Porsche was approved after IPG reviewed video of the putt and verified conditions were met, such as Weber never having played golf professionally and not having been allowed a practice attempt.
At UMass, there was a recent dispute over payment for a $10,000 halfcourt shot, with the school announcing last week it would pay off the winner after the insurance company covering the prize was said to have reneged because the contestant’s foot was over the line.
Esterhai said IPG insures about $2 million in prizes for thousands of in-game contests each year and that there are about 250 winners, but only one or two take home a prize valued at $75,000 or more. Asked if he roots for contestants to win, Bob Hamman paused. “Well, not really,” he said, laughing. “But generally speaking, we know there has to be winners. If there are no winners, we have no business.”
Chris Hamman said a watershed moment for in-game contests occurred in 1993, when Chicago Bulls fan Don Calhoun's overhand throw from the opposite free-throw line swished through the hoop 80 feet away for $1 million.
The insurance company balked at paying because Calhoun had walked on to play basketball at two junior colleges a few years earlier and played in a handful of games. That was disqualifying, according to the insurance company. The Bulls — reportedly with Michael Jordan's involvement — and sponsors ended up making good on the payoff.
Porsche of Omaha has conducted the putting contest for four years at Nebraska basketball games. Weber said a Nebraska Athletics employee tapped him on the shoulder a couple minutes before tipoff to ask if he wanted to be the putter during a break in the first half.
Weber readily accepted. He owns and operates a home inspection business and is an occasional golfer. Putting, he said, is the strength of his game. Weber said his strategy was to aim straight at the target. Fortunately, he pushed the putt a bit right and it began to break to the left about 6 or 7 feet from the slot and went through.
Weber said Tuesday he expects to take delivery of his Porsche in a couple of weeks. Naturally, he chose Husker red as the color.
“I had never been selected for a contest ever,” he said. “I wanted to do the free throw, halfcourt shot thing. Never got to. I guess this was something I’m actually good at, putting, so that helped my odds a little bit."
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FILE - Robert Yanders, of Springfield, Missouri, celebrates after hitting a halfcourt shot during a timeout midway through the second quarter of the Cleveland Cavaliers - Oklahoma City Thunder game to win $20,000, in Oklahoma City, Sunday, Dec. 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
FILE - Phoenix Suns' Eric Bledsoe (2) high fives fan Tim Boven after Boven hit a three point field goal for $77,777 during a time out during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the New York Knicks, Friday, March 28, 2014, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)
FILE - Johnnie Durossette, center, a 20-year-old from Muskogee, Oklahoma, celebrates after making the MidFirst Bank halfcourt shot during a timeout to win $20,000 during an NBA basketball game between the Boston Celtics and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
FILE - Scott Schwartz makes a halfcourt shot during a promotion in the fourth quarter of the Phoenix Suns' 112-107 overtime victory over the Denver Nuggets in an NBA basketball game in Denver on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2014. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday said he plans to tell the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop recommending fluoridation in communities nationwide. Kennedy also said he’s assembling a task force to focus on the issue.
Also on Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it is reviewing “new scientific information" on potential health risks of fluoride in drinking water. The EPA has primary authority to set the maximum level of fluoridation in public water systems.
Kennedy told The Associated Press of his plans after a news conference with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in Salt Lake City.
Kennedy can’t order communities to stop fluoridation, but he can tell the CDC to stop recommending it and work with the EPA to change the allowed amount.
Utah last month became the first state to ban fluoride in public drinking water, pushing past opposition from dentists and national health organizations who warned the move would lead to medical problems that disproportionately affect low-income communities.
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed legislation barring cities and communities from deciding whether to add the cavity-preventing mineral to their water systems. Water systems across the state must shut down their fluoridation systems by May 7.
Kennedy praised Utah for emerging as “the leader in making America healthy again.” He was flanked by Utah legislative leaders and the sponsor of the state’s fluoride law.
“I’m very, very proud of this state for being the first state to ban it, and I hope many more will,” he said.
Kennedy oversees the CDC, whose recommendations are widely followed but not mandatory. State and local governments decide whether to add fluoride to water and, if so, how much — as long as it doesn’t exceed a maximum set by the EPA, which is currently 4 milligrams per liter.
