Relationships and Sex: Here's why professional athletes like Dak Prescott keep swearing off sex

It's not exactly backed up by science.

Dak Prescott has a lot going for him: He's the starting quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys; he's young; he's healthy; and he has a girlfriend, Yasmin Nicole Lee. But what Dak Prescott allegedly doesn't have, at the moment, is a sex life.

Earlier this week, celebrity news and gossip site Terez Owens reported that Prescott is the latest athlete to take a pledge of chastity in order to focus on sports or another aspect of his life. According to the site, Prescott told Lee that he didn't want to have sex until the Cowboy's season was over, or at least until they were "mathematically eliminated from the playoffs."

"Dak is enjoying the process of getting to know her without the pressure of having sex," an anonymous source told Terez Owens.

If the rumors about Prescott are true, he's not the first high-profile athlete to swear off shaggin' in the name of sport. Terez Owens also reports that Prescott's now-injured friend and teammate Ezekiel Elliott also took a celibacy pledge at the beginning of the season. Floyd Mayweather refused sex before fighting Conor McGregor, and Russell Wilson famously swore off sex before marriage with his fiancee (now wife) Ciara. Still, pretty much every time the Olympics or the World Cup rolls around, stories of team coaches frantically trying to prevent their players from joining in on the orgy of the Olympic village go viral. So why do athletes swear off sex—especially if, to be frank, their partners are usually incredibly attractive?

In fairness, there are any number of legitimate reasons. For Wilson, it was a religious thing. Prescott, if the rumors are correct, appears to be attempting to limit distractions from his job. But scientifically, swearing off sex really doesn't make sense.

"There are two possible ways sex before competition could affect performance," said Ian Shrier, a sports medicine specialist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada told National Geographic in the midst of the 2006 Winter Olympics sex-fest. "First, it could make you tired and weak the next day. This has been disproved. The second way is that it could affect your psychological state of mind. This has not been tested."

Shrier thinks the first myth—that getting laid before competing makes you worse at stuff—could stem from the perception that sexual frustration feeds aggression, which makes you better at sports. But there's not much, if any, scientific data to back that up. One study found there could be some detrimental effects if an athlete has sex less than two hours before an athletic attempt, which makes sense mostly because, well, sex can be tiring. Other than that, experts say, there's probably nothing wrong with it, unless it causes you to lose sleep.

"If sex is going to affect performance, it will be via a lack of sleep," David Bishop, research leader at Victoria University's Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living in Melbourne, Australia, told CNN in 2014. "But I can't see any problems with having sex and then getting a good night's sleep."

Still, for sheer concentration purposes, another scientist told CNN that yeah, sex can be distracting.

"Sex is not just fun but also healthy," Emmanuele Jannini, professor of endocrinology and medical sexology at the University of Rome-Tor Vergata in Italy, said. "However, if concentration is important, I would suggest to avoid sex for some few days before the game."

This is Prescott's excuse, and to be fair to him, his rumored girlfriend was recently pictured wearing his jersey near the sideline of a Cowboys game, which certainly could be distracting.

The Cowboys have 11 games left in the regular season, but we're sure no one's counting.

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