What do you think is the most grueling pro sport by season?
Here’s some stats:
NHL - 82 games over 6 months + a month or so of playoffs. Game clock is 3 20-minute periods.
MLB - 162 games over 6 months + a month or so of playoffs. Games have no time limit.
NFL - 16 games over 4 months + 4 weeks of exhibition + a month or so of playoffs. Game clock is 4 15-minute quarters.
NBA - 82 games over 6 months + a month or so of playoffs. Game clock is 4 12-minute periods.
Things to consider:
How much of each game does a typical starter play? (example: Baseball, a little more over 1/2 of the game. Football would average out to be about 1/2.)
How much of the official clock time is action and how much is not action? (Baseball - not much action. Football - usually 22 of each 24-second play is not full action. Hockey and basketball - a lot of action all the time).
How do atmospheric conditions come in to play? (Baseball can be hot, rainy, cold, windy, etc. Football starts off hot then can get way cold, windy, etc. Basketball is indoors, as is hockey but hockey is cold.)
I know a good bit about baseball but not too much about basketball or hockey. I’d also like to compare the above primarily-North-American sports to games like rugby, soccer (globally), cricket and tennis. Heck, even golf. I don’t know anything about those sports like schedules, clock times, regular starter time or playing conditions.
From the list above I’d say hockey was the most grueling - it’s got a lot of continuous action (akin to basketball) with the physicality of football. Football is grueling but the season is short with 1 week between games and a lot of down time for starters.
I would put basketball behind hockey (because of the schedule and the continuous action of each game), then football and way down the list would be baseball (although the schedule in baseball is the most grueling, the game…not so much)
But, I’d like to hear discussion, especially from those who have played.
I did…in the “tell me more about these sports” section of the OP.
I’m not even sure what the most popular form of soccer is (indoor or outdoor), what the different leagues are and how season and game length differ between each.
Outdoor is by far the most popular, in the USA or internationally. MLS (Major League Soccer) is the American (plus Toronto) league. Games are 2 45 minute halves with stoppages for fouls and injuries and little else. Typically leagues will have a 30-40 game schedule with tournaments pushing that up to around double that in some situations. MLS runs from spring to fall, pretty much exactly the same as baseball. The most popular European leagues go from fall to spring with a winter break.
I heard an interview with Mark Hendrickson, he played for a few years in the NBA then switched to baseball has a pitcher. He says that baseball is much more grueling than basketball. In baseball, you are on the road for half the season, you play virtually everyday, and much of the travel is in the middle of the night. Weather is also a big factor, you play in the cold and the heat. With basketball, you are not on the road near as much, most travel is the morning after a game and you play in a controlled environment. He said he would have liked to stay in the NBA but he had a much better chance of a long pro sports career as a baseball player.
Re: Soccer – it’s actually probably way up there among the list of contenders for “most gruelling.” It is played outdoors, in some pretty harsh conditions (blistering heat and pouring rain); it is a football-game-sized field (actually slightly larger), with non-stop play and action moving around the field of play all the time (a-la both basketball and hockey); and top-notch teams in Europe will play 2-3 games a week for the better part of 8-9 months out of the year (generally September through May.) The very best players are also on their national teams, and will be playing up to 10 additional games a season, and possibly another month of intensive activity in the summer (World Cup, European (National) Championship or the equivalent in S. America, etc…)
In hockey, players generally play 40 seconds or less at a time, except of course for the goalie. Everyone on the main roster plays: there are four rotations, or “lines”, of forwards (three players each), three lines of defensemen (two players each), and of course the goalie. Within each position (forward or defense), generally, the first line is the best, the second line is not quite as good, etc. Accordingly, the first line gets the most playing time, the second not quite as much, etc. Additionally, the players who excel at playing during penalties are on penalty kill and/or power play lines, which means more playing time. Basically, the better you are, the more you play; a big-name star might play 30-40 minutes out of the 60 total IIRC (haven’t followed the game closely in a while). It doesn’t sound like much, but the time increments are that small precisely because it’s a brutal, grueling game. When you have the puck, generally it’s not a matter of if, but when someone is going to try to put the hurtin’ on you. The answer is usually “very, very soon”. Goalies are deliberately poked at and inadvertently shoved all night long, and play under an incredible amount of equipment, not to mention all the pressure to contort their body in a number of odd ways to get in the way of a hard piece of rubber zooming along at 70-90 MPH (in the NHL, that is). If you’re standing near the goal and you’re not a goalie, you’re probably being shoved, pushed and poked. God help you if the puck is between you and a wall. Defensemen–who don’t wear much more protective gear than NFL players–routinely drop forcefully to the ice to put their stomachs in the way of the aforementioned 70-90 MPH shots.
Basketball is grueling, but not in the same way that hockey (probably the most overtly similar sport popular in the US and Canada) is. Basketball is grueling in terms of the physical energy required and, to some small extent, the shoving and jostling that goes on near the basket, but hockey has all of that plus a constant threat of violence. They don’t stop the fights in hockey, either, and they don’t fine people when fights break out.
Almost all of the players play all 90+ minutes of the game – you are allowed up to 3 substitutions in the entire game; once a player is subbed for, (s)he can’t come back on the field – game over for that player, today.
Not at the same level as Football or Hockey, but Soccer is very much a contact sport. If you have the ball or are going for it, expect to get hit. And the players are wearing shorts and a tee-shirt, with only shin-guards to avoid the worst of the kicks they get to their legs (well, and probably a jock-strap or a cup, for those of the male persuasion. But that part isn’t mandated by the rules’ book)
Thing to consider: which athlete’s are the worse off physically after their careers.
