Here’s a puzzler – take above average players from each of the major sports (any ones you like). Let’s take 3 from each, just to try to control for any 1 person who may be exceptional.
Each player plays all the other players at their own sport. Kind of like a big round robin tournament. Who, that is to say which sport, comes out on top? You can assume that each player has a limited, but adequate, amount of time to learn the basic skills and strategy of the others’ sports. Players who have previous (high level) experience with multiple sports, like Bo Jackson, are excluded. The contests will be whatever the normal unit is for that sport – 1 match or 1 game, etc. Obviously team sports get tricky, but assume all else is equal in the team matchup.
Throwing sports players would have an advantage, I think, for other throwing sports. Likewise for runners in running sports.
EDIT: Looking back on this, I guess this is kind of a stupid question. I suppose I’ll go ahead an post it anyway to see if people have anything to say.
Well, rugby players have to run, pass, catch, kick, tackle, ruck, maul, etc. Call me biased, but I can’t think of a sport that has such a diverse required skill set.
One problem, right off the top of my head, is that many sports will need several different kinds of athletes. An AL baseball pitcher, for instance, is going to be really good at throwing a ball, and pretty good at catching one, but he doesn’t really need to do anything else. By contrast, an AL designated hitter will never need to throw a ball, but he does have to hit it with a bat, and run fast. Yet both could be great baseball players. Or consider football: A soccer player might do pretty well in American football as a kicker (in fact, some NFL kickers were recruited from soccer), but he’s going to be a pathetic quarterback.
All that said, though, I think I’m going to go with horse racing. Train Secretariat to hold a ball in his mouth (you did say some training was allowed), hand off to him, and no defense is going to be able to catch up with him :D.
ESPN Page 2 did a bit on this a year or two ago. Well, not quite this, it was which sport is most athletic, which is at least pretty close. They were surprisingly agreed on boxing.
Olympic decathletes are probably the best all-around athletes, although there is a question as to how much athleticism counts vs. specific skills for this specific proposal. For example, Bruce Jenner probably couldn’t put a 90 MPH fastball to the inside corner, or complete a Hail Mary pass.
Anybody trying to play ice hockey against a pro is going to get creamed.
No football player except a running back could beat a throw to first.
There’s a lot of incentive to be at peak condtioning. A boxer friend of mine was lamenting that his wife didn’t seem to understand why he needed to train so much: “she doesn’t understand that if a golfer doesn’t train, he misses par on the back nine, but if I don’t train, I need surgery!”
How would you judge the winner? Jockey gets picked up and shot putted out of the ring. Sumo wrestler squishes horse. Which one fails less at the other’s sport?
I would go with Boxing or UFC. the conditioning these guys go through is shocking. seriously think about having some guy trying to beat the crap out of you for 15 minutes? all while you try to beat the crap out of him? (thats UFC, I dont know how long boxing rounds or matches are)
and some fights after 15 minutes they dont even look winded, well not much anyway.
This instantly made me think of that “Simpson’s” gag where Homer and Bart are training their new horse Duncan to kick field goals:
Bart: Wow, Duncan, you’re 10-for-10
Homer: That’s great, boy; this horse is gonna make me rich…Now, let’s check the NFL rules to see if horses are allowed to play…(long pause, flips thru rulebook)…D’OH!"
I just love how they blew away the premise of an entire Disney movie franchise (“Gus”, “Air Bud”, etc.) in one fell swoop.
The question probably belongs in IMHO because I don’t know how you would ever construct a competition where top pro could compete with pro in other sports on a level where there would even be any competition.
Getting in the ring with a pro boxer who had bad intentions would be suicide even if you outweighed him by 50 lbs.
Everything in hockey (skating, stickhandling, shooting) is a learned skill. The hockey players might fare the best because they don’t have to learn how to run, throw or take a hit. They also tend to be pretty good golfers.
As Michael Jordan found out, pro golfers are a rarified breed.
Baseball requires some highly refined skills.
When you are good enough to make a living at a sport you are a special talent. At that level nobody can just move in and compete. If such a thing was possible nobody could make a living at it. These guys get paid for a reason. They are special.
I coudn’t disagree more on the UFC; sure, I wouldn’t want to step in a cage with those guys, but that’s because they’re nuts, not because they have any special athletic skills. Most of those guys are overweight brawlers who probably drank themselves into this laughable carnival event. A real athlete in any contact sport would destroy these guys in a matter of seconds if they knew they had to step in the cage.
On retrospect, since this is GQ, I retract the second sentence (if I could edit it I would), and apologize to the mods and the fans of UFC for any offense. Sorry
No offense taken, don’t worry, but I do have to point out that that’s not an accurate representation, or at least not anymore. At one time that would have been an arguably correct characterization of at least some UFC fighters, but not now. UFC has come a long way. Mixed martial artists nowadays are every bit the trained and serious professional athletes that boxers are. If they didn’t specifically train very, very hard for MMA fighting for a very long time, nobody could last more than a round or two, contact sport athlete or not.
I think we can take for granted that the hockey players are going to win the hockey game, and the baseball players are going to win the baseball game, etc. Where the real competition would come in, is whether the football players or the baseball players are going to be better at hockey, and the like.
