I’m curious to know about sporting feats you’d think would have been achieved at least once, but haven’t. The more achievable the feat, the better.
My contribution…
One day cricket:
10 wickets by a single bowler in a single innings. It has been achieved twice in Test cricket, but never in a one day game.
Baseball:Every out by strikeout. Current record is 20 strikeouts by three pitchers.
As strong and accurate as field goal kickers are getting I’m surprised the 63-yard record for longest field goal is still standing. I’d expect a 70-yarder to be made sometime within the next 10 years.
Wicket on every bal of an over. I think that never been done.
1 yd. Big whoop. 
In baseball the record for doubles in a single season is 67, set in 1931 by Earl Webb, who was only a major league regular for a few years. Modern Day players like Todd Helton, Carlos Delgado and Garret Anderson have gotten in the high 50s but The Earl of Doublin’s record still stands.
Or Hack Wilson’s 191 rbis in 1930 was approached a few years later by Lou Gehrig and Hank Greenberg. But the highest since WWII is 165 by Manny Ramirez in 1999. But then baseball teams used to have one or two power hitters with a bunch of slap hitters. Now lots of guys have some power so there are fewer opportunities for a #3 or #4 hitter.
Other than having overlooked that Dempsey’s record has been broken, albeit by just a yard, adaher clearly has a point here.
The linked table shows that there have been fifteen 60+ yard FGs in the NFL; 9 of them have been in the past 6 years and 10 days. That’s quite a surge.
And one that I totally missed, too: starting in 2009, new parenthood crowded out my football-watching time, and then the whole CTE business came to light, and I stopped watching football as a matter of principle. So I missed the news of all of those 9 recent 60+ kicks.
But I digress. The point is that odds are excellent that someone’s gonna hit a 66+ yarder before the decade is out. IMHO, a 70-yarder is a much more iffy bet, but it’s hardly impossible.
See a goalkeeper save all 5 penalties in a World Cup penalty shootout. Unlikely for many reasons.
We were looking at this at work a while ago wondering how unlikely it is. And it is very unlikely. The best chance ever was Chaminda Vaas with his 8 - 19. He had the first 8 wickets to fall and 2 overs to go but Sanath Jayasuriya foolishly made his one bowling change letting Murali at the tail. He promptly took 2 wickets in 3 balls. Of all the other huge wicket counts there is either a runout or another bowler already has a wicket before the star bowler’s run of wickets ends. Waqar Younis did take the first 7 wickets against England in his 7 - 37 but he and Fazl-e-Akbar bowled the first 20 unchanged to 7 - 70. Interestingly Pakistan didn’t get the 157 they were chasing, they were awarded the match after England conceded following a pitch invasion.
The other really interesting one was Shahid Afridi’s 7 - 12. He was actually the sixth bowler used and wasn’t brought on until the 21st over with the score 3 - 73. He then bowled 9 overs in 2 spells to take the last 7 wickets for 12 runs.
I don’t think this is achievable. 27 strikeouts is a few orders of magnitude harder than 20 strikeouts. Even if 20 strikeouts wasn’t unusual, 27 would still be damnably hard. The binomial distribution is a tough opponent. 
How about 27 strikeouts on 81 pitches?
If that ever happened then the next day they’d move the mound out to 2nd base.
Who knows, if Sidd Finch had just stuck it out…
Heh. Didn’t even have to click the link. I still remember that hoax. Pure awesomeness.
19-0 in the NFL.
Patriots got within a helmet’s chance, and with the way some offenses shake out it’s entirely possible.
If something happens once it will probably happen again unless the game changes in such a way that it makes it much more difficult, such as a pitcher trying to win 511 games.
I am actually surprised that Joe Dimaggio’s hit streak record is considered unassailable. Although given that millions have played MLB’s Beat the Streak for years and no one has ever done it proves the point statistically I guess.
Unlikely as the other keeper would need to perform as well. Has there ever been one where the first team doesn’t need to take their 4th penalty?
A televised minimum total clearance (72) in snooker.
I think this is far more unlikely. The problem with field goal distance is that, even though kickers have greater power and accuracy than ever before, this sort of record depends entirely on very specific game conditions and coaching decisions. Consider that to break the record with just a 65-yard FG, even a good kicker has a low chance of making it even in ideal conditions, even if the ball WOULD go through the goal posts, the distance requires a lower angle meaning greater chance of being blocked. Worst of all, the field position given up in the case of a miss for that would be on giving your opponent the ball on your own 48, essentially mid-field. That’s a big risk with a big drawback.
Further, consider how much pressure coaches are under to win these days. It seems to me that many coaches aren’t even taking what ought to be statistically good risks. Unless you’re one of the few coaches that isn’t potentially on the hot seat following a potentially disappointing season, coaches are less likely to be blamed for making decisions that follow traditional football wisdom rather than something that makes sense with more modern statistical analysis.
As such, you’re really only going to see a coach even attempt a 60+ yard field goal under very specific circumstances. Generally, they need an awesome kicker, they need ideal conditions, the field position needs to fit and they need to have a situation where the risk of a miss is largely mitigated. So this will really only come up if a team is well ahead and they just a few seconds on the clock and happen to be just inside the 50. They can either kneel, take a long bomb, or try a long field goal, with the result of the play ending the half, making the field position risk moot. It’s not going to happen at the end of the game since, generally, a 50-yard TD pass is probably a better chance than a 65-yard FG.
So, I think we might see a handful more 60+ makes in the next several years, but a 70-yard FG in game conditions isn’t something I could see even the most aggressive coach really wanting to put his kicker into, perhaps unless the kicker were really begging for the chance. And I really doubt too many kickers are that worried about it since kicker careers tend to be short lived if they have too many misses.
Then again, who knows, we might see just the right conditions show up next week in the playoffs. I’m far more inclined to see achievements of records based on accumulation of stats or extreme luck. Like, perhaps, a truly perfect 19-0 season (and I thought the Panthers had a decent chance of 16-0 this year), maybe career sacks, or similar types of stats getting broken.
That’s just never going to happen. There would be absolutely no reason for anyone to attempt this as it is much much harder for much less benefit.
No Superbowl game has ever gone into overtime.