Yeah, baseball, hockey, basketball have that “daily grind” aspect to them, but football RUINS your body and brain. Numerous concussions. Destroyed knees. Destroyed backs.
82 (84?) games of even hockey does not take the toll on you that a football season does. In a typical football game, an offensive lineman smashes his 300 pounds of bulk against another 300 pounds of bulk with maximum power 60 times. A running back gets tackled (usually by multiple people) 20-25 times per game. . .a man runs into him as hard as he can, running as fast as he can.
These guys can’t walk the day after games.
IMHO, NFL football is the most grueling, and it’s not even close.
About soccer…is everyone from both teams always moving when the ball is moving? I seem to recall from my kiddie soccer days that there’s lines across the field that you have to stay between but I don’t recall if it’s based on where the ball is or what team you’re on. Does everyone run the length of the field every time the ball changes hands or what?
Basketball is set up similarly but the court is quite a lot shorter than a soccer field.
Trunk, the season schedule isn’t really that grueling for football compared to other sports. And neither is gameday play - lots of down time between plays and you only play 1/2 the game unless you’re on both offense and defense (which isn’t done anymore is it?) You’re still convinced that football is the most grueling per season even though it’s just short bursts of intense action over a short period of time over a short season?
I would just add, that while falling short of a real sport, old style pro wrestling was pretty grueling. You had to furnish your own transportation, meals, board, etc. You were on the road or wrestling (tossing around 200+ pounders) almost every night. Jack Brisco said that when he was NWA champ that things were so hectic that sometimes he just knew where he was booked, and wouldn’t even know whom he was battling until he made it to the ring. But at least with the NWA champ, he did get some compensation for travel and expenses.
But for the regional grunts, you were on the road a lot.
I can only find one questionable cite for this (although I’ve heard the statistic before) but David Beckham is reputed to have run over 10 miles during the England v Greece World Cup qualifier on 6 October 2001.
Have you ever seen one of these specials about football players after they retire? Guys with 7+ surgeries in both knees! 50 year old men walking around with canes! Vicodin addiction. Depression and suicide from the damage caused by concussions.
Read this about Jerome Bettis the day after a game. It includes this:
“The average career of an NFL back is 2.6 years and falling, according to the National Football League Players’ Association.”
From this.
Find me stories like that about guys who have to skate or run back and forth day in and day out.
Unless your definition of “grueling” is simply a “long schedule” I don’t know how anyone can claim that anything outside the NFL is even close.
When properly executed (i.e., at the top professional levels, yes, everybody is on the move pretty much constantly. And no, there are no “lines” a player may not cross – the only exception is the Offsides Rule (similar but different from Hockey) that regulates how and when a player may be ahead of the ball (in essence, if the ball is passed forward to you, there must be two defensive players nearer their own goal than you are)
Exceptional yes, completely out-of-whack no. I’d say top professional Soccer players probably cover anywhere between 5-10 Km in a game (sorry, no cite - just a faint recollection of some relatively long ago statistic)
I’d suggest cycling. One day races (let alone stage races) can be prety hard, with race times of 5 to 6 hours. Racers who quit are not replaced, so every rider who finishes is in for 100% of the action.
100% of the clock time is action. There are no time outs, no halftime breaks, and no bench to sit on. There may be times when the pace is fairly easy but when the pace gets hard, it gets brutally hard.
Weather conditions play a bit part in the outcome. Wind direction can play a bit part when it comes to race strategy and tactics. Rain can make the roads slippery. Temperature can be freezing cold or broiling hot. Some of the worst days are when it’s windy, raining, and cold.
It’s not a big contact sport like football or hockey, but there is always the risk of a crash.
I think you need to have sub-sections of grueling.
For example -
Hardest on you mentally?
Hardest for impact?
Hardest cardio?
For example I can say that cycling is probably quite hard mentally to keep going to that long - similar to some ultra-marathons, but football (American) and hockey are hard for impact too, you are less likely to have a three hundred pound team throw himself at your gut while in the Tour de France.
I’ll have to make mention of competition cross-country skiing.
Back in the 1970s, before television got squeamish, you’d see these guys in the Winter Olympics coming in to the finish with their own vomit all over themselves from the sheer exertion. They clearly thought nothing of it, realizing it came with the territory. There aren’t too many sports where exhaustion puke is a standard part of the experience.
I think football might be the physically most damaging, but I don’t think it’s the physically most demanding.
That baseball is demanding because of the schedule and travel involved is a bit tricky. Baseball in Japan, for example, isn’t going to be near as demanding. They play less games, (130, I think), and have a longer season than than in the US (i.e., usually at least two days off a week). Plus they travel in an area the size of California. But baseball itself is hardly a ‘demanding’ sport.
I’ve played in the past, or still play now, the following sports: hockey, baseball, football, tennis, and cycling. And cycling, hands down was the most physically demanding sport I have ever participated in. Top cyclists often ‘bonk’, or hit the wall - completely run out of energy - on long rides or difficult hills. When’s the last time you heard about a baseball or football player suddenly being unable to continue, not because of cramps or something, but because they were simply too tired?
Hockey’s a close second. Shifts that last longer than 60 seconds leave your legs feeling like rubber. I can only imagine the kind of shape top hockey players are in.