I thought I was pushing towards that advantage with my over-80 marathon example, too. But I was apparently mistaken.
This speculation is backed up by the fact that we have multiple examples of players who have been successful at the professional level in both football and baseball (Bo Jackson being the go-to example). Today, both Russell Wilson and Kyler Murray (starting NFL quarterbacks) were drafted by MLB teams (though they didn’t actually play for those teams). The skills overlap quite a bit.
Basketball does translate a bit as well; a number of basketball players in college go on to NFL careers, especially at offensive line and tight end positions where having a towering height and good hands are a big plus. And Michael Jordan played pro baseball and basketball (though his baseball career was short and in the minors, and he had a unique athletic talent). But it doesn’t seem to have as much crossover as football and baseball.
I’m not aware of much crossover between soccer and baseball. I played soccer in high school, and the only skill I developed that I imagine would translate is running (both to field balls and to reach base).
Speaking of Michael Jordan, I watched the excellent documentary about the historic Chicago Bulls team called The Last Dance (I highly recommend it, it was fantastic, even if you’re not the biggest basketball fan). During the documentary it covered Michael’s transition to baseball and back to basketball, and one thing that was a huge problem was that he had to essentially restructure his body between the sports. In baseball, he needed to develop muscles to help him hit the ball better, and when he returned to basketball it took him almost a year to get back into his regular shape and become an elite player in that sport.
At the college level, elite women generally play SOFTBALL, not baseball; this is an insurmountable additional disadvantage because you won’t have the same pitching skills and fielding is significantly different in some respects.
Women who choose to play baseball usually have to play with men, and the odd one does (especially if they have pitching skill) but they’re really rare these days.
I suspect we will see these gaps close significantly over time - those who are over 80 now grew up in the 50s, when girls’ participation in athletic activities was far less than it is now, especially compared to boys. So your talent pool is much smaller when it comes to females. In 50 or so years’ time, that will be much less the case.
Although, I think that some of that is an (odd?) anomaly of football. I remember reading some stuff a few years ago on the increase of specialization among young athletes in the last 20 years or so (as I recall, there was a concern that it lead to an increase in injury). If memory serves, a significant majority of Division I athletes (male and female) had specialized in their college sport by the time they were 12, with the exception of DI football where the reverse was true – a significant majority played at least two sports through high school. I don’t know what to make of that, but this reminded me of that.
(It’s certainly possible that the true “elite” athletes in any sport come from the multi-sport contingent, I don’t know.).
It’s not a good idea, physically, to play football more than once a week and generally it’s played exclusively via the school season at the high school level. So there’s lots of time in the week/year to fill with something other than football games, and playing another sport is excellent physical training even if football is someone’s top priority.
Youth baseball and basketball players will be on multiple teams and play almost year-round so they don’t necessarily need another sport if they don’t want one. I regularly played 15 games of basketball a week at one point as a teenager and I was never “potential pro athlete” material. For those who are it’s pretty apparent how it can expand to fill all available time.
Read only first couple posts.
Really? 67 posts, somehow?
The discussion wandered a bit, naturally.
Posts 3-66 are just people complaining about how many posts are in a thread they didn’t read.
Sorry, not only could they not defeat the men’s team, they wouldn’t be able to defeat the top (men) high-school team in Germany. I’d even bet agaisnt them if the played the top (men) middle-school team.
Just to provide an example. In the late 80s, Peru had a bottom-of-the-top-tier female volleyball team For 20 years the governemnt had supported the team. Silver medal in the Word Cup and the Olympics. I’d say that the six starters were 6 of the top 50 (if not 20) female athletes in Peru in those days.
Volleyball was considered a “girly” game and men who played were considered effemenate at best. Men who played it were those who couldn’t compete in football (soccer), basketball, track-and-field or ten other sports. It really had the rejects. They didn’t receive any support while the women had direct governmental support.
Even in those circumstances (the best possible women with the best possibel training vs. barely atheltic men with almost no high level trraining), the men’s team would clobber them without breaking a sweat. Even the U18 had absolutely no issue. It’s not even close.
One thing this thread has me wondering is if one reason for the men/women divide in sports ability is because sports have developed in a male-dominated world and are built around skills and attributes that men think are important and excel at. Traditional sports use speed, power, domination, strength, etc., to differentiate the players, but these are attributes which are more prominent in males than females. If instead sports were developed in a female-dominated world, sports may instead favor attributes that women find important and excel at. In those sports which favor female attributes, males may be at a disadvantage.
An example that I think would be prominent in a female sport would be the ability to convey emotions through movement, like in ballet, dance, and ice skating. Although both males and females engage in those activities, I think females are much better at conveying a story through movement. Males are much better at athletic moves and can jump higher, leap farther, flip more impressively, but I don’t think they are as good as telling a story through movement. In a female-dominated world, the athletic moves of the males might be seen as flashy nonsense while the delicate movement of a female’s hand to express joy or sadness might be revered or something like that.
It’s like if sports were developed in a bird-centered world, the sports would be based around bird abilities. Other kinds of animals would do poorly because they have a different set of skills than birds. Although men and women are the same kind of animal, there are biological differences between males and females that mean their athletic and competitive abilities are not necessarily exactly the same.
Sports came from everyday activites or preparation for war. Also, it gets you the girls.
Dancing and storytelling fulfill a completely different niche in society.
Possibly, but the issue with ballet, ice skating, dancing, etc. is that their performance is inherently subjective. One judge may give a 9 and the other give a 5 for the same performance by the same person; it’s subjective (not to mention much political bias, like when Cold War judges on the Eastern Bloc reliably voted for their Eastern Bloc performers.)
With other sports, there is far less to be subjective about. If Usain Bolt beats his competitors by three yards to the finish line, nobody can dispute it. If someone scores a touchdown, it’s a touchdown; if one team outscores the other 200-50 in a basketball game, there is nothing to debate either.
Two things: motivation - winning gets you the girls; the boys, not so much. And men have a greater variance on almost every attribute. So women do have a chance in contests that don’t depend on physical ability, but the winner is still statistically likely to be a man.
Lets try this question on for size: if ‘physical disparity’ explains the difference between male and female athletic performance, where are the masses of great female auto racers? Or yacht drivers? There are stellar examples such as Michelle Mouton, Margaret Murdock, Ashley Force, Ellen MacArthur, but it shouldn’t be a matter of single examples of female greatness in these sports. Is it just cultural for why we don’t see more?
Not that I have any personal experience, but my understanding is that race car driving is very tough on a person physically. You may notice that race car drivers are not physically frail, or extremely old, or really out of shape. That’s because it takes a real athlete to do it. Here’s an article with some info:
In particular it takes a great deal of strength and endurance to make it through a NASCAR race.
Indy car racing also requires athletic prowess.
https://www.indycar.com/Fan-Info/INDYCAR-101/The-Drivers/Driver-Fitness
It’s not a cultural thing. These people aren’t sitting on a couch playing Mario Kart. It’s really tough to do, physically.
So why aren’t there great women racing sim competitors? A quick glance at the top racing sim championship reveals a list of names that look pretty overwhelmingly male.
That is a cultural thing. Just like there has never been a female chess world champion.
I bet a list of ordinary racing sim enthusiasts would also be pretty male dominated. Most women aren’t interested enough to dedicate the time required to get good. Also, men have faster reflexes which possibly improve performance. I’m not sure exactly what skills are involved. But like I said, men are likely to dominate at the very top in any case.