Some of those buttons are DAMN hard to push!
Bolding above is mine.
He’s expanded to a bit beyond just playing the games, but allow me to introduce you to Fatal1ty.
Curling isn’t for lazy people. During an average game, a lead or second – positions traditionally given to the most inexperienced players on a team – will walk at least two miles, much of it spent sweeping. We’re not talking about the kind of sweeping where you’re brushing dust bunnies off of hardwood, but pushing a broom HARD, with all your weight, onto the ice.
Rowing is incredibly strenuous, especially at the elite level, yet remains an entirely amateur sport. Most Olympic caliber athletes wind up mooching off their SOs, families, and friends while attempting to squeeze in a few part time hours somewhere between training.
No way. There may be four or five games in the televised finals, but to get to that point, you’ll have to bowl 30 or 40 games of preliminaries, including as many as 18 games in a single day. It ain’t for the weak of arm.
Darts requires a sniper’s accuracy and the ability to readjust on the fly in literally a second. Bowling requires machinelike consistency and at least a fairly strong arm. Golf requires controlled strength, a variety of swings with a variety of clubs, flexibility, and the hand-eye coordination of a master karateka, not to mention a laundry list of mental requirements (the instant your focus goes, it’s over).
I’m going the football route, but instead of the too-obvious place kicker I’m nominating the other guy. The punter.
Simplicity
Two choices. Long. Or short. And he knows exactly which to go for before he even steps onto the field. If they’re pinned deep, kick it as far as humanly possible. If they’re relatively close to the end zone, keep it out of there but get it as close as possible. Oh yeah, sometimes he’ll want to kick it away from a particularly dangerous returner, but that’s not exactly a huge decision (and the coach will probably make it for him anyway).
Margin for error
For a place kicker, a 2-degree angle difference can mean the difference between good and wide by three feet. If a punter drills it down the field 2 or even 5 degrees off of his intended path, hey, no biggie. (And if it gets away from the returner and picks up fifteen yards, yeah, baby.) For a short punt, even if he snap hooks it horribly and it wobbles out at the 19, that’s still better than a touchback or nearly any return, so it’s still an okay result. There are a lot of ways a punter can be less than perfect and still come out on the positive end.
Not a lot that can go wrong
Don’t kick it short if he’s supposed to go long (and vice versa). Don’t shank it. Don’t line-drive it. Don’t moonball it. Small potatoes. And when something does go wrong, it’s usually someone else’s fault. Bad snap? The snapper’s fault, obviously. Teammates mishandle the ball on the 3 and it goes in the end zone? On their heads. Blocked? Miscue on the offensive line, or the punt blocker is just that damn good.
No pressure
When was the last time you saw a punter under the microscope? Criticized as overpaid? Labelled the goat (even after something did go wrong for him)? For the most part, he goes out and does his thing, picks up his paycheck, and let his higher-profile teammates deal with the hassles of superstardom. If worst comes to worst and he does constantly stink up the joint, chances are he’ll be cut long before being put through the wringer.
And for worst reward-to-effort ratio, it’s gotta be gymnastics.
First off, if you’re going to amount to anything, you have to start in childhood. Wait until high school (perfectly fine for basketball, football, hockey, or tennis), it’s too late. And it’s lots and lots and LOTS of practice, day in and day out…what, you think a triple-twisting backflip dismount comes naturally? So this sport completely consumes your childhood and teenage years. You never have time to do any cool stuff or make connections or even goof off at the mall.
Oh yeah, did I mention the need for a strict diet? Not only to stay in shape (which is absolutely paramount), but to prevent your natural body development. :eek: Then there’s the constant threat of serious or even lifelong debilitating injury. Even if you avoid that, there’s plenty of bumps and brusies as you try for the 200th time to Stick The Landing.