Zeldin said his agency was launching a renewed examination of scientific studies on the potential health risks of fluoride in drinking water to help inform any changes to the national standards.
“When this evaluation is completed, we will have an updated foundational scientific evaluation that will inform the agency’s future steps,” Zeldin said. “Secretary Kennedy has long been at the forefront of this issue. His advocacy was instrumental in our decision to review fluoride exposure risks, and we are committed to working alongside him, utilizing sound science as we advance our mission of protecting human health and the environment.”
Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the CDC. In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and in 1962 set guidelines for how much should be added to water.
Kennedy, a former environmental lawyer, has called fluoride a “dangerous neurotoxin” and said it has been associated with arthritis, bone breaks and thyroid disease. Some studies have suggested such links might exist, usually at higher-than-recommended fluoride levels, though some reviewers have questioned the quality of available evidence and said no definitive conclusions can be drawn.
In November, just days before the presidential election, Kennedy declared that Donald Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day as president. That didn't happen, but Trump later picked Kennedy to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he has been expected to take some kind of action. Meanwhile, some localities have gone ahead and decisions whether to keep fluoridating water.
Related to all this: A massive round of staffing cuts last week across federal agencies included elimination of the CDC's 20-person Division of Oral Health. That office managed grants to local agencies to improve dental health and, in come cases, encourage fluoridation.
Fluoride can come from a number of sources, but drinking water is the main one for Americans, researchers say. Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population gets fluoridated drinking water, according to CDC data. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water was long considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.
About one-third of community water systems — 17,000 out of 51,000 across the U.S. — serving more than 60% of the population fluoridated their water, according to a 2022 CDC analysis. The agency currently recommends 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water.
But over time, studies have documented potential problems. Too much fluoride has been associated with streaking or spots on teeth. Studies also have traced a link between excess fluoride and brain development.
A report last year by the federal government’s National Toxicology Program, which summarized studies conducted in Canada, China, India, Iran, Pakistan and Mexico, concluded that drinking water with more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter — more than twice the recommended level in the U.S. — was associated with lower IQs in kids.
Utah Oral Health Coalition chairperson Lorna Koci said Monday that she hopes other states push back against the removal of fluoride and that Kennedy’s visit to celebrate her state's fluoride ban underscores the political motivations of those who support it.
She predicted children will have more cavities as a result and said backers of the fluoride legislation in Utah spread false information that raised doubts about its effectiveness. Opponents of the law warned it would disproportionately affect low-income residents who may rely on public drinking water containing fluoride as their only source of preventative dental care.
“This seems to be less about fluoride and more about power,” Koci said.
Stobbe reported from New York. Associated Press writer Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed reporting,
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, arrives at University of Utah to discuss Utah's new fluoride ban and food additives legislation, Monday, April 7, 2025, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Melissa Majchrzak)
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to appear in Salt Lake City with the EPA administrator and state lawmakers to talk about Utah's new fluoride ban and food additives legislation, Monday, April 7, 2025, in Salt Lake City, Utah. (AP Photo/Melissa Majchrzak)
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to appear in Salt Lake City with the EPA administrator and state lawmakers to talk about Utah's new fluoride ban and food additives legislation, Monday, April 7, 2025, in Salt Lake City, Utah. (AP Photo/Melissa Majchrzak)
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. exits a bus as he visits University of Utah to discuss Utah's new fluoride ban and food additives legislation, Monday, April 7, 2025, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Melissa Majchrzak)
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to appear in Salt Lake City with the EPA administrator and state lawmakers to talk about Utah's new fluoride ban and food additives legislation, Monday, April 7, 2025, in Salt Lake City, Utah. (AP Photo/Melissa Majchrzak)
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visits University of Utah to discuss Utah's new fluoride ban and food additives legislation, Monday, April 7, 2025, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Melissa Majchrzak)
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visits University of Utah to discuss Utah's new fluoride ban and food additives legislation, Monday, April 7, 2025, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Melissa Majchrzak)
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to appear in Salt Lake City with the EPA administrator and state lawmakers to talk about Utah's new fluoride ban and food additives legislation, Monday, April 7, 2025, in Salt Lake City, Utah. (AP Photo/Melissa Majchrzak)
