Sleeping Sickness

Steve Rushin

December 30, 2002

On Christmas Eve 30 years ago, the day of his team's playoff game against the Cleveland Browns, Miami Dolphins receiver Paul Warfield woke in a panic in his clockless home and dialed Time & Temperature to hear, to his everlasting relief, that it was still only 5:53 a.m. In sports oversleeping (hypersomnia) is epidemic (even more powerful than the/ear of oversleeping—hypersomniaphobia?—that wakes some athletes in the dead of night). And so Florida State quarterback Chris Rix was suspended by the Seminoles for the Sugar Bowl last week after oversleeping and missing an exam. His punishment could have been worse: Saint Vitus, the patron saint of oversleepers, was, in A.D. 303, boiled in oil like a popcorn shrimp.