Then comes your first taste of actual competition, tryouts. All of them against other athletes who’ve sacrificed their childhoods for this sport. And one, ONE tiny mistake…one missed bar grab, one inch off on the balance beam, a sixteenth of a rotation too much or too little off the vault…can knock you out. As can a serious injury, the threat of which does not magically vanish in competition.
Finally, if you’ve kept up with constant practices and stayed in shape and healthy and nailed your routines and impressed the judges and beat out hundreds and hundreds of other candidates to make the national team, you make it to the big stage, The Olympics.
Where one year a vault was set lower than regulation, and the officials did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT IT. Where you’ll be up against athletes from pitiful backwaters who’ve dedicated their whole lives to this sport. Where it’s common knowledge that if the judges don’t want you to win a medal, you’re not winning a medal, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.
A few thousand dollars if you medal. Nothing if you don’t…and considering what you’re up against, that’s more than likely.
Finally, after the Olympics…
Nothing. No professional league, not even some bargain-basement league like in paintball. No exhibition tours. You can’t even bring your skills to another sport. Washed up and forgotten at 18, banged up or worse, and barring an extremely unlikely medal, without a penny to show for it.
Figure skating has it better than this. Think about that.
Gatopescado / Antinor01: Go talk to anyone involved in any way with Golden Tee Golf to disavow yourself of the notion that competitive videogaming is easy money.
cot’d…
In a nutshell: At Gold (the highest level), a player not only needs to be technically flawless, he needs to know all kinds of difficult techniques and pull them off flawlessly. If you cannot execute a letter-perfect monster hook or slice, you cannot finish in the money in Gold. It’s that simple. Look at all the times Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, or even Supreme God-King Eldrick himself blundered horribly at some point and still won the tournament. That is not possible in Gold. At the lowest level (Bronze), averaging a birdie on every hole will usually allow you to finish in the money. Yes, that’s what it takes.
All I’m saying is, if you’re serious about earning money from a video game, be prepared to spend at least as much time and effort making it that you do with your regular job.
I don’t think it’s easy. Was just pointing out that there is money to be made in it.
I’ll have to nix backup quarterback for easy money. I am sure he practices a LOT to maintain his job. During scrimmages, he’s probably the one the defensive team is practicing their sack techniques on. Sure, the defense is trying not to hurt him, but we’re talking about 300-pound behemoths cranked up on steroids who can run 50 yards in less than 5 seconds, who have to prove their worth to stay in their positions. I bet it’s pretty damn rough.
I’m guessing professional iron man (or woman) triathlete might be near the bottom of the effort/reward scale. There may be prizes for the various races, but those things are incredibly grueling. I’ve seen competitors dragging their bodies toward the finish line even though they’re basically going into spasms from dehydration/heat exhaustion/whatever. It’s kind gross to just watch, I can’t imagine what it must feel like.
The holder is either the punter or backup QB. There is no dedicated backup; if the holder goes down, whoever has done it the most gets pressed into service. Note that since most everyone on an NFL team was a superstar during their early days, not many of them will have experience.
As an example of how thin teams are at holder, last season the starting QB for the Dallas Cowboys, Tony Romo, was still the only holder they used, as he started the season at holder. Even when he got promoted from backup to starting QB, he still had to do the holding.
For football, I’d probably go with punter as the easiest job for the lazy. There’s a reason that the longevity records in the NFL are held by a punter. Then again, job security as a punter sucks ass. Shank two punts and they’ll probably not let you on the team plane to go home.
For a marginally more difficult position to play that has good job security, try long-snapper. It has been said that if you want your child to have a long and successful career in the NFL, teach him to be a long-snapper. They are a valuable commodity, it is difficult to do if you haven’t worked at it, and generally speaking the aforementioned superstars aren’t all that interested in such an unglamorous position. So it’s not particularly hard to stand out as a good long-snapper, and once you do you’ve pretty much got a guaranteed spot for half a decade, and you only have to come out on the field on FGs and punts. Although you’re going to be emergency depth for the OL, they’ll probably press a TE into service before